Bush Out

Where's Gandhi?

2011-09-08T12:26:00.002+10:00

I am now tweeting as @Jaraparilla and blogging at jaraparilla.blogspot.com - come say hi.

The Best Of BushOut

2010-03-06T15:47:00.000+10:00

Top ten posts since I started this blog in 2003:

1. How Bush's friends manipulated Global Oil Prices in the lead-up to the 2006 mid-term elections.

The real question is not why they manipulate oil prices for political profit, but how do they do it...

2. Killing Arabs: Bush, Camus and the Politics Of The Absurd:

Camus’ writing is marked by an intellectual rigor that shines like a bright light through all his work. By contrast, Bush cannot even be bothered to analyze complex issues in anything more than a superficial way...

3. Bush Cites Fadhils For Proof Of "Success" In Iraq:

When the President of the United States of America is reduced to quoting propaganda nonsense fabricated by his own neocon supporters, that's pathetic. When he does so specifically in order to justify failed policies which continue to see dozens, if not hundreds, dead every day in Iraq, that's worse than tragic. It's criminal...

4. Iraq The Model: The Full Story

The NYT article only skimmed the surface of my allegations against the Fadhil brothers, gently suggesting they might be working with the CIA but quickly concluding that they probably are not. So here is the full story, from my point of view, for anyone who is interested...

More on Jim Hake here. More on the Fadhil brothers here. One day I might get around to pulling all this shit together.

5. Warmongers Jerk Off To Chrenkoff

If normal companies are using buzz and direct-advertising techniques, there's no reason to think that the most powerful military complex on the planet hasn't caught on...

More on Chrenkoff here.

6. Bush Versus Confucius

Others are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Others are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.

7. Too Incredible To Be True: The Khaled El-Masri Story

Regular readers might remember that it was not so long ago that this humble blog was - quite incredibly - rated the #2 resource on the Web for a Google search on his name...

More on Khaled El-Masri here. Original Bush Out blog post here. Latest Wikipedia info here.

8. A hit from the Executive Office Of The President Of The United States:

The hit came from Washington, D.C., on April 16th at 11:46:42 pm. It was a Google blog search (blogsearch.google.com) for the words "George Tenet" and it led to this post...

9. My very first blog post, from way back in Feb, 2003:

Who are we? Where are we going? What kind of world do we want to create? ...

The industralised behommeth [sic] of 21st Century "Civilisation" races at full steam towards a destination most thinking people no longer wish to attain... Who built this cursed machine? Who controls it? Should we be trying to stop it, destroy it or re-direct it? Or should we just be jumping off?!?

After centuries of disenfranchisement, subjugation and de-humanisation, the Internet promises to re-empower the individual and unite ordinary people around the globe. Personal web sites like Blogger give us a medium to make our voices heard like never before. This Blog is my voice on the Internet.

10. My second blog post, just two months into the war:

We are now witnessing the collapse of the myriad Bush administration myths about why the USA had to invade Iraq... So now it it time to ask: WHY DID THEY DO IT?

The answer, obvious enough once the other myths are exploded, is OIL.

So, what now? Iraq is perhaps the only nation on earth capable of seriously challenging Saudi Arabia as the World #1 oil exporter. The Americans will clearly want to maintain control of this oil for the next hundred years (or at least until it is all gone). The obvious fix would be to "sell" all the Iraqi's oil to the USA at very attractive prices. In return, the USA will give the Iraqis ... what? Hmmn... How about ongoing military and administrative support? Well, that won't be necessary once the Iraqis regain control of their country and set up a stable, model democracy, right?

Hands up anyone who thinks the instability in Iraq will be resolved anytime soon.

And a follow up more than four years later:

If the truth was obvious to me, a relatively uninformed middle-aged nobody, way back then, why couldn't the whole world see it? Why couldn't our politicians admit it? Why was the media silent? Why has it taken us four long years of lies, and over half a million deaths, to reach this point of public outrage? How on earth did Bush, Blair and Howard manage to get re-elected?

The disturbing answers to these questions tell us much about who we are, what we have become, and where we are going.

I have now spent over four years blogging nearly every day against Bush, Howard, Blair and their Big Money backers. It has been a process of learning and self-realisation as much as a politically-oriented campaign for truth and accountability.

The knowledge I have accumulated has been quite shocking, in many respects, and almost always depressing. Much that was dismissed, just a short time ago, as wild Conspiracy Theory, is now accepted as common knowledge. I have learned a good deal about of politics, business, and Western society, but I have learned far, far more about human nature.

9/11 Was An Inside Job

2009-11-25T05:43:00.001+10:00

The son of the man who built the Sydney Opera House - himself a highly respected architect - gets the usual "batshit crazy" treatment from the media but makes his opinion clear.

Utzon's son signs up for September 11 conspiracy theory

''I think it is important that we get all the things on the table, all the different facts, and see what is actually right,'' Mr Utzon tells Mr Gage. ''Because if somebody, they are indeed trying to cover something up, it is good to get it out in the open. Because what else would they be covering up?''

Speaking in a corridor in the Sydney Opera House, Mr Gage reveals that Mr Utzon signed a petition organised by his organisation, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, demanding an inquiry a year ago.

Contacted yesterday about the comments, Mr Utzon said he was ''a bit surprised'' that the video had been posted. Yet he repeated his call for an investigation and said distrust of the media was a significant driver of that.

''I have an inborn sense [that] what is coming out in the media is slightly, or to a large extent, a distorted version of what actually happened,'' Mr Utzon said. ''This comes right back from where my father had to leave the Opera House job here in Sydney and consequent media reports on his life and his doings.''

Mr Monsieur? Really?

2009-11-24T18:08:00.001+10:00

BBC News - Belgian pleads guilty to US-Iran arms sales charges

Mr Monsieur... real name?

How The Game Works

2009-11-24T18:03:00.001+10:00

Tensions high at climate deal crunch time - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Mr Rudd today announced the Government was doubling compensation for the coal sector and more than doubling it for electricity generators in an attempt to win Coalition support and get the deal through the Senate before the end of the week.

Blair's War

2009-11-24T06:14:00.001+10:00

Iraq war inquiry Tony Blair invasion

British military commanders are expected to tell an inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens today, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair's government's attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva Conventions to safeguard civilians in a conflict.

The lengths the Blair government took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders' anger at what they call the government's ''appalling'' failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, promised to produce a ''full and insightful'' account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.

Fresh evidence indicates how Mr Blair misled MPs by claiming in 2002 the goal was ''disarmament, not regime change''. Documents show the government wanted to hide its true intentions by informing only ''very small numbers'' of officials.

The documents, leaked to London's Sunday Telegraph, are ''post-operational reports'' and ''lessons learned'' papers compiled by the army and its field commanders. The deep hostility of Britain's senior military commanders towards their US allies is also disclosed in the classified government documents leaked to the Telegraph.

In an interview for the Chilcot inquiry, Colonel J.K. Tanner, the British chief of staff in Iraq, described his US counterparts as ''a group of Martians'' for whom ''dialogue is alien''. He added: ''Despite our so-called 'special relationship', I reckon we were treated no differently to the Portuguese.''

Colonel Tanner's boss, Major-General Andrew Stewart, the top British operational commander in Iraq, told how ''a significant amount of my time'' had been spent ''evading'' and ''refusing'' orders from his US superiors.

At least once, according to the papers, General Stewart's refusal to obey an order resulted in Britain's ambassador to Washington, Sir David Manning, being called to the US State Department for a diplomatic reprimand - of the kind usually delivered to ''rogue states'' such as Zimbabwe.

One commander said the government ''missed a golden opportunity'' to win support from Iraqis. Another commented: ''It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves.'' One, describing the supply chain, added: ''I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.''

The ''lessons learned" report said: ''Never again must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle.''

Significantly, the documents support what officials have earlier admitted - that the army was not allowed to prepare properly for the Iraq invasion in 2002 so as not to alert Parliament and the UN that Mr Blair was already determined to go to war.

Mr Blair had in effect promised the US president, George Bush, that he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action.

Guardian News & Media;

Telegraph, London

We All Know That Feeling, Right?

2009-11-24T06:04:00.001+10:00

Well, maybe not quite.

Doctors thought he was in a coma, but he was in fact conscious

A Belgian man thought to have been in a coma for 23 years has told of his "second birth" after doctors realised he was in fact conscious, a German weekly reported.

Medical staff believed Rom Houben had been left in a vegetative state by a serious car accident, but he was simply paralysed and unable to communicate.

The former engineering student and martial arts enthusiast, now 46, told Der Spiegel that he meditated to pass the long years trapped in his own body.

Houben's true condition was discovered following new tests at the University of Liege, in eastern Belgium, which found that his brain was still functioning.

Using a specially-adapted computer to type messages, Houben has been able to describe the ordeal he endured for more than two decades.

"I cried out, but no-one heard me," he said, "I will never forget the day they discovered me - it was my second birth."

bLAIR'S wAR

2009-11-23T17:45:00.001+10:00

Blair misled MPs on Iraq war: papers

Blair misled MPs on Iraq war: papers

By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici

Posted 10 hours 40 minutes ago
Updated 5 hours 39 minutes ago
Troops in Basra: the leaked reports reveal that Britain was not prepared for war

Troops in Basra: the leaked reports reveal that Britain was not prepared for war (AFP: Toby Melville)

Secret British government papers reveal that former prime minister Tony Blair misled MPs and the public about the reasons the country was going to war in Iraq.

Britain's Sunday Telegraph has published correspondence between military commanders and their political masters.

The correspondence shows that in July 2002, Mr Blair told the public and MPs that Britain's objective in Iraq was "disarmament, not regime change", and that there had been no plan for military action.

But the documents reveal that a full invasion of Iraq was being planned five months earlier.

The leaked reports also reveal that Britain was not prepared for war and was under-equipped when the invasion began in 2003.

The need to conceal that fact had "constrained" the planning process and the result was a "rushed" operation "lacking in coherence and resources", which caused "significant risk" to troops and "critical failure" in the post-war period.

The revelations come two days before public hearings begin in the Iraq inquiry.

The Sheep Awake

2009-11-23T16:13:00.001+10:00

Guardian Report: US Setting Aside $1.3 Billion For Anti-Taliban Afghan Militias

1.3 billion something is wrong here wish we could audit this money and see where it is really going?????????? that's 1,300,000,000 of your tax money and I do not think it will go to who they say..............call me a skeptic

The Mysterious US Media

2009-11-23T08:14:00.000+10:00

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

The Washington Post has known since 2005 in exactly which countries the CIA maintained its illegal, secret prisons but still refuses to say, even though they've now been banned by Executive Order and even though Lithuania and Poland are launching investigations which the Post could easily answer, but chooses not to.

Throw Out The Case?

2009-11-23T07:51:00.000+10:00

First Obama, now his AG... In any fair trial, this would be enough to get the case thrown out.

September 11 accused to explain why

"I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder told the committee.

Shock! Horror!

2009-11-17T05:57:00.001+10:00

Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories, film claims | Politics | The Guardian

50% of MPs in the shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel members, according to Channel 4's Dispatches.

Was Hasan Working Undercover?

2009-11-16T14:46:00.000+10:00

A comment from Zelikow? And more "anonymous White House officials"? Why...?

Obama orders inquiry into handling of Hasan intelligence:

Perhaps more than most of Hasan's actions, it was the e-mail contact with Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki that had independent analysts and some members of Congress demanding an investigation.

"I was startled," said Philip Zelikow, who was the executive director of the bipartisan commission that investigated the 2001 terrorist attacks. "Awlaki is a (Sept. 11) loose end. ... It should have set off some questions."

U.S. government agents knew that Hasan had exchanged 10 to 20 e-mails starting last December with Awlaki, a New Mexico-born Muslim cleric who grew up in Yemen and was linked in the 9-11 Commission's final report to at least two of the 2001 hijackers.

Awlaki's response was limited - only two of Hasan's messages were returned - and didn't encourage violence. In fact, one of them advised Hasan not to violate any laws, according to an official at the House Intelligence Committee, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorize to talk about the investigation.

Anthrax!

2009-11-16T08:17:00.001+10:00

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS AND ITS COVER-UP:

Bruce Ivins sent samples of RMR-1029 to both Battelle and Dugway. Practically all of the science underlying Amerithrax now being reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences is about matching the genetic fingerprint of the attack anthrax to that of RMR-1029. Given that both Battelle and Dugway had RMR-1029, Battelle and Dugway are no less incriminated than Bruce Ivins by the science underlying Amerithrax.

That the FBI has engaged in cover-up in its Amerithrax investigation is readily apparent. This memorandum addresses the urgent matter of what it is that is being covered up...

I posted the following comment at ICH:

Great work, Barry. These anthrax attacks really have demonstrated a most extraordinary level of official incompetence on multiple levels, including the FBI's bungled attempts to pretend to be mounting a serious investigation. If they are going to lie to us, they should at least TRY to make the lies semi-plausible.

More importantly, the fact that nobody in Washington DC or the US media is prepared to mount a ruthless exposure of these anthrax lies tells us everything we need to know about the USA today. Look at the simple logic:

1. The anthrax attacks were an inside job.

2. The FBI and the Bush administration covered up the truth.

3. The Obama administration is not interested in further investigations, even though two top Democrats were targetted.

ERGO:

4. The US military-industrial complex is now as powerful as, or more powerful than, both major parties in the US government. Effectively, it controls the government.

AND:

5. The US military-industrial complex and major political parties are prepared to engineer false reasons for more wars, including targetting US citizens.

Horrifying stuff, but unarguably TRUE!

A Decent Book Review?

2009-11-16T06:22:00.001+10:00

Book Review - 'The Ground Truth - The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11,' by John Farmer - Review - NYTimes.com

It doesn’t require scouring the archives to notice that 9/11 was relentlessly exploited by the Bush administration to serve as the founding myth for the war on terror, which was seamlessly expanded from Afghanistan to Iraq. In retrospect, the administration’s public portrayal of itself and the armed forces as acting heroically on 9/11 can be seen as an integral part of the selling of the Iraq war.

Farmer also suggests that the cold war did not come to an end until the 9/11 attacks took place. But this, too, is questionable. In trumpeting an ill-defined war against terrorism, Bush simply transposed the bombast of the cold war to the present to suggest that he was a new Churchill staring down evil and that America needed to combat a new totalitarian threat emerging from the Islamic world. Still, Farmer’s accomplishment is to throw 9/11 into fresh relief. A precise and reliable accounting of what happened has been absent until now. This is it.

Scum

2009-11-13T10:41:00.000+10:00

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

What Galbraith kept completely concealed all these years was that a company he formed in 2004 came to acquire a large stake in a Kurdish oil field whereby, as the NYT put it, he "stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars." In other words, he had a direct -- and vast -- financial stake in the very policies which he was publicly advocating in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and countless other American media outlets, where he was presented as an independent expert on the region.

Resolve To Withdraw ASAP!

2009-11-13T09:10:00.000+10:00

The Associated Press: Obama's hesitancy on war buildup sends messages

"How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this isn't an open-ended commitment?"

So Much For The First Black Female President

2009-11-12T08:15:00.000+10:00

Rice And Hadley Look Set To Launch Consulting Firm | TPMMuckraker

In September, the RiceHadley Group LLC was registered as a business in California, under a San Francisco address. According to a source, the venture is to be a "strategic consulting" firm, headed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and will be launched imminently.

Neither Rice nor Hadley responded to TPMmuckraker's requests for comment.

A website at the URL "ricehadley.com" is said to be "under construction."

The Only Thing That Surprises Me...

2009-11-11T21:17:00.001+10:00

... is that they couldn't get hold of this information themselves. I assume the DoJ/CIA/FBI/etc is staffed with fools while Indymedia has some very clever geeks.

Justice Dept. Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists - Taking Liberties - CBS News

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

No Magic Escape For Australia

2009-11-11T13:48:00.000+10:00

Fall in housing starts to impact prices

The myth is that higher property taxes increase the cost of housing and office space over time. The reality is that higher taxes would leave less site-rent to be pledged to banks - thereby reducing the financial cost of property ownership - while also enabling the government to shift the tax burden back off labour on to property, as used to be the case in Australia before the mid-1970s.

This explains why the financial lobby supports the real estate lobby in shaping public perceptions of the property market - along with government financial policy towards the finance, insurance and real estate sector.

Australia's fiscal-financial system has become increasingly dysfunctional in giving tax preference to land-price ''capital'' gains and hence property speculation rather than tangible capital formation. Instead of raising living standards by producing more, what passes as post-industrial ''wealth creation'' takes the form of inflating asset prices on credit. The result is a bubble economy. And inasmuch as asset-price gains are fuelled by debt leveraging, wealth creation is more accurately viewed as debt creation.

The problem is that debts remain in place even as prices drop.

And they are dropping in response to the economy's shrinking ability to pay, as more and more income is earmarked to pay debts run up in the past. This debt service is not available for spending on goods and services. The result is debt deflation. Lower spending on goods and services shrinks the domestic market (and also shrinks imports), leading to lower business profits and also lower business rentals. Lower rental income results in lower property prices - and at a point, property falls into negative equity: the mortgage debt exceeds the current market price that home owners or commercial investors can recover.

This is the end stage of debt-leveraged bubbles.

Violence Bets Violence Begets Violence Begets....

2009-11-11T12:51:00.000+10:00

Breaking news

Breaking news
Washington sniper executed by injection: prison

1:39pm Washington sniper John Muhammad has been executed by lethal injection over a series of 2002 shootings that left 10 people dead, a prison spokesman has said.
Obama vows justice for Fort Hood victims

DAPHNE BENOIT 1:34pm US President Barack Obama has vowed justice (IE EXECUTION - G.) as he eulogized the dead of the Fort Hood shootings and warned that even twisted faith could not explain such "craven" mass murder.

So That's All Right Then?

2009-11-11T09:11:00.000+10:00

Maybe not quite! But I am sure the professional global warming sceptics will grab at it with both hands...

Ice loss offsets global warming: study

Their estimate, based on images of green algal blooms, is that the phytoplankton absorbs 3.5 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 12.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas.

To put it in perspective, this is equivalent to the CO2-storing capacity of between 6,000 and 17,000 hectares (15,000 and 42,500 acres) of tropical rainforest, according to the paper.

The tally is minute compared to the quantities of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation, which amounted to 8.7 billion tonnes of carbon in 2007.

Heckuva Job (Cont'd)

2009-11-11T08:56:00.000+10:00

On Bush's Watch, U.S. Suffered Its "Electronic Pearl Harbor"

Enter Jim Lewis, who directs the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who says that the United States experienced its "electronic Pearl Harbor" in 2007:

LEWIS: Some unknown foreign power, and honestly, we don't know who it is, broke into the Department of Defense, to the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, probably the Department of Energy, probably NASA. They broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information.

Lewis goes on to point out that the entire Library Of Congress is the equivalent of 12 terabytes, so that sort of puts things in perspective, doesn't it? And it's not like hackers were making off with William Faulkner novels!

And last November, according to Lewis, "someone was able to get past the firewall and encryption devices of one of the most sensitive U.S. military computer systems and stay inside for several days." That system? The CENTCOM network, which you might know as "the people who are fighting all of our wars." The hackers were able to sit inside the network, tracking information and documents "like they were part of military command."

This, Lewis said, is the "most significant" breach of security ever "acknowledged by the Pentagon." Not acknowledging this, however, is the Bush administration, on whose watch all of this happened. Asked why the public was never told about the extent to which the United States had already suffered significant cyber-casualties, Lewis said: "You know, I've been trying to figure out why that is. And some of it is the previous administration didn't want to admit that they had been rolled in 2007." Worse yet, in Lewis' estimation, the seriousness of the threat, even now, "doesn't seem to be sinking in."

Yoo Got Problems

2009-11-11T08:47:00.000+10:00

Justice Watch: Yoo Withdrew: Amidst Growing Call for Criminal Investigation, Torture Memos Author John Yoo Withdraws from Federalist Society Panel

Yoo was scheduled to speak on the panel, “Professional Responsibility: The Role of Government Attorneys and the Global War on Terror” this Thursday, November 12.

Teh Stoopid (Part 134,236,729 and counting...)

2009-11-11T08:29:00.000+10:00

They really do let anyone into the US Marines these days...

Marine accused of attacking priest

Marakis, a Greek Orthodox priest visiting from Crete, told police he had stopped to ask the 28-year-old reservist for help after getting lost in downtown Tampa. He had just performed a blessing of another priest and accidentally got off the highway.

Marakis approached Bruce as he was unloading his dry-cleaning, police said.

"Please, please help," Marakis said to Bruce in his limited English.

Bruce pulled out a tyre iron and attacked the priest, police said. He then called police as he chased Marakis, saying an Arabic man was trying to rob him. When officers arrived, Bruce told them the man was a terrorist.

Bruce told police he heard Marakis yell, "Allahu akbar!", Arabic for "God is great," according to Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy.

Marakis, however, does not speak Arabic, McElroy said. He speaks Greek.

Rupert Murdoch, White Supremacist

2009-11-11T06:22:00.001+10:00

A former NY Post editor is suing the paper, claiming they are racist misogynists. Longtime Murdoch favourite editor Col Allen, the man who took Kevin Rudd to a strip club, gets special attention: he even showed women employees photos of naked men on his Blackberry!

Murdoch recently insisted that he doesn't tell his editors what to write, "but I do choose my editors." News Ltd employees and outlets are always coming under scrutiny, while Murdoch himself floats above the carnage. That could be about to change.

Murdoch: Beck 'Was Right' When He Called Obama Racist:

In an interview with SkyNews last week, Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox News, said Glenn Beck "was right" when he called President Obama "a racist" this summer.

Some background: In August, after a white cop mistakenly arrested a black Harvard professor in his own home, touching off a nationwide debate about race, Obama said during a news conference that James Crowley, the police officer, "acted stupidly."

Beck jumped on the comment, saying Obama has "a deep-seated hatred for white people." He later said, "I'm not saying he doesn't like white people. ... He has a, this guy is, I believe, a racist."

Asked about that comment last week, Murdoch -- ultimately, Beck's boss -- said Beck was right, even though he maybe shouldn't have said as much.

"On the racist thing, that caused a grilling. But [Obama] did make a very racist comment about, you know, blacks and whites and so on, which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. And, you know, that was something which perhaps shouldn't have been said about the President. But if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right."

Murdoch is now in the firing line. About bloody time!

Bye Bye Bitch

2009-11-11T04:44:00.001+10:00

Albrechtsen ABC board retires

Das Kapital Sux

2009-11-10T16:00:00.001+10:00

BBC NEWS | Special Reports | Free market flawed, says survey

More than 29,000 people in 27 countries were questioned. In only two countries, the United States and Pakistan, did more than one in five people feel that capitalism works well as it stands.

Almost a quarter - 23% of those who responded - feel it is fatally flawed. That is the view of 43% in France, 38% in Mexico and 35% in Brazil.

And there is very strong support around the world for governments to distribute wealth more evenly. That is backed by majorities in 22 of the 27 countries.

If there is one issue where a global consensus seems to emerge from the survey it is this: there are majorities almost everywhere wanting government to be more active in regulating business.

Another Occupied US Colony

2009-11-09T21:14:00.001+10:00

I was trying to explain to my 12-y-o about East and West Germany today when he saw a TV story about the Berlin Wall (I drove through it 20 years ago, just weeks after it came down, and it was like going back 50 years in time). I explained that the Russians built the wall to block off East Berlin, and then he asked "So who owned the other side?"

Japanese FM Rules Out Base Deal During Obama Visit -- News from Antiwar.com

Go Now

2009-11-09T21:07:00.001+10:00

Japanese protest against US military presence:

Okinawa has long been called the United States' "unsinkable aircraft carrier" but the vast majority of Okinawa's 1.4 million inhabitants would like the Americans to sail off into the sunset.

At a rally in Ginowan, more than 20,000 Japanese turned up to call for the US base to be moved off the island.

"No other place in the world has had US troops stationed there as long as Okinawa," Ginowan mayor Yoichi Iha said.

"Okinawa has suffered for too long."

Born Again? Or Nowhere?

2009-11-09T20:58:00.001+10:00

The cap fits!

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The map that changed the world

The name America, for example, very probably represents not just a tip of the hat to Amerigo Vespucci but also a multilingual pun that can mean both "born new" and "no-place-land" - a playful coinage that seems to have inspired Sir Thomas More to invent his new world across the ocean, one meaning of which was also "no-place": Utopia.

Pitchforks? Anyone? Or Just Tea Bags?

2009-11-09T20:13:00.001+10:00

Wall Street Record Bonuses Return as Big 3 May Pay $30 Billion - Bloomberg.com

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s investment bank, survivors of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, are set to pay record bonuses this year.

The firms -- the three biggest banks to exit the Troubled Asset Relief Program -- will hand out $29.7 billion in bonuses, according to analysts’ estimates. That’s up 60 percent from last year and more than the previous high of $26.8 billion in 2007. The money, split among 119,000 employees, equals $250,400 each, almost five times the $50,303 median household income in the U.S. last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The three will award more in stock and defer more cash payments under pressure from regulators to tie pay to long-term results, compensation experts said. They may still face public wrath over the size of bonuses after the government injected capital into all the major financial institutions following Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse in September 2008.

“Wall Street is beginning to resemble Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in the film ‘Gone With the Wind’: ‘Quite frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,’” Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate on compensation at the Portland, Maine-based Corporate Library, said in an e-mail. “It doesn’t seem as if even political threat, disastrous PR, envy, rising unemployment rates and home repossessions is enough to get any of these people to refuse the bonuses they have ‘earned.’”

USA Declares Victory In Iraq

2009-11-06T07:55:00.000+10:00

Exxon clinches Iraq oil deal

Exxon Mobil on Thursday became the first US company to win a contract since Iraq's oil industry was nationalised almost 40 years ago, further expanding the role of foreign nations in the industry.

The contract to develop West Qurna 1, the war-torn country's second largest field, will boost its production to 2.325 million barrels per day (bpd), said Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani.

"The companies will spend $US50 billion ($A54.82 billion) - 25 billion on operations and a further 25 billion in development," he said, referring to the winning bid, in which Exxon holds an 80-per cent share and Anglo-Dutch firm Shell the balance.

The contract was announced 48 hours after Baghdad completed a deal with Britain's BP and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) to almost triple production at the giant Rumaila oilfield - Iraq's biggest - in what is also a $US50 billion ($A54.82 billion) investment.

Both fields are located in southern Iraq, home to most of the nation's oil.

Belling The Cat

2009-11-05T09:53:00.000+10:00

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Michael Ledeen is one of the most dishonest and ludicrous jokes on the political scene. Will that stop George Stephanopoulos from using Ledeen as an expert source on Iran? No, of course not, because once one obtains Seriousness credentials in Washington, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct...

Interesting Result

2009-11-05T08:32:00.000+10:00

I followed this case for a while way back when...

Italy Convicts 23 Americans In CIA Terrorist Kidnapping Case

MILAN — An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.

Human rights groups hailed the decision and pressed President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush administration's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted.

The Obama administration ended the CIA's interrogation program and shuttered its secret overseas jails in January but has opted to continue the practice of extraordinary renditions.

The Americans, who were tried in absentia, now cannot travel to Europe without risking arrest as long as the verdicts remains in place.

Despite the convictions capping the nearly three-year Italian trial, several Italian and American defendants – including the two alleged masterminds of the abduction – were acquitted due to either diplomatic immunity or because classified information was stricken by Italy's highest court.

The case has been politically charged from the beginning, with attempts to mislead investigators looking into the cleric's disappearance and derail the judicial proceedings once the trial was under way. But the Italian-American relationship, conditioned on such issues as participation in the Afghan campaign, is unlikely to be hurt by the convictions. The American Civil Liberties Union said the verdicts were the first convictions stemming from the rendition program.

Three Americans were acquitted, including the then-Rome CIA station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other diplomats formerly assigned to the Rome Embassy, as well as the former head of Italian military intelligence Nicolo Pollari and four other Italian secret service agents.

Only two Italians were in the courtroom to hear the verdict, including Marco Mancini, the former No. 2 at Italian military intelligence, who embraced his lawyer outside the courtroom after he was acquitted.
Story continues below

Former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady received the top sentence of eight years in prison. The other 22 convicted American defendants, including a former Milan consular official, Sabrina De Sousa and Air Force Lt. Col. Joseph Romano, each received a five-year sentence. Two Italians got three years each as accessories.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the Obama administration was "disappointed about the verdicts."

The State Department is being sued by De Sousa, a former State Department employee who denies she was a CIA agent and who believes she should have been granted diplomatic immunity by U.S. officials. The judge's verdict, however, did not extend diplomatic immunity to consular officials charged.

Mark Zaid, the American lawyer for De Sousa, told The Associated Press in Washington: "The Italian conviction merely confirms the U.S. government's betrayal of our diplomatic and military representatives overseas."

Romano, who was one of only two Americans who received permission to hire his own lawyer, had tried to have the jurisdiction moved to a U.S. military court in the last weeks of the trial.

"We are clearly disappointed by the court's ruling," Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell told a Pentagon press conference Wednesday.

The Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents, were tried in absentia as subsequent Italian governments refused or ignored prosecutors' extradition request – a position that casts doubts on the Italian government's political will to enforce the sentences.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro said he was considering asking Rome to issue international arrest warrants for the fugitive Americans on the strength of the convictions. The government of Silvio Berlusconi, a close ally of President George W. Bush, has previously refused.

The Americans and Italian agents were accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany. He was then moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He has since been released, but has not been permitted to leave Egypt to attend the trial.

Spataro had sought stiffer sentences ranging from 10 to 13 years in jail, citing a conspiracy between U.S. and Italian secret services to abduct Nasr, who was under surveillance by Italian investigators building their own terror case against him. Nasr was suspected of organizing the movement of would-be suicide bombers to the Middle East, and Spataro noted in his closing arguments that the timing of his CIA-led abduction, as the United States was preparing to invade Iraq, indicated his potential importance.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said at his confirmation hearing in February that the administration would continue the practice of rendition for prisoners captured in the war on terrorism, but promised to get assurances first that prisoners would not be tortured or have their human rights violated once transferred.

The CIA declined to comment on the convictions.

After Hanan Ashwari

2009-11-04T22:30:00.001+10:00

Pilger awarded Sydney Peace Prize:

Pilger noted that in an essay in The Monthly magazine published not long before Mr Rudd became prime minister, he lauded the moral principles of the Good Samaritan and left no doubt that he believed refugees should not be treated the way Jews fleeing Nazi Germany were - that is, prevented from entering western countries, including Australia.

"But now Rudd says the diametric opposite: that his government would be `tough' on `illegal immigrants'. The term itself is a lie," he said.

"Refugees are not illegal - international law is clear on that. When are Australians going to speak out against this outrage being perpetrated in our name?"

Mr Pilger will deliver his Sydney Prize Lecture, titled Breaking the Australian Silence, at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday.

Rack 'Em And Screw 'Em

2009-11-03T08:12:00.000+10:00

From Information Clearing House:

What is more frightening -- that the C.I.A. got its jollies by torturing, even murdering human beings in its secret sodomy frat-houses -- or that the F.B.I. took one look, fled the scene and remained silent for years?

911 Was An Inside Job

2009-11-03T05:55:00.001+10:00

FBI Whistleblower Names Names by Scott Horton -- Antiwar.com

"I know when I was in the bureau there’s been a lot of espionage investigations that we had on State Department officials and also DoD employees. The thing is though, we know for a fact also that there were other people involved in helping the bin Laden family get out of the country right after 9/11, and there was some other things going on, illegal activity like Sibel stated to assist the family also. Certainly she’s accurate in stating that. I can’t get into any specifics on who we investigated in the State Department, but I will say that we did have some espionage investigations and criminal investigations on individuals in the State Department at that time..."

They Saw It Coming

2009-11-01T21:45:00.001+10:00

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash:

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

Who Should Really Be In Prison?

2009-10-29T15:40:00.001+10:00

Under Attack, Credit Raters Turn to the First Amendment

With help from two of the most storied constitutional lawyers in the country, the raters have successfully argued that when they make a mistake -- say, awarding the top triple-A grade to a multibillion-dollar bundle of bonds that later default -- they cannot be sued or held accountable.

That's because ratings are opinions, the agencies claim, protected by the constitutional right to free speech.

Imagine That!

2009-10-28T13:48:00.000+10:00

Afghan leader's brother on CIA payroll: report

Karzai denied receiving CIA payments or playing any role in the booming opium trade that helps fund the Taliban-led insurgency.

"I don't know anyone under the name of the CIA," he told the newspaper. "I have never received any money from any organisation. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan."

A Prescription For "The Long War"

2009-10-28T00:20:00.001+10:00

Glenn Greenwald nails it:

How long are we going to continue to do this? We invade and occupy a country, and then label as "insurgents" or even "terrorists" the people in that country who fight against our invasion and occupation. With the most circular logic imaginable, we then insist that we must remain in order to defeat the "insurgents" and "terrorists" -- largely composed of people whose only cause for fighting is our presence in their country. All the while, we clearly exacerbate the very problem we are allegedly attempting to address -- Terrorism -- by predictably and inevitably increasing anti-American anger and hatred through our occupation, which, no matter the strategy, inevitably entails our killing innocent civilians.

Some Motivation

2009-10-27T22:33:00.001+10:00

George W. Bush is a hit on the motivational speakers' circuit - washingtonpost.com

Bush did not appear to have an overarching theme, but strung anecdotes and jokes together and frequently mentioned his faith in God.

"I don't see how you can be president without relying on the Almighty. Now when I was 21, I wouldn't have told you that, but at age 63, I can tell you that one of the most amazing surprises of the presidency was the fact that people's prayers affected me. I can't prove it to you. But I can tell you some days were great, some days not so great. But every day was joyous." That, he attributed, to the prayers of others.

I'm So Old I Can Remember When This Would Have Been A Big Story

2009-10-26T14:31:00.000+10:00

Israeli Police Raid al-Aqsa Mosque, Clash with Protesters -- News from Antiwar.com

Naughty, Naughty!

2009-10-26T14:11:00.001+10:00

Karzai questions US reliability as partner

"Is the United States a reliable partner with Afghanistan? Is the West a reliable partner with Afghanistan?" Karzai asked. "Have we received the commitments that we were given? Have we been treated like a partner?"

Karzai said a partnership to him was "where the Afghan lives are respected, where Afghan property is respected, where the Afghan traditions are respected, where we know the direction we are moving to."

Let Them In

2009-10-23T10:25:00.000+10:00

Australia urged to take more refugees

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) national president Sandra Kanck said Australia could double the number of refugees it accepted provided it cut as many, or more, entrants through the skilled migration program.

"We have no moral obligation to the people coming here under the skilled migration program - they are not fleeing from war-torn states," Ms Kanck, a former Australian Democrats state MP, said.

"They are taking places we could make available to real refugees."

Ms Kanck said Australia could provide the necessary training to produce its own skilled workforce and did not need to poach from other countries.

She also suggested ditching the federal government's baby bonus to use the funding for training programs.

Oh My!

2009-10-23T09:46:00.000+10:00

Pentagon Used Psychological Operation On US public, Documents Show : Information Clearing House - ICH

A months-long review of documents and interviews with Pentagon personnel has revealed that the Bush Administration's military analyst program -- aimed at selling the Iraq war to the American people -- operated through a secretive collaboration between the Defense Department's press and community relations offices.

Raw Story has also uncovered evidence that directly ties the activities undertaken in the military analyst program to an official US military document’s definition of psychological operations -- propaganda that is only supposed to be directed toward foreign audiences.

Old, Gifted And White

2009-10-23T09:09:00.001+10:00

That's me. One in 100,000, when I was back in my old selective school. What happened, eh?

Gifted, talented, but it's no easy ride

"The word is the problem. In the Australian context, the term 'giftedness' is often perceived as a form of privilege. We are not saying they are any better in terms of their worth though."

Dying Breeds

2009-10-23T08:30:00.001+10:00

Bid to install Howard as rugby league boss given boot:

''I wish the game of rugby league well and I'll continue to follow it with sympathy,'' he said.

Gentle, Caring Killers

2009-10-22T10:21:00.001+10:00

Always the way, innit? You have to wonder why all these gentle, caring souls sign up to go abroad and kill people...

World News Australia - Family's tribute to 'gentle, caring' soldier

His distraught family say the dedicated soldier "was so strong, and yet the most gentle, caring, and loving man you would ever meet.

"He made us laugh every time we were together and his easy-going attitude was infectious.

"Our hearts ache for him.

Sibel!

2009-10-22T08:20:00.000+10:00

The BRAD BLOG : Military.com Covers Edmonds Disclosures, Reports 'Denials' From Several Fingered Bush Officials

If only we had the DNA of Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc...

2009-10-20T16:51:00.001+10:00

Maybe 20 years from now?

Crime-fighting leech collars crook:

The robber who was identified by the leech - Peter Cannon - will be sentenced in the Launceston Supreme Court on Friday.

The Anger Still Burns In Many Of Us, It Seems...

2009-10-20T13:19:00.001+10:00

David Hare: It all started 96 hours after 9/11 | David Hare | Comment is free | The Guardian

Every period throws up its own favoured means of mass distraction, but you're going to have to pull every history book off the shelf to find a distraction quite as nothing-to-do-with-anything as the US invasion of Iraq. The decade's significant date of choice for most historians is taken to be 11 September 2001. An airborne suicide attack on the twin towers in New York killed 2,948 people of 91 different nationalities. But if I was going to choose the day when the destiny of the new century really took shape, then I'd opt for 96 hours later. On 15 September, George Bush assembled his cabinet in casual clothes at Camp David (Paul Wolfowitz came without invitation and wore a suit) and, over chicken noodle soup, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, began to yield to the dazzling temptation of deliberately pursuing the wrong suspect. Hey, said the Americans, Let's Look Away.

How Will They Spin This Shit?

2009-10-19T14:21:00.000+10:00

If Obama is looking for excuses to withdraw...

Karzai Camp Hardens Its Line on Recount - WSJ.com

"The foreigners are trying to push a second round, and we are not going to participate this time," said Talim Khan, who marched in Spin Boldak. "They don't respect our votes. Despite threats that the Taliban will cut off our nose and ears we went to the polling station. We won't do so again."

Ah, Here Comes The Flood

2009-10-15T09:42:00.001+10:00

There really appears to be no solution to human stupidity.

Arctic ice cap to disappear in 20-30 years: study

"The summer ice cover will completely vanish in 20 to 30 years but in less than that it will have considerably retreated," said Professor Peter Wadhams, head of the polar ocean physics group at Britain's prestigious Cambridge University.

"In about 10 years, the Arctic ice will be considered as open sea."

Hey, We Finally Found That Steel From The WTC!

2009-10-14T14:01:00.001+10:00

Surprise, surprise! The military-industrialists have it!

Ship built from 9/11 steel sets sail:

A warship built with steel salvaged from the wreckage of the World Trade Centre has set sail for New York.

Hundreds of people lined the banks of the Mississippi river near New Orleans as the USS New York sailed through the fog, according to local media reports.

Its bow stem contains 7.5 tonnes of steel, salvaged from the rubble following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

But But But They Said They Didn't USE Depleted Uranium...

2009-10-13T14:39:00.001+10:00

Al Jazeera English - Focus - Video: Iraqi cancer figures soar

Mano A Mano, Rupes?

2009-10-13T08:39:00.001+10:00

While it's nice that the White House is belatedly targetting FAUX, Obama should really be going mano-a-mano with Rupert Murdoch.

White House targets Fox as it goes after press critics

History Lesson

2009-10-09T08:54:00.001+10:00

From Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

In February, the Obama DOJ went to court to block victims of rendition and torture from having a day in court, adopting in full the Bush argument that whatever was done to the victims is a "state secret" and national security would be harmed if the case proceeded. The following week, the Obama DOJ invoked the same "secrecy" argument to insist that victims of illegal warrantless eavesdropping must be barred from a day in court, and when the Obama administration lost that argument, they engaged in a series of extraordinary manuevers to avoid complying with the court's order that the case proceed, to the point where the GOP-appointed federal judge threatened the Government with sanctions for noncompliance. Two weeks later, "the Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, [tried] to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails."

In April, the Obama DOJ, in order to demand dismissal of a lawsuit brought against Bush officials for illegal spying on Americans, not only invoked the Bush/Cheney "state secrets" theory, but also invented a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim to insist Bush officials are immune from consequences for illegal domestic spying. The same month -- in the case brought by torture victims -- an appeals court ruled against the Obama DOJ on its "secrecy" claims, yet the administration vowed to keep appealing to prevent any judicial review of the interrogation program. In responses to these abuses, a handful of Democratic legislators re-introduced Bush-era legislation to restrict the President from asserting "state secrets" claims to dismiss lawsuits, but it stalled in Congress all year. At the end of April and then again in August, the administration did respond to a FOIA lawsuit seeking the release of torture documents by releasing some of those documents, emphasizing that they had no choice in light of clear legal requirements.

In May, after the British High Court ruled that a torture victim had the right to obtain evidence in the possession of British intelligence agencies documeting the CIA's abuse of him, the Obama administration threatened that it would cut off intelligence-sharing with Britain if the court revealed those facts, causing the court to conceal them. Also in May, Obama announced he had changed his mind and would fight-- rather than comply with -- two separate, unanimous court orders compelling the disclosure of Bush-era torture photos, and weeks later, vowed he would do anything (including issue an Executive Order or support a new FISA exemption) to prevent disclosure of those photos in the event he lost yet again, this time in the Supreme Court. In June, the administration "objected to the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons, arguing to a federal judge that doing so would endanger national security." In August, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder announced that while some rogue torturers may be subject to prosecution, any Bush officials who relied on Bush DOJ torture memos in "good faith" will "be protected from legal jeopardy." And all year long, the Obama DOJ fought (unsuccessfully) to keep encaged at Guantanamo a man whom Bush officials had tortured while knowing he was innocent.

It Stopped Making Sense A Long Time Ago

2009-10-08T09:36:00.000+10:00

The article below is just one of many I've read lately where the ridiculousness of the various justifications for staying in Afghanistan is laid bare.

Marine Gen. James Jones says there are "less than 100" Al Quaeda operatives in Afghanistan.

A War of Absurdity : Information Clearing House - ICH

Meanwhile David Corn describes a surreal White House press conference.

The Funny Thing Is...

2009-10-06T14:24:00.002+10:00

.. that Howard actually thinks his comments on the Murdoch media network will HELP. Check out the 100 comments here, I don't think there is a single one supporting him. So where were they all way back when...?

Send more troops or lose the war: Howard

Kevin's Naughty Nephew

2009-10-06T11:03:00.000+10:00

For sale: $1.2b used car part:

"Christies and Sothebys would no doubt argue that my piece is unsellable," he said.

"This is totally the point."

Heads You Lose, Tails We Win

2009-10-05T11:49:00.000+10:00

FT.com / Companies / Financial Services - Goldman to be paid $1bn if CIT fails

Goldman Sachs stands to receive a payment of $1bn – while US taxpayers would lose $2.3bn – if embattled commercial lender CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter said.

The payment stems from the structure of a $3bn rescue finance package that Goldman extended to CIT on June 6 2008, about five months before the Treasury bought $2.3bn in CIT preferred shares to prop it up at the height of the crisis. The potential loss for taxpayers would be the biggest to crystalise so far from the government’s capital injection plan for banks.

Hubris And Senilty

2009-10-02T09:33:00.002+10:00

Michael Wolff on Rupert Murdoch:

Murdoch can almost single-handedly take apart and re-assemble a complex printing press, but his digital-technology acumen and interest is practically zero. Murdoch’s abiding love of newspapers has turned into a personal antipathy to the Internet: for him it’s a place for porn, thievery, and hackers...

News Corp. isn’t like other media companies. Murdoch can cut through and level all bureaucratic confusion and inaction. If he says it will be paid, then all the voices, which in other companies would tell you why this, logically, might not work, go silent at News Corp. The logic of the situation is remade around Murdoch’s logic.

And even his young wife thinks he's an old fogey. This is surely grounds for divorce:

In one of my favorite Murdoch stories, his wife, Wendi, who had befriended the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, told me about how the “boys” had visited the Murdochs at their ranch in Carmel, California. When I marveled at this relative social mismatch and asked what they might have talked about, Wendi assured me that they had all gotten along very well.

“You know, Rupert,” Wendi said, “he’s always asking questions.”

“But what,” I prodded, “did he exactly ask?”

“He asked,” she said, hesitating only a beat before cracking herself up, “‘Why don’t you read newspapers?’”

Where Are They Now?

2009-10-01T08:51:00.000+10:00

Remember Tom Switzer, the neocon-friendly ex-editor of The Australian? His influential mates were pushing for him to take over Brendan Nelson's old seat - "the jewel in the crown of conservative politics in NSW". Interestingly, he lost out. But his old friends in the Murdoch press were still singing his praises...

Chosen for his smarts | The Australian

First up, based on an order drawn from a hat, was Tom Switzer, a former opinion editor at The Australian. Handsome and charismatic, Switzer carried endorsements from leading conservative figures such as John Howard, Tony Abbott and Peter Costello.

Switzer had given everything to the contest, but his opponents had managed to brand him as the candidate of the Right: a disadvantage on the north shore, where the Left, also known as the Group, has done a much better job than elsewhere of blocking a resurgent Right during the past decade. Switzer's enemies also used the coward's haven of the internet to circulate nasty rumours about an alleged womanising past.

Insight

2009-10-01T07:36:00.001+10:00

Goldman Sachs In Vanity Fair: Andrew Ross Sorkin Details Secret Meetings During Financial Crisis

"By tonight the government will realize they can't provide capital to a deal that's being done by the former firm of the Treasury secretary with the company of a former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs and former deputy Treasury secretary," Buffett said. "There is no way. They'll all wake up and realize, even if it was the best deal in the world, they can't do it."

Roy

2009-09-30T08:53:00.001+10:00

What Have We Done to Democracy?

What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit?

Is it possible to reverse this process? Can something that has mutated go back to being what it used to be? What we need today, for the sake of the survival of this planet, is long-term vision. Can governments whose very survival depends on immediate, extractive, short-term gain provide this? Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race? Could it be that democracy is such a hit with modern humans precisely because it mirrors our greatest folly -- our nearsightedness?

Our inability to live entirely in the present (like most animals do), combined with our inability to see very far into the future, makes us strange in-between creatures, neither beast nor prophet. Our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival. We plunder the earth hoping that accumulating material surplus will make up for the profound, unfathomable thing that we have lost. It would be conceit to pretend I have the answers to any of these questions. But it does look as if the beacon could be failing and democracy can perhaps no longer be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we once dreamed it would.

Rather Not Know The Truth?

2009-09-30T06:26:00.001+10:00

A big call:

Dan Rather Lawsuit Against CBS TOSSED In Entirety

"At the outset, we find that Supreme Court erred in declining to dismiss Rather's breach of contract claim against CBS," the court added.

Rather's team is appealing the dismissal. It would be great to see that report of Bush's AWOL National Service becoming public record. But obviously there are huge powers lined up to ensure it never happens. Not just because of the embarrassment to Duby & Co, but also for Big Media's sake.

Irony Is Dead

2009-09-29T22:18:00.001+10:00

This is the guy who bankrolls the Lib/Nat (ahem) "rightwing" coalition in Australia...

China foreign investment rules racist, says Clive Palmer:

“Capital is now in China, it's not in the US.”

So now the Chinese are Capitalists...?

Or in other words, the whole left-right thing was just a ruse, and everyone is just greedy and self-interested. We've moved beyond ideology to pure practicality. Greed is good, that's the only thing everyone with any wealth and power agrees on.

Another Amazing Coincidence In Iraq

2009-09-28T11:28:00.000+10:00

Somebody should compile a list...

U.S. drone crashes into Iraq political party office

Cheng said it was a coincidence that the drone struck the local offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Iraq's biggest Sunni Arab political group, the military said.

God Smites Thee!

2009-09-27T23:09:00.000+10:00

Soldiers killed in Afghan lightning storm - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Where's Omar Fadhil Now?

2009-09-26T05:31:00.012+10:00

Still picking up cheques from Rupert Murdoch, still writing opinion pieces for the WSJ, but now under the name Omar Fadhil Al-Nidawi.

Omar is still following the money, obviously, as a mouthpiece for the US military-industrial complex. Calling for more missiles, a bigger airport, more spending. You know the game. And if you don't, this clip from Motley Fool should help:

The Obama administration has proposed, and Congress is currently reviewing, a possible $7.8 billion sale of Patriot PAC-3 missiles to Turkey. Congressmen who've been stymied in their efforts to funnel government funds to Lockheed for its F-22 fighter jet (killed for good last week in the Senate), and to Raytheon for its subcontracting role in the Kinetic Interceptor (also now DOA), get a second bite at the funding apple. Both Lockheed and Raytheon were named as contractors to build the Patriot batteries, if the sale gets approved.

And that's just the start. In other Mideast news, The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by Iraqi commentator and political analyst Omar Fadhil Al-Nidawi last week, calling on Congress to provide Iraq with a robust air defense system. Headlining Mr. Al-Nidawi's wish list: F-16 fighter jets from Lockheed, and -- you guessed it -- Patriots from Raytheon.

(BTW: His WSJ co-author Austin Bay is a (former?) US Army Colonel who served in Iraq and wrote a book called "The Other Side Of Brightness". Irony much?)

Omar also wrote an Op-Ed for Rupert's The Australian back in June, titled Iraq Was A Just War. No trace of irony here either:

Corruption is a serious problem, but worse than corruption itself is if there is a lack of checks and balances that can stop it. In Iraq this used to happen all the time, but now a wind of change is blowing...

In fact, Omar Fadhil is now a summer associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. They are connected to the National Review and The Weekly Standard, and they publish a number of blogs including "Faster Please" by Michael Ledeen, "Iraq Status Report" and a blog called "The Long War Journal". There's that old neocon money trail.

Omar Fadhil is also now a graduate student of international affairs at Columbia University in New York City. He has 300 friends on Facebook, including media "guru" Jeff Jarvis, the mysterious Kerry Dupont (who offered all that cash to the boys in Baghdad), and Arthur "Good News" Chrenkoff.

Here's Omar's pic:

Here's brother Mohammed Fadhil:

And here's their old mate Arthur Chrenkoff:

Interesting that brother Ali is either not on Facebook, or totally estranged from the clan.

Also interesting to follow Kerry Dupont's links. You remember Kerry, a plain old mother of two from Maine who offered the Fadhil brothers $300,000, promised to get them help from the Department of Defense, and met George W. Bush with them and Paul Wolfowitz in the Oval Office. Here's a Facebook pic of Kerry:

Who is friends will Kelly Dupont:

Who is friends with Edward Dupont:

He looks pretty hard-core, doesn't he? There are a few Washington DC "friends" in the Dupont portfolio too. Wonder where Spirit Of America was getting all that money? There's another trail to follow...

Now I am just wondering if these crazy Dupont kids are not somehow related to these guys:

The Dupont Group is a Concord, New Hampshire-based business consulting firm focused on government affairs and public relations. The firm specializes in advocacy and communications associated with complicated public policy issues and regulated industries. The firm's services include lobbying and government affairs representation with an emphasis on New Hampshire state government, including the Legislature, executive branch as well as regulatory agencies. In addition, The Dupont Group's public relations division, White Birch Communications Group provides clients with a full array of corporate communications services ranging from integrated news media programs to corporate identification programs.

The head of the Dupont Group is a guy called Edward Dupont, a former Senator and founder of Strafford Fuels, Inc. But the pic doesn't look like the same guy:

Still, there could be a family resemblance. What do you think? Kerry Dupont comes from Maine, which is not too far from New Hampshire, where the Dupont Group is based.

PS: For anyone who doesn't know who Omar Fadhil is, this old blog post explains.

Coincidence?

2009-09-26T05:11:00.001+10:00

Hmmn, this is where they re sending the guys from Gitmo, right?

AP: Palau creates world's first shark sanctuary.

Staggering

2009-09-25T16:15:00.001+10:00

Amazing how we all slowly becomes immune to the impact of these still-climbing figures at INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE:

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq "1,339,771"

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,664

Number Of International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan : 1410

Cost of U.S. War and Occupation of Iraq

$685,399,255,031

What Was It All About?

2009-09-25T15:05:00.001+10:00

More Dirty Deeds

2009-09-24T16:20:00.001+10:00

Listening to Sibel Edmonds by Philip Giraldi -- Antiwar.com

Dirty Deeds

2009-09-24T15:36:00.000+10:00

Investigation: Nuclear scandal - Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan - Times Online

On the face of it, the letter’s contents are a damning indictment of a generation of Pakistan’s political and military leadership, who used Khan’s nuclear and missile skills to enhance Pakistan’s diplomacy.

It was not rocket science to work out a plausible explanation for the Dutch seizure. Bloggers will probably err on the side of more imaginative conspiracy theories, but the truth is probably simpler. After the September 11 attacks, the West in general, and the United States in particular, had to work with Pakistan to counter Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in neighbouring Afghanistan. That meant that they had to work with President Musharraf, even though he was no democrat. As part of the bargain, Pakistan’s nuclear sins also needed to be placed to one side.

As sins go, they were big: Pakistan had been spreading nuclear technology for years. The first customer for one of its enrichment plants was China — which itself had supplied Pakistan with enough highly enriched uranium for two nuclear bombs in the summer of 1982.

There it was in the letter...

GWB: The Comeback Tour

2009-09-24T08:58:00.001+10:00

George Bush in Real Life | vanityfair.com

The 1,500 people in the audience—men in dark-blue suits and women who look like they could be B.F.F.’s with Sarah Palin—spent $400 each to hear Bush give his first speech since leaving office. This is his test run, kicking off his post-presidency. No media invited. The organizers of the event, Andy McCreath and Christian Darbyshire of tinePublic (pronounced “Tiny Public”), won’t say how much W. is getting for this appearance, but they’re the same guys who helped launch Bill Clinton’s lucrative post-presidential juggernaut, with a multi-city tour of Canada—reportedly at about $150,000 a stop.

On May 29, they’ll take Bush to Toronto, where he’ll appear with Clinton for a first-time-ever public “conversation.” “His popularity is only going to increase with this,” predicts McCreath.

“This is my maiden voyage,” Bush says, onstage, in that way of his that could almost be ironic. He starts off by telling everybody he’s feeling great. “I’m a lucky man,” he says, “to have been married to Laura Bush. She’s awesome!”

Applause—everyone claps for awesome Laura Bush!

The former president says that his first day home in Preston Hollow, the suburb of Dallas where he and his wife moved in January, he kicked back on the couch and hollered, “Baby, free at last!” To which Laura responded, “‘Yeah, you’re free to take out the trash. Consider it your new domestic policy agenda.’”

Big laugh. A woman at my table mouths, “He’s so funny!”

“I had not gone for a walk in a neighborhood in 14 years,” Bush says, referring to his time as governor of Texas and then president. He tells of how weird it felt to be able to go outside and take his Scottish terrier, Barney, for a walk. “Barney made a deposit in the yard,” he says, adding that when he bent down to retrieve it with a plastic bag, he got to thinking, “I was dodging this stuff for eight years—now I’m picking it up!”

The crowd goes wild on that one. Welcome to the George W. Bush post-presidency, which will be all about exorcising the demons, and trying to forge a comeback for a failed figure and his party.

Insiders V. Outsiders

2009-09-23T06:01:00.001+10:00

Not a bad way to put it.

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Are the views expressed in that paragraph liberal or conservative ones? They're neither. Instead, they're the by-product of a completely different dichotomy that is growing in importance: between system insiders and their admirers (those who believe our national political establishment and its elites are basically sound and good) and system outsiders (those whose anger is confined not to one of the two political parties but who instead believe that the political culture itself is fundamentally corrupted and destructive). There are people typically identified as members of either the conventional Right or Left who are, in fact, more accurately described as being in this latter group: those disenchanted with the political culture itself.

Beyond Parody

2009-09-21T15:24:00.001+10:00

Because without NYT and Wapo, the world would not exist.

Obama open to newspaper bailout bill - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

Sorry, But This IS Funny!

2009-09-19T12:43:00.001+10:00

Of course mental illness is nothing to joke about. But this guy is the Lib's go-to man on emissions etc. And he plans to resume his job as soon as he's "well" again!

Robb takes leave over depressive illness - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The King Is Dead

2009-09-19T07:21:00.001+10:00

PostPartisan - Irving Kristol's Intellectual Universe

Irving Kristol's Intellectual Universe

The passing of Irving Kristol is a very sad occasion. He was a truly great man, a great intellectual, and a great, patriotic servant to his country. He was also a unique inspiration, to me personally, and to untold thousands of other young people for whom he provided a model of the intellectual life well-lived. He was a deep and fierce thinker, who nevertheless delivered his thoughts in the most amiable fashion, without animus or bile. He was curious and invited others to be curious, to engage in serious dialogue on the important issues of the day.

He was also a creator of communities and institutions. He occupied a unique space between the world of the mind and the world of action. Networks of thinkers, policy-makers, and politicians revolved around him -- and not because he thrust himself into their midst but because his mind and character attracted them to him. To go to work for him, as I did fresh out of college almost 30 years ago, was to enter a rich and exciting intellectual universe, filled with learning and integrity and a commitment to the well-being of society. I fear such a universe may no longer exist. But the memory of what Irving Kristol created is enough to warm the soul for a lifetime.

By Robert Kagan | September 18, 2009; 4:22 PM ET
Categories: Kagan | Tags: Robert Kagan Share This: E-Mail | Technorati | Del.icio.us | Digg | Stumble Previous: In Virginia's Election, a Study in Contrasts
Comments

Let us be clear. Irving Kristol was one of those who supported and pushed for the invasion of Iraq. THE INVASION OF IRAQ WAS AND STILL IS A MISTAKE. I use capital letters here because there are still some people out there that, despite all facts to the contrary, believe to the contrary and virtually none of the neoconservatives have apologized to the American people for the invasion. Therefore, Mr. Kristol was NOT a great man, and, if one reads some of his writings, even just a few, one finds that Mr. Kristol was wrong about virtually everything he ever wrote about. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead but the most patriotic thing that Mr. Kristol ever did was to pass away, because by passing he no longer speaks or writes and no longer influences politicians into making costly mistakes like the invasion of Iraq, THE WORST FOREIGN POLICY DEBACLE THIS COUNTRY HAS EVER PERPETRATED.

When the hell are you people going to learn this? Personally, I am fed up with you guys.

Posted by: nyrunner101 | September 18, 2009 4:49 PM | Report abuse

HS this is the only thing i could think of in response to your article.

Posted by: krj1944cableonenet | September 18, 2009 4:55 PM | Report abuse

Irving Kristol did two things for which he can never be forgiven:

1. He founded the American Enterprise Institute, from whence everything that is putrid about Washington emanates. Its influence on America has been malign.(That it was/is Dick Cheney's favorite place to give his speeches says enough.)

2. He fathered Bill Kristol, who -- along with Robert Kagan -- co-founded PNAC, the cabal of neo-con crazies and Zionists who polluted the Pentagon and the Bush White House with their plans, drawn up in the late 1990s, for the invasion of Iraq (and Iran).

The depth of Irving Kristol's much-ballyhooed intellect can be garnered from the following (courtesy of blog commenter Harry Hopkins):

"I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.

"The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.

"With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.' "

Posted by: WhatHeSaid | September 18, 2009 5:02 PM | Report abuse

My thoughts go out to his family and friends. He was the architect of neoconservatism. All the warm tributes will give hope to the poor guy that came up with New Coke. I am sure his standing and endeavours will survive whatever his son and Sarah Palin do to them. Peace.

Posted by: steveboyington | September 18, 2009 5:03 PM | Report abuse

"The passing of Irving Kristol is a very sad occasion. He was a truly great man, a great intellectual, and a great, patriotic servant to his country." ~ Kagan.

Unfortunately for America, the country Irving Kristol served was Israel.

Posted by: WhatHeSaid | September 18, 2009 5:05 PM | Report abuse

He was a goddamned traitor to the U. S. so the country you refer to (but curiously don't name) to which he was so patriotic must be Israel.

It's time for zionists like you Kagan to be measured for a rope.

But by all means let us know where he will be buried, once in a while I have the runs and would love to squat in reflection over this fine man.

Posted by: mot2win | September 18, 2009 5:09 PM | Report abuse

For deacades Mr. Kristol and his son have done more to stratify, fragmant and damage this country than anyone except "Old Nick" himself, Milton Friedman. These were/are people who want to reinstitute a system of elitism that borders on royalism. That's one reason why the Kennedy's angered you so much: they were revered by their followers.

If, as Dr. Krauthammer is saying, the "public interest" has died, then why are no comments allowed to be posted in response to his valorization of Mr. Kristol? Or did you just draw the short stick, Mr. Kagan?

Liberal ideology may be inherintly meek, but ultra conservatives are cowards. Rather than let your ideology speak for itself by achiewving positive results for all Americans, you continually have to rig the game either rhetorically or by materially breaking or altering the law to make it look like you're right.

Long live the king.

Posted by: rogied25 | September 18, 2009 5:10 PM | Report abuse

Pilger

2009-09-18T07:02:00.001+10:00

Will we ever get our democracies back again? Or did we never really have them?

For Britons, The Party Game Is Over :

The game is over. Corporatism and a reinvigorated militarism have finally appropriated parliamentary democracy, a historic shift.

He Means It

2009-09-17T21:38:00.001+10:00

The Story of My Shoe by Muntadhar al-Zaidi -- Antiwar.com

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful.

Here I am, free.

Bye Bye Star Wars!

2009-09-17T16:39:00.001+10:00

OMFG this is good news. Reagan's Star Wars Missile Shield is finally toast.

The funny thing is that this was originally designed to beat the Soviets, whose empire collapsed under the weight of their own economic ineptitude.

U.S. To Shelve Bush's Nuclear-Missile Shield

XXXX Is Now A Japanese Beer

2009-09-17T14:23:00.001+10:00

Crazy world. One day someone will realise there's money to be made in breaking all these big global corporations up again. But we'll probably all be dead by then. Meanwhile they are become more powerful that the governments who granted them carte blanche to rule the world.

Beer acquisition creates Australia's biggest supermarket supplier - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Hearts And Minds

2009-09-17T08:10:00.000+10:00

When all these trigger-happy US psychos go home, the results are going to be pretty awful.

US troops kill Fallujah 'shoe-thrower' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Getting Real

2009-09-16T16:24:00.001+10:00

A new Dark Age?

A new Dark Age?

We need to do more to prevent the world descending into a new Dark Age as a result of climate change, argues Professor Tim Flannery.

By Tim Flannery
In the northern summer of 2008 Arctic sea ice covered the second smallest area recorded since the beginning of the satellite era

In 2006 James Lovelock published a book that bluntly laid before us the consequences of the carbon imbalance. The Revenge of Gaia argues Gaia's climate system is far more sensitive to greenhouse gas pollution than we imagine, and the system is already trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback.

Although there is still time to avert a catastrophe, Lovelock believes humans lack the foresight, wisdom and political energy required to do so. Instead, he predicts, before the 21st century is out our global civilisation will have collapsed and a new Dark Age will have dawned, wherein a few survivors will cling to the few remaining habitable regions, such as Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula.

How probable is it that this bleak vision will come to pass? New scientific data means that in 2009 we are better placed than ever to determine the scale of the threat and its imminence.

The sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean is an ancient feature of our planet. It has glistened brightly into space for at least three million years.

The northern ice acts as a refrigerator that cools the entire planet. During the summer, the sun's rays beat down upon it 24 hours a day, but because the ice is bright, 90 per cent of that energy is deflected back into space.

By 2005 the Arctic ice cap had been melting at a rate of around eight per cent per decade for thirty years. At that rate, it would have taken until 2100 or thereabouts for the ice cap to disappear altogether.

But in the summer of 2005, a dramatic change occurred. The rate of melt accelerated, so that around four times as much ice melted as compared with previous summers.

These changes in the Arctic have left many scientists worried the region is already in the grip of an irreversible transition. During the winter months, the Arctic is now warming four times faster than the global average, while the existing temperature increase year-round already exceeds two degrees Celsius.

What will happen during that first iceless summer? Most likely, not much at all, for it will take several summers' worth of energy to warm the surface of the Arctic sea to a point where dangerous changes are generated further south. But each year thereafter, the ocean at the top of the world will warm inexorably, and the temperature gradient that controls climatic zones across the northern hemisphere will shift.

If we look back to the last time in Earth's history when such a great warming occurred — 55 million years ago — we see an ominously different world.

Back then, lemurs sported in the rainforests of Greenland, while the tropics were covered in a spiny, thin and alien-looking cover of vegetation, which is today entirely extinct. No one knows how quickly the world's climate altered back then, but one cannot help but fear what a similar scale of change might mean for humanity today.

New ramifications of rapid warming are continually being discovered. In 2006 scientists realised that the sea can die as a result of massive global warming. Indeed, it has done so several times during Earth's history, and when it does, it takes most life on land with it.

The most devastating example of oceanic death occurred around 250 million years ago, when 95 per cent of all life perished.

Geologists studying rocks in Western Australia discovered traces of the unique lipids (fatty molecules) made by strange kinds of bacteria known as purple bacteria and green sulphur bacteria.

These bacteria only thrive in waters that are well lit by the sun, yet are low in oxygen and high in hydrogen sulphide. Such conditions exist only in very restricted and unusual environments today, such as the 'jellyfish lakes' of Palau. Yet the story preserved in the rocks reveals that most, if not all, of Earth's oceans resembled this environment 250 million years ago.

How much time do we have to prove Lovelock wrong? On 31 March 2008, Dr James Hansen and eight of his colleagues provided a new, alarming, though still partial, answer to this question.

They looked back over the increasingly complete ice-core record, which documents the last three-quarters of a million years of Earth's climatic history, and tried to determine how much warming a given amount of atmospheric CO2 pollution would produce, and how long it would take to produce it.

Their most alarming discovery was that, when viewed over the long term, Earth's climate system is about twice as sensitive to CO2 pollution as is shown on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's century-long projections.

This implies that there is already enough greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere to cause two degrees Celsius of warming, bringing about conditions not seen on Earth for two to three million years and constituting, according to the authors, "a degree of warming that would surely yield 'dangerous' climate impacts".

Fortunately for us, some, perhaps half, of that warming is currently masked by other pollutants, known collectively as the agents of global dimming, which reflect sunlight into space, thus cooling Earth.

Today, China, India and other rapidly industrialising economies are releasing these pollutants in ever-increasing quantities. Yet because of their effect on visibility and their serious impact on human health, there's good reason to believe that in the near future such nations will move to curb their release.

In their landmark paper, Hansen and his colleagues make a useful distinction between climatic "tipping points" and "the point of no return."

The climatic tipping point is the point at which the greenhouse-gas concentration reaches a level sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change. The point of no return is reached when that concentration of greenhouse gas has been in place sufficiently long to give rise to an irreversible process.

Humanity is now suspended between a tipping point and a point of no return. We still have a few years before we reach the point of no return, but there is not a second to waste. This is our greatest challenge: to draw the pollution out of the air and save ourselves from Lovelock's new Dark Age.

Professor Tim Flannery is an eminent scientist, writer and former Australian of the Year. He is also chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council. This is an edited extract from his book Now or never: a sustainable future for Australia? published in Australia by Black Inc.

Who Are The Real Material Supporters?

2009-09-16T13:09:00.000+10:00

Dad urges Hicks to fight to clear name

David Hicks has been urged by his father to fight to clear his name amid US government revelations that his terrorism-related charge could be quashed.

Adelaide-born Hicks pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism at a US military commission hearing in 2007.

But the US government now believes the charge isn't a law of war offence and convictions such as Hicks' could be overturned.

US assistant attorney-general David Kris has told a US senate committee examining military commissions there were "serious questions" about the material support charge.

"Our experts believe there is a significant risk that appellate courts will ultimately conclude that material support for terrorism is not a traditional law of war offence, thereby threatening to reverse hard-won convictions," Mr Kris has told the committee.

A Man With A Few Things To Say

2009-09-16T10:31:00.001+10:00

YouTube - Al-Zeidi addresses the media - 15 Sep 09

Another Controlled Demolition

2009-09-16T08:32:00.000+10:00

Once again, everything was already in place, including the camps and the US-based troops...

Post Mortem for Lehman : Information Clearing House - ICH

"On Thursday night, the Treasury went literally down on his knees before Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, begging her to agree taxpayer money to bail out the financial system. Bernanke, a scholar of the financial panic that caused the Great Depression, told fearful lawmakers there wouldn't be a banking system in place by Monday morning if they didn't act. Paulson talked openly about planning for martial law, about how to feed the American people if banking and commerce collapsed."

Pathetic. Paulson is a charlatan and Bernanke is just as bad. Despite their dire warnings, on Monday morning, the banking system was still in tact, just as it was a full month later when the first TARP funds were handed out to the big banks. It was all a hoax. The problem wasn't the banks toxic assets at all, but the commercial paper and money markets. The Fed and Treasury knew that they could count on Congress's abysmal ignorance of anything financial; and they weren't disappointed.

Church II

2009-09-16T08:08:00.000+10:00

The Secret Government: What a Real Bipartisan Probe of Bush-era Crimes Should Look Like | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

Church was never quite able to part with this conception of good Democrats/bad Republicans. Confronted with misdeeds under Kennedy and Johnson, he chose to view the CIA as a rogue agency, as opposed to one executing the president's wishes. This characterization became the fulcrum of debate within the committee. At one point Church referred to the CIA as a "rogue elephant," causing a media firestorm. But the final committee report shows that to the degree the agency and other parts of the secret government were operating with limited control from the White House, it was by design. Walter Mondale came around to the view that the problem wasn't the agencies themselves but the accretion of secret executive power: "the grant of powers to the CIA and to these other agencies," he said during a committee hearing, "is, above all, a grant of power to the president."

A contemporary Church Committee would do well to follow Mondale's approach and not Church's.

A Cruel Hoax Indeed

2009-09-16T05:18:00.002+10:00

ME TALK PRESIDENTIAL ONE DAY: GQ Features on men.style.com

At one point there were twelve people crowded around our computer, trying to explain how the proposal worked. The economic advisers were disagreeing with each other.

There was total confusion. It was 5:30 p.m. The speech was in three and a half hours.

After finally getting the speech draft turned around and sent back to the teleprompter technicians, we trudged back to the Family Theater, where the president rehearsed. In the theater, the president was clearly confused about how the government would buy these securities. He repeated his belief that the government was going to “buy low and sell high,” and he still didn’t understand why we hadn’t put that into the speech like he’d asked us to. When it was explained to him that his concept of the bailout proposal wasn’t correct, the president was momentarily speechless. He threw up his hands in frustration.

“Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don’t understand what it does?” he asked.

The president was clearly frustrated with what was going on, but there was little he could do at this late hour. He went up to take a nap, saying he was beat. He looked it. I’d never seen him more exhausted. His hair was out of place and shaggy. His face looked drained and pale. Even more distressing, he was wearing Crocs. As I looked at him I thought to myself, how many more crises can one guy take?

This bit is also good for a bit of schadenfreude:

The president, like me, didn’t seem to be in love with any of the available options. He always believed Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. “Wait till her fat keister is sitting at this desk,” he once said (except he didn’t say “keister”). He didn’t think much of Barack Obama. After one of Obama’s blistering speeches against the administration, the president had a very human reaction: He was ticked off. He came in one day to rehearse a speech, fuming. “This is a dangerous world,” he said for no apparent reason, “and this cat isn’t remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you.” He wound himself up even more. “You think I wasn’t qualified?” he said to no one in particular. “I was qualified.”

And this is juicy too:

I was once in the Oval Office when the president was told a campaign event in Phoenix he was to attend with McCain suddenly had to be closed to the press. The president didn’t understand why when the whole purpose of holding the event had been to show Bush and McCain together so the press would stop asking why the two wouldn’t be seen together. If the event was closed to the press, the whole thing didn’t make sense.

“If he doesn’t want me to go, fine,” the president said. “I’ve got better things to do.”

Eventually, someone informed the president that the reason the event was closed was that McCain was having trouble getting a crowd. Bush was incredulous—and to the point. “He can’t get 500 people to show up for an event in his hometown?” he asked. No one said anything, and we went on to another topic. But the president couldn’t let the matter drop. “He couldn’t get 500 people? I could get that many people to turn out in Crawford.” He shook his head. “This is a five-spiral crash, boys.”

We tried to move on to something else. But the president wouldn’t let go. He was stuck on the Phoenix event. At one point, he looked off into space and said to no one in particular, “What is this—a cruel hoax?”

Primitive Politics

2009-09-15T17:53:00.001+10:00

Love this story!

Bananas for sex cult leader on the run - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Speaking Of Old Bastards Who Should Be Dead By Now

2009-09-15T15:07:00.000+10:00

Did Henry Kissinger want "an accident" to happen to Bud Zumwalt? | Danger Room | Wired.com

At night, one friend of his told me, Zumwalt used to crawl into bed, smile, and say, “goodnight Henry.”

More Power To The Fed

2009-09-15T06:32:00.001+10:00

BBC NEWS | Business | Obama issues warning to bankers

President Obama said his administration was working on an "ambitious" overhaul of the regulatory system.

Under the proposed regulation, the White House would give the central bank, the Federal Reserve, new powers over huge financial firms and the ability to seize banks whose collapse could threaten the economy.

The Great Game

2009-09-14T08:16:00.000+10:00

This is not a well written article, but some food for thought nonetheless. Amazing how it's all disappearing down the memory hole, isn't it?

What Role Did The U.S.-Israeli Relationship Play In 9-11? : Information Clearing House - ICH

Only one nation had the means, motive, opportunity and stable nation state intelligence required to take the U.S. to war in the Middle East while also making it appear that Islam is the problem.

Lest We Forget

2009-09-11T21:07:00.001+10:00

9/11: Our Truth, and Theirs by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com

Cameron’s reportage haunts us today, and mocks us from the archives where it has been gathering dust for eight years. "Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations," reported Cameron:

"A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States. There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are ‘tie-ins.’ But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, ‘evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.’"

Over the next three nights, Cameron detailed the existence of an underground Israeli army in the US armed with a dazzling array of hi-tech spying devices and techniques that enabled them to penetrate our vital communications, including those utilized by law enforcement. His reports also described the consequences for any law enforcement officials who dared raise questions about this: their careers, Cameron told us, would be effectively over.

Cameron’s reporting was viewed by millions. Of course, the Israelis and our own government denied everything. Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli government, scoffed: Israel, spying on the United States? Why, who ever heard of such a thing?! The US government, for its part, disdained all such reports as "an urban myth." The Israel lobby moved quickly to make sure the Cameron reports were thrown down the Memory Hole, and Cameron was accused of – you guessed it! – "anti-Semitism," on account of having spent time in the Middle East in his youth.

Yet the story persisted. Die Zeit, the respected German weekly, ran a piece entitled "Next Door to Mohammed Atta," in which further evidence the Israelis had been tracking the hijackers quite closely was cited as coming from French intelligence sources. This was followed up by a story in Salon – hardly a bastion of anti-Semitic agitation – which gave a long and detailed account of the Israeli spying operation, as outlined by Cameron, and concluded that it was in large part meant as a diversionary tactic. The same author did a comprehensive follow-up in Counterpunch, after The Nation spiked it. Reputable newspapers like the Scottish Sunday Herald reported the known facts.

Yet the 9/11 Commission did not so much as mention this aspect of the 9/11 story. Nor has Fox News ever followed up on Cameron’s reporting: they haven’t disavowed it, either. They, along with the rest of the "news" media in this country, simply pretend it never happened. When Arianna Huffington purged me from blogging on the Huffington Post, she cited my own reporting on this story as the reason: "Oh, come on, Dhaaa-link! You know dat’s anti-Semitic!"

Really? Is Fox News anti-Semitic, too? Is Die Zeit? Salon? Le Monde? How about The Forward?

Of course, Arianna is an airhead, but her instinct for self-preservation at all costs – yes, even at the cost of the truth – is indicative of what’s involved here. I was told, before I undertook to challenge the "official" 9/11 story, that I would pay for it by being cast out of the "mainstream" whilst being mercilessly smeared. In any event, since I was never all that interested in being considered "mainstream" – in part because I knew the whole concept of "mainstream" was very over – and because the prospect of being viciously attacked didn’t phase me in the least, I was undeterred. And I remain so to this day.

Bush's Legacy

2009-09-11T11:16:00.001+10:00

Explains why you never hear a word about him any more...

Nearly 40 million Americans living in poverty.

Defending The Indefensible

2009-09-11T08:19:00.001+10:00

John Howard writes an Op-ed. In The Australian of course:

LET'S start with some facts....

It's predictably downhill from there.

Meanwhile, I wonder if he'll be summoned to appear before the new AWB class action?