Bush Challenges 750 Laws

Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws—Charlie Savage, Boston Globe April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower' protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute' a law he believes is unconstitutional."

He's the decider, the uniter, not the divider.

Felt Anything Odd Lately?

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Metro -- Mystery disturbance traced to sound wave:

"According to data analyzed by the scientists, the wave was felt on San Nicolas Island, northwest of San Clemente Island, at 8:40 a.m. It hit Solana Beach at 8:46 a.m., the western edge of the Cleveland National Forest at 8:47.30 and the eastern side of the Salton Sea at 8:53 a.m. From there, it appears to have dissipated.

Elizabeth Cochran, the lead researcher on the project, said the wave moved at 320 meters per second, roughly the speed that sound travels through the air. Its velocity was too slow to be that of an earthquake, she said.

Cochran, a postdoctoral researcher in the geophysics and planetary physics department, said the only explanation is that the wave was traveling through the atmosphere, not through the ground. At each location, the wave could be felt for roughly 10 seconds, she said.

Several months before the April 4 incident, the team had begun studying other nonquake disturbances that were registering on San Diego County seismometers, including 76 that apparently originated in that same general area of the ocean in 2003. Shearer said he and his colleagues figured that some of those disturbances surely must have come from offshore military exercises.

The researchers haven't been able to determine whether the April 4 wave was more powerful than the earlier ones or whether it simply felt that way because of atmospheric conditions.

If the disturbance was caused by the military, no one has owned up to it. The Navy and Marines say none of their planes were flying at supersonic speeds that morning.

“I'm told that a sonic boom would not cover that distance at all,” said Fiebing, the Navy spokesman.

The Navy uses Warning Area 291 for a wide range of training, including large-scale ship maneuvers and battle exercises, but Fiebing and Fenick said they were unaware of any such training April 4 that would have caused such a disturbance.

Authorities have said a meteor probably wasn't the cause because it would have been noticed by the scientific community. The American Meteor Society reported no fireball sightings over Southern California on that day.

Airbrushing The Dead

Dennis Perrin at Red State Son:

"It takes a deft hand to not only erase an active sponsor of genocidal violence, but also hide some 200,000 butchered human beings. Yet Guido Guilliart of the Associated Press did so in a single sentence:

'Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and ruled the tiny half-island territory with an iron fist until 1999, when a U.N.-organized plebiscite resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence.'

The ol' 'iron fist' line. Seemingly descriptive, but in this case, incredibly vague. An honest, accurate account would read:

'Indonesia invaded East Timor on December 7, 1975, after receiving the green light from then-U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who visited Jakarta on the eve of the Indonesian invasion. Indonesia ruled the tiny half-island territory through terror and mass murder, killing some 200,000 Timorese, nearly a third of East Timor's population, thanks to several billion in military and economic support from the United States. This state of siege lasted until 1999, when a U.N.-organized plebiscite resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence. The Clinton administration continued to finance the Indonesian military as it committed more atrocities in a last-ditch attempt to stem Timorese independence. As U.S. Ambassador to Jakarta, Stapleton Roy, told reporters at the time, 'Indonesia matters, East Timor does not.' International pressure and outrage in Congress finally forced President Clinton to halt military aid on September 10, 1999.'

Something tells me that if the Soviets or Saddam were financing these atrocities, especially over a 24 year period, their sponsorship would be mentioned. Indeed, we'd never hear the end of it. But knowing when to tell the whole story, if telling it at all, is one of the many tricks a journalist must learn in order to climb the mainstream ladder. An 'iron rule,' if you will."

The Phony Rationale for high Oil Price

==> The Truth About Political Stuff <==:

Joel Peskoff deconstructs the Motley Fool explanations for skyrocketing Oil Prices:

"In a traditional market, speculators gamble. They’ll either be right or not. In this market, speculators aren’t gambling, they’re controlling the market and oil suppliers are all too eager to enjoy the higher price. If OPEC wanted to bring prices down, they merely would have to sell oil at the spot price of $50 per barrel and the futures speculators wouldn’t be able to cover their margin calls. But neither OPEC, nor any other supplier has any interest in doing that.

(. . .)

In summary, there really isn’t any rational reason why current oil prices are rising, except market manipulation by speculators. This is not to say that there isn’t a long-term energy problem that needs to be addressed. Eventually, the world will run out of oil but the current oil pricing is not causally related to that fact. In the short-term, there is plenty of oil. "

2.5 Billion Impeachable Offenses

A Tiny Revolution:

The Congressional Research Service has issued a report on U.S. spending on the Iraq, saying it will soon reach $320 billion. As a Washington Post story notes, this includes '$2.5 billion diverted from other spending authorizations in 2001 and 2002 to prepare for the invasion.'

$2.5 billion. That's even more than the $700 million Bob Woodward reported in Plan of Attack:

On July 17 [2002], [Tommy] Franks updated Rumfeld on the preparatory tasks in the region. He carefully listed the cost of each and the risk to the mission if they didn't proceed along the timeline which set completion by December 1. Total cost: about $700 million.

The big-muscle movement was for airfields and fuel infrastructure in Kuwait where a massive covert public works program had already been launched...

Some of the funding would come from the supplemental appropriations bill then being worked out in Congress for the Afghanistan war and the general war on terrorism. The rest would come from old appropriations.

By the end of July, Bush had approved some 30 projects that would eventually cost $700 million. He discussed it with Nicholas E. Calio, the head of White House congressional relations. Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money.

Now, here's Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution:

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.

So, back in olden times when we still cared what the Constitution said, Bush could clearly be impeached for this. Thank goodness those days are behind us. Kudos also to the Washington Post for demonstrating this by putting it in the second-to-last paragraph in an A16 story.

BONUS: Bush administration lawyers like John Yoo argue that the president can wage wars at his own discretion, despite the plain language in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution giving Congress the power to 'declare war.' Yoo makes this claim:

Congress could express its opposition to executive war decisions only by exercising its powers over funding and impeachment.

But it turns out Congress doesn't even control the funding of war. So you heard it from John Yoo himself: the only way to stop the war is by impeaching Bush.

"Nothing Prepared Me for Bush"

Robert Scheer Interview:

Robert Scheer spent over 30 years interviewing American presidents and candidates since Nixon, but it was only in retrospect that he discovered a disturbing pattern. Scheer's new book Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton - and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush explores the crippling effects the campaign process had on every candidate he interviewed - and how our presidents have become increasingly out of touch with American voters.

As one of the last print journalists to spend extended periods of time with candidates, Scheer's close examination of our political process, and how the media covers it, points to the flaws that led to the election of George W. Bush. AlterNet spoke with Scheer about what we got right, what we got wrong, and why in the face of such an unpopular president, we still find ourselves 'drowning in lesser evildom.'"

Using Ethanol Fuel More Efficient Than Using Gasoline

Looks like what I've been saying for years is wrong. Not the first time...

LiveScience.com -

"The study refined results from several previous studies by comparing the total energy that goes into making ethanol gas from corn, such as harvesting and refining, and comparing it to the energy needed to produce gasoline from fossil fuels. Kammen's team looked into levels of greenhouse gases produced by both the production and the use of each fuel.

They found inconsistencies and errors in the previous work, which had suggested ethanol gas might not be beneficial.

After correcting the errors—which ranged from incorrect unit conversions to reliance on data from outdated methods more than a century old—the researchers arrived at a very different conclusion: not only does corn-based ethanol gas reduce petroleum use by 95 percent, it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions about 13 percent, although that decrease is within a range of uncertainty for the imprecise data involved.

'Making ethanol from corn is a good thing if you want to offset fossil fuels from overseas,' Kammen told LiveScience. 'On the greenhouse gas side of things, it is not clear if corn, as grown today, is a good thing. We just don't know yet, but it appears to be a mildly good thing.'

Guess that's what I get from believing everything I read. Wait! I just read this! Now what do I do?

See With Your Tongue

LiveScience.com

The device, known as "Brain Port," was pioneered more than 30 years ago by Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a University of Wisconsin neuroscientist. Bach-y-Rita began routing images from a camera through electrodes taped to people's backs and later discovered the tongue was a superior transmitter.

A narrow strip of red plastic connects the Brain Port to the tongue where 144 microelectrodes transmit information through nerve fibers to the brain. Instead of holding and looking at compasses and bluky-hand-held sonar devices, the divers can processes the information through their tongues, said Dr. Anil Raj, the project's lead scientist.

In testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking in front of them and caught balls. A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics.

Cindy is Deceptively Sharp

2006EasterCindy512K.mov (video/quicktime Object)

Every time I see and hear Cindy Sheehan, my first reaction is to her look and her voice. This lady seems so average, so normal, so unexceptional. Not particularly bright. So normal, even bland looking. The antithesis of everything we're trained to value in the US.

And then I hear what she says, and it is so well put together, so obviously coming from her own brain (which is a whole lot sharper than one would think just from hearing a soundbite snippet from her) from months and years of thought, that I think, if everyone would just listen to what she has to say, and not the media slander about her, there's a good chance that the whole country might turn around (or might have turned around faster, since it does seem to be turning around.)

Reactionary descriptions of her usually start or end with "of course, I didn't listen to her—why would I?" just as they do about Fahrenheit 911.

This video is a good example of what I mean. In just a few minutes she deconstructs all Bush's arguments to be the lunacy that they are.

Blogging Apology

It has recently been called to my attention, by one of the three actual physical people who read this besides me, that I haven't been "writing" anything in this blog recently. Well, that's not exactly true. I do try to "write" the headlines...

But it's that BlogThis! thing. As I flit from website to website, like a butterfly attracted by pretty colors, or a fly drawn by the smell of dead meat, BlogThis! makes it easy to just "appropriate" stuff—so easy that I seem to be doing it, almost as a notekeeping device to myself. "Oh, this post is so bizarre, so intriquing, so counterintuitive to the prevailing wisdom, that I must make note of it," I think to myself. So my blog ends up a long long list of quotes from other sites and blogs and such.

This does not mean that my life has stopped. Though artwork seems to have diminished to near zero, music has been taking up more and more of my time. I'm just nearing the end of a week of daily music gigs or rehearsals—tomorrow I may get a break (not that I want one.) Here's how the last week (or so) played out:

• Saturday, April 15, 2006: Anniversary party with Alvon Johnson, guitar and vocals, and Bob Groff, drums (and guy who put it together) at Markham Winery, St. Helena
  
• Monday: Jessel's Jammin' with ace sax man Kent Cohea, as well as Mary and the others
  
• Wednesday: rehearsal for Jessel's Gallery show of Monday the 24th.
• Thursday: Benefit performance for Friends of the Napa Symphony, at Jessel's. Wore a Tuxedo. Play guitar with Mary and Clyde, a standup bass player.
• Friday: Rehearsal at Jessel's for the Terry Bradford show on Monday, May 22.
• Saturday: Play with Kevin Fraser, remarkable sax man, at McKenzie-Mueller Wineryfor April in Carneros.
• Sunday: Play solo at McKenzie-Mueller Winery. Guitar and keyboard.
• Monday: Jessel's Jammin' with Alvon Johnson and the usual crew of personalities
• Tuesday: Play keyboards, bass, and guitar with Gail Mead's Poolhouse Gang at Anna's Cantina in St. Helena.
  

I'm kinda stunned at this turn of events. Other than Jessel's, gigs have been very very few the last year or so. Maybe this is indicative that things are heating up. I hope so.

Other than music, I burn a guilty amount of gasoline driving between Bonnie's and Napa. When my folks were in Napa, I spent much of my time driving to Sonoma County for gigs. Now, with Bonnie in Petaluma, I seem to get all my gigs in Napa.

Boogie Man Update

Wayne Madsen Report - Home:

"April 26, 2006 -- Terrorism, Lies, and Videotapes. Earlier this month, it was reported that a Pentagon psychological warfare (psyop) unit purposely hyped the threat posed in Iraq by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. It was also revealed that a 17-page letter written by Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden in 2004 and selectively leaked to a New York Times reporter in Baghdad. The contents of the letter was featured on page one of the Times on Feb. 9, 2004. In the letter to Bin Laden, 'Zarqawi' said that if democracy took root in Iraq, it would suffocate the terrorists. On April 10, 2006, President Bush cited the 2004 Zarqawi letter in a speech before Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). This was after it was revealed in the Washington Post that same morning that the Pentagon had hyped the Zarqawi threat and that its psyop team may have even written the Zarqawi letter to Bin Laden as a feint to justify a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq. It was reported that there were Kurdish fingerprints on the supposed Zarqawi letter. The Kurds see every day of U.S. military presence as helping them in their goal of achieving an independent state. It now appears that the Zarqawi letter to Bin Laden was every bit as phony as the Niger uranium documents. Bush used the Zarqawi and Niger fraudulent documents in his public statements.

The Post's information came from a briefing Joint Chiefs of Staff psyop officer Col. Derek Harvey told a meeting in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 2005. According to a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, 'Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will -- made him more important than he really is, in some ways . . . The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends.' In addition to an Iraqi audience for the Pentagon disinformation campaign, documents from the Kansas meeting indicated that another target was the 'U.S. Home Audience.' The psyops were part of a U.S. Special Operations Command program called 'trans-regional' media operations. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the media spokesman in Baghdad, called the Zarqawi Psyop campaign 'the most successful information campaign to date.'"

At $50 per Barrel, There is No Oil Shortage

BBC NEWS | Americas |:

"Analysis by the US Department of Energy (DoE) - seen by Newsnight - shows that at $50 a barrel Venezuela - not Saudi Arabia - will have the biggest oil reserves in Opec.

Venezuela has vast deposits of extra-heavy oil in the Orinoco. Traditionally these have not been counted because at $20 a barrel they were too expensive to exploit - but at $50 a barrel melting them into liquid petroleum becomes extremely profitable.

The DoE report shows that at today's prices Venezuela's oil reserves are bigger than those of the entire Middle East - including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Iran and Iraq.

The US agency also identifies Canada as another future oil superpower.

Venezuela's deposits alone could extend the oil age for another 100 years.

The DoE estimates that the Venezuelan government controls 1.3 trillion barrels of oil - more than the entire declared oil reserves of the rest of the planet."

Wolfowitz: the World Bank Rewards and Punishes Nations...

...depending on whether or not they let the US military off the hook:

Wayne Madsen Report - Home:

"April 24, 2006 -- Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz, who helped craft the suspension of military aid to countries that refused to exempt U.S. military personnel from prosecution by the International Criminal Court, has used his position as World Bank President to reward with debt relief those nations that signed the exemption agreements, so-called Bilateral Immunity Agreements, or 'Article 98s, with the United States. Wolfowitz was the subject of a puff piece in yesterday's Washington Post as part of a campaign to makeover his war hawk image. But Wolfowitz's actions at the World Bank demonstrate he still takes his orders from his right-wing neocon friends in the White House and Pentagon.

The countries granted debt relief that signed the Article 98s with the United States, include Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia. Three countries that have not signed Article 98s with the United States -- Mali, Niger, and Tanzania -- are under intense pressure to do so and the Wolfowitz debt relief action may be a tool to pressure them into signing the agreements. The Bush regime is attempting to get Niger to amend its constitution to permit it to sign an Article 98. Tanzania is embarrassed to sign such an agreement as the host of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The Bush administration brought direct pressure on the Malian President to sign an Article 98 in exchange for the financial assistance now being dangled by Wolfowitz and his neocon cabal at the World Bank."

Keep the Feds From Read Your Email!

It's Easy!

Wayne Madsen Report - Home:

"April 20, 2006 -- Beating Bush's NSA e-mail surveillance simple. According to NSA sources, there is a simple method to avoid having one's e-mail captured by NSA Internet filters that have been installed within major Internet exchanges, such as the AT&T facility in San Francisco, which is the subject of a class action suit against AT&T. By typing 'Viagra' or 'Cialis' in the message text, the filters will automatically identify the e-mail as spam and ignore it. The e-mail could contain the words 'Al Qaeda' or 'Bin Laden,' but as long as Viagra or Cialis are also contained in the text, the e-mail will pass through the filters without being intercepted."

Bet You Didn't See This One on the Evening News

ThePittsburghChannel.com - News - $500K Seized; Strange Situation Reported At Nuclear Plant:

"SHIPPINGPORT, Pa. -- Two workers looking for tools set off a security situation at a Beaver County nuclear power plant that drew a response from police and federal investigators, WTAE Channel 4's Paul Van Osdol reported.

State police said the men drove up to the Beaver Valley Power Station in a tractor-trailer on Tuesday night to pick up two large containers of tools for a contractor for whom they worked.

Security guards stopped the men for a routine inspection, but they drove away, police said.

The guards became suspicious and called police, who pulled the truck over about a mile from the plant.

A state trooper got a warrant to search the vehicle and found a duffel bag, which he said contained $504,230 in mostly small bills.

The driver denied knowing anything about the money or who gave it to him, so the trooper seized it, police said.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed that the Joint Terrorism Task Force responded to the situation in conjunction with state police, but he said they don't think terrorism is involved. He would not give any other details.

The men, who are from Houston, said they picked up the bag in Chicago and had no knowledge of its contents, according to police.

Investigators think the cash may have a drug connection. A police dog picked up the scent of drugs in the sleeper cab of the truck where the bag was found, police said.

Both men were detained and later released. No charges have been filed."

Neil Young Interview

This Modern World today (April 21) links today to a video interview with Neil Young about his new album. What Young has to say is well worth hearing.

Most Democrats Won't Protest Iran Rhetoric

The Raw Story | As rhetoric builds, Democrats in Congress lie low on Iran:

"There is no formal consensus among Democrats on Iran. One Democrat – Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) – has endorsed the possibility of using airstrikes to “delay” Iran’s nuclear program, though most are more vague, saying they won’t take “any options” off the table. And they appear to be serious: Not even the Democrats’ liberal heavyweight in the House, Nancy Pelosi, has ruled out the possibility of using nuclear weapons, keeping 'all options' on the table, an aide said."
(. . .)
Asked about Democratic strategy on Iran, the aide said, “The strategy is simple: Give the Republicans enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.”
(. . .)

Not all Democrats are silent on Iran. Perhaps the most outspoken and most cogent voice is Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Speaking specifically about Iran to the Council on Foreign Relations in early April, Harman portrayed US intelligence on Iran as a potential minefield. (Harman's full remarks, along with that of former Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, are available here.)

“I think that some of the intelligence I see -- and I did ask to see the intelligence case on Iran -- is not close to where it needs to be,” Harman said. “I'm not going to reveal the classified information, but I did have a reaction in the briefing I got that some of this might be disinformation, not information. And I know we are passing around our intelligence case, the administration is, to the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and some of our allies.”

As the leading Democrat on the Committee, Harman is one of only four Democratic members of Congress who receive top-level briefings from US intelligence agencies. This is part of the party’s struggle – one senior Democratic aide said that nearly all Democrats were in the dark because of their lack of access to the latest intelligence.

Rumsfeld: Generals Are With the Terrorists

Wayne Madsen Report - Home:

"Yesterday, Rumsfeld appeared on the radio show of self-hating homophobe and racist Rush Limbaugh to declare that the generals and others who oppose America's losing war in Iraq are consorting with terrorists.

Rumsfeld, in a display of unbridled McCarthyism, said:

There have always been people who have opposed wars…I think we just have to accept it, that people have a right to say what they want to say, and to have an acceptance of that and recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees.

They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it.

Rumsfeld would have us ignore that it has been Pentagon propaganda machine that has created the bogeymen of Zarqawi and Zawahiri. These are Orwellian figments used to perpetuate continual war. Today, Bush defended Rumsfeld, proclaiming, 'I listen to all voices, but mine is the final decision . . . and Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job . . . I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.'

The only 'voices' Bush hears are from his own drug and alcohol damaged brain. He may believe the voices are from the great ether but they are the same types of voices those who are incarcerated in mental institutions around our nation hear on a daily basis."

The Iran War is Now

Whiskey Bar: This is Not a Drill: " Bombs That Would Backfire

By RICHARD CLARKE and STEVEN SIMON

The president assures us he will seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis. And there is a role for threats of force to back up diplomacy and help concentrate the minds of our allies. But the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling. (emphasis added)

The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was 'no war plan on my desk' despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well.

Richard Clarke and Steven Simon were, respectively, national coordinator for security and counterterrorism and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

The problem, which I'm sure Clarke and Simon fully understand, is that there isn't going to be a congressional resolution this time – in fact I'd be very surprised if the administration gives the leadership of either party more than 24 hours notice before the bombing begins. No marketing campaigns, no debates, no arms twisted in the Oval Office. Just a fait accompli. (That's French for: 'Choke on it, suckers.'"

I think I posted something about this just the other day. Yes, two posts ago...

Good News for Those Who Miss Latin American Death Squads!

The Wayne Madsen Report:

"April 13, 2006 -- As U.S. and NATO descend upon the Caribbean in two exercises -- Operation Tradewinds and Partnership for the Americas -- designed to intimidate populist and progressive governments and political movements in Latin America, particularly the Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela, comes word from U.S. intelligence sources that U.S. Special Forces are training Guyanese rebels in Guyana for cross-border incursions into the eastern part of Venezuela. It is clear that with the arming and support of secessionist forces in Zulia state in western Venezuela, the Bush regime has decided to also foment problems in Venezuela's east. The Guyanese-Venezuelan border has a history of irredentist problems among the tribal peoples who live in the region. U.S. missionaries tied to U.S. intelligence activities have been active among Amerindian tribal peoples of Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and Guyana, especially those living in the border regions of Venezuela. It now appears that President Hugo Chavez was correct when he accused U.S. missionaries, particularly the New Tribes Mission, of being linked to the CIA. Suspiciously, New Tribes Mission is based in Jeb Bush's Florida, which has become a newly invigorated base for CIA-funded right-wing Cuban, Venezuelan, Bolivian, and other Latin American paramilitaries and terrorist groups."

Bringing Democracy to Iran, US—Style

The Raw Story:

“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization.

“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”

Stephen Cambone is the Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence. His office did not return calls for comment.

"According to all three intelligence sources, military and intelligence officials alike were alarmed that instead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world – including US civilian and military casualties – Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike.

“They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” one intelligence source said."

(. . .)

Indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely tortured, attacked and arrested.

Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.

“We are already at war,” the UN official told RAW STORY.

Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year and included unmanned drones run jointly by several agencies.

In a stunning repeat of pre-war Iraq activities, the Bush administration continues to publicly call for action and pursue diplomatic solutions to allegations that Iran is bomb-ready. Behind the scenes, however, the administration is already well underway and engaged in ground operations in Iran.

Are laser weapons ready for duty? | Newsmakers | CNET News.com

| Newsmakers | CNET News.com:

"The next generation of weapons in the U.S. arsenal could be straight out of science fiction: laser beams and heat rays. And they could be ready for action before you know it."

This page is so bizarre I cannot adequately describe it

a few highlights...

Sometime in late 1980, then-Col. Paul E. Vallely, the Commander of the 7th Psychological Operations Group, United States Army Reserve, Presidio of San Francisco, Ca., co-authored a discussion paper, which received wide and controversial attention within the U.S. military, particularly within the Special Operations community. The paper was titled "From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory," and it presented a Nietzschean scheme for waging perpetual psychological warfare against friend and enemy populations alike, and even against the American people.
(. . .)
And The New Yorker magazine investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in a Jan. 24-31, 2005 article on "The Coming Wars," mooted that the Special Forces "black programs" may now have ventured into the field of "pseudo-gang warfare," in which counterinsurgency methods blur with insurgency.
(. . .)
Four of the names most often cited as promoters of programs like the "Goat Lab," the "Jedi Warriors," "Grill Flame," "Task Force Delta," and the "First Earth Battalion," have held top posts within the military intelligence and Special Operations commands:

Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin was the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, N.C., from 1998-2000
(. . .)
Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the current U.S. Army Chief of Staff,
(. . .)
Gen. Wayne Downing also was the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command
(. . .)
Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin was the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, N.C., from 1998-2000
(. . .)
According to author Jon Ronson, in 1977, Lt. Col. Jim Channon, a Vietnam War combat veteran, wrote a letter to Lt. Gen. Walter Kerwin, then the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff, proposing a fact-finding mission to unearth ways for the U.S. military to become more "cunning." Channon was given an open-ended assignment, a small Pentagon budget, and spent the next two years, by his own accounts, exploring the depths of the New Age movement, seeking military applications. Channon visited over 150 New Age facilities during his travels, with such countercultural names as: Gentle Wind, Integral Chuan Institute, Dayspring, Inc., The Center of Release and Integration, Postural Integration Reichian Rebirthing, the New Age Awareness Fair, Beyond Jogging, Aikido with Ki, the Biofeedback Center of Berkeley, and the Esalen Institute.

Channon particularly spent a good deal of time training under Michael Murphy, the co-founder of Esalen, which was the leading West Coast New Age psychological experimentation center, testing a wide array of mind-control methods, many involving the use of psychotropic drugs. Cultist mass murderer Charles Manson spent Aug. 5, 1969 at Esalen, just four days before he unleashed the "Helter Skelter" murder spree, for which he is still serving a lifetime jail sentence. Manson had been tracked, from his years in state prison, by military psychologists, who were studying behavioral patterns of what they dubbed the "pathologically violent five percent."
(. . .)
Indeed, according to both Ronson and The New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, many of the torture techniques employed at Guantanamo Bay, at Abu Ghraib, and at such less-well-known locales as al-Qa-im near the Syrian border in Iraq, are based on Channon and Alexander's non-lethal schemes, but with lethal consequences in some cases.

Oh, and it says that a couple of guys trained by these folks went on to become 911 hijackers.

Abaddon

It's like the scariest horror movie you've ever seen, only you're locked in the theater, you can't get out, and you have no idea how close you are to the end...

Rigorous Intuition:

"And one more thought. If Iran is nuked, it doesn't mean we're suddenly in an End Game scenario. We're already in it. Except for the shadows beneath the mushroom cloud apocalypse doesn't come in an instant. The breaking of souls is incremental. We are meant to acclimatize ourselves to Hell, to raise our children in it, and teach them to expect worse to come.

J Robert Oppenheimer became Death, the destroyer of worlds. Since George W Bush's religious alter is Christian rather than Hindu, perhaps what he's becoming is contained in this packet of Revelation 9:11 Truth: 'They had as king over them the Angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.' And in English, Destroyer.

We're ready for your close-up, Dr Oppenheimer."

The War is Bad for the Economy

So says Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz: in an interview in - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News.

Besides saying the true cost of the war is between $1 trillion to $2 trillion, we find this little morsel:

SPIEGEL: If the UN Security Council votes for sanctions over Iran and its oil exports, what would that mean for the world economy?

Stiglitz: It would mean an enormous disruption, as oil prices might rise over $100. You can increase the price from $25 to $40, and people can absorb it. If the price rises above $60, they become unhappy. They start to adjust, they move to smaller cars, drive a little bit less. At $100 or $120, there are major changes in lifestyle. The sales of cars will plummet. Poor people will be facing real problems of heat versus food.

That Immigrant Thing

BottleOfBlog: Stand Up And Be Proud,

...in which a blogger I've never heard of zeroes in on the Republican agenda on immigration.

Federal Bureau of Luddites

Defense Tech:

Most of you have probably heard about the FBI's technology problems: The field offices that still aren't connected to the 'Net. The 8,000 employees who don't have fbi.gov e-mail addresses. The case management database that's straight out of the leisure suit era.

But what's not as widely known is why the bureau is so behind the times. The big culprit is FBI culture, it turns out. Until very recently, being computer-savvy hasn't been considered much of an asset in the FBI, and clues were something you kept to yourself.

My story in Slate explains. Check it out -- it's my first one for 'em.

UPDATE 6:03 PM: Slate is more of an essay-driven operation. So I didn't get to use some of the juicier quotes that I squeezed from folks in researching this story. Here are a few:

*'Compar[ing] with the FBI is like comparing the Neanderthal system of 'one bang club on cave mean yes, two mean no,' to the futuristic Star Trek vision of intergalactic communications that transcend time and distance. If Captain Kirk found himself in... the FBI headquarters building in D.C., he surely would tap the communicator on his chest with the comment 'Scotty, beam me up, there is no intelligent life in this rectangular cave.''
-- former NSA officer

* 'Guys would write their notes on legal pads, and lock them in a safe at night when they went home.'
-- former FBI agent

* Every SAC [Special Agent in Charge of an FBI office] is his own king. And they don't like people from other divisions coming into their kingdoms... If I'm working on an L.A. case, and I've got leads in Chicago, the attitude is, 'Why Go?' Everyone gets tied in knots.'
-- former FBI agent

* 'Everything the Bureau has been talking about, they’ve had here for years... You can’t believe how far ahead they are here.'
-- U.S. Strategic Command analyst, formerly with the FBI.

(And before you ask: Yeah, I talked to current agents, too. They just weren't as snarky as the exes.)"

Weapons of Mass Salad Fixin's

The Wayne Madsen Report:

"U.S. ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield is spinning a Venezuelan vegetable, egg, and fruit protest pelting of his motorcade as some sort of terrorist attack. The U.S. State Department complained to Venezuela's ambassador in Washington that Venezuela was in violation of the international treaty on the protection if diplomats. Spinning an unfounded conspiracy theory (they are only conspiracy theories when the left-wing cites them), State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the incident in a poor Caracas neighborhood was condoned by the city's mayor, police, and local government. McCormack vowed that the United States will not be intimidated by such attacks of vegetables, fruit, and eggs on U.S. diplomatic vehicles. U.S. embassy spokesman Brian Penn bemoaned, ''Our car is stained all over . . . the motorcyclists were throwing things at us for at least 10 minutes, and the police did nothing.' Penn did not indicate whether there were any funds left in the embassy's CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency slush funds used to foment insurrections, secessionist movement, coups, street protests, and election chicanery to afford a car wash for the ambassador's car."

Another Way to Get Oil...

The Wayne Madsen Report: "If anything, it is Washington and its Dutch allies who pose a threat to Netherlands Antilles autonomy. The neo-con Dutch government has, through Round Table Conferences (RTCs) with the Antilles and Aruba, attempted to convince the islands to cede judicial autonomy to the central Dutch government. Using the non-ABC islands of Saba, St. Eustatius, and Saint Maarten as wedges, Washington and The Hague, have caused problems for the ongoing efforts of the Netherlands Antilles to devolve autonomy to the individual islands and largely scrap the federal system.

However, while the Bush administration and its Dutch lackeys charge Chavez with having territorial designs on the ABC islands, the military-industrial oilgarchy in Washington and Houston may be fomenting a separatist movement in western Venezuela's oil-rich Zulia state. Chavez has accused Zulia's right-wing governor, Manuel Rosales, of working with the United States and American oil interests to promote independence for the state. A recently-formed right-wing and pro-business group called 'Own Road' is pushing for an independence referendum for the state. There is evidence that the group has received support from intelligence elements operating from within the U.S. embassy in Caracas. In addition, U.S.-backed mercenaries and Florida-based missionaries have attacked the villages of pro-Chavez indigenous tribes in Zulia.

Bush administration would have Venezuela's oil-rich Zulia state declare independence as a U.S. client state. Other Latin American nations with populist governments can expect similar Bush/neocon-supported secessionist movements. Already, there are U.S.-supported secessionist stirrings in the hydrocarbon-rich Chaco region of Bolivia aimed against President Evo Morales, a Chavez ally.

The parallels between Own Road ('Rumbo Propio') and southwestern Iran's Ahwaz independence movement, which is backed British and U.S. intelligence, are striking. Both Zulia and Ahwaz are oil-rich regions. U.S. intelligence now backs independence movements in both regions designed to pry oil-rich resources away from anti-Bush central governments. Conversely, in regions where independence movements threaten U.S. oil interests, the Bush administration provides the central governments with military hardware and special counter-insurgency training. This is the case with oil-rich Aceh in northwestern Sumatra in Indonesia, the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, and the Delta region of Nigeria.

"

Are We Serious About Defeating the Insurgents, or Are We Not?

A delightful and thoroughly disgusting little "ode to crucifixion"—lambasting futile US efforts against the insurgency in Iraq as compared to Roman tactics which worked against the Jews— takes the BushCo logic to it's logical conclusion.

"Now, I readily admit that a program of mass crucifixion in the Middle East may seem a bit extreme, and perhaps it is. We are Americans, after all, and with that comes a solemn responsibility to be somewhat less cruel and evil than the most cruel and evil people ever. This is a valid criticism. But criticism is not a substitute for a strategy. If mass crucifixion - despite its proven record for short-order insurgency-squelching - is too brutal for war hawks to contemplate, I feel that the onus is on them to explain just what positive, proven, non-rhetorical (and preferably non-Canadian) measures might be implied by “whatever it takes.” Because, not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t exactly think the war is suffering from a shortage of pro-war chin music. The war is suffering, as Reynolds so astutely observes, from a lack of resolve. And if war supporters are unwilling to advocate for the methods which millenia of proven are necessary to bring order to the Middle East, then they really have no business advocating these occupations in the first place."

Bank of America

New York Post Online Edition: news: "April 4, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - The Manhattan DA is pursuing a settlement with the Bank of America in a major money-laundering probe of more than $3 billion that flowed from Latin America through one of the bank's accounts to Mideast fanatics, sources said yesterday.

Sources familiar with the case - reported in yesterday's Post - revealed that DA Robert Morgenthau is close to reaching a settlement with the nation's second largest bank.

The bank is not being accused of complicity with money-launderers or terrorists, but is facing possible penalties for dealing with an unlicensed money transmitter from Uruguay, sources said.

A bank spokeswoman had no comment.

Morgenthau forced the shutdown of a New York account at the bank that investigators said was used to funnel $3 billion from a shadowy money transmitter called Lespan in Montevideo to several suspicious accounts in the Middle East, sources said.

Some of the Mideast accounts are suspected of being used by terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah."

Well, This Takes the Cake

They hate us because of our freedom—our freedom to act like vicious thugs and think nothing of it.

Dahr Jamail: How Massacres Become the Norm:

"On the 23rd of that month during Ramadan, US soldiers raided a home where a family was just sitting down together to break their fast.

Three men of the family had their hands tied behind them with plastic ties and were laid on the ground face down while the women and children were made to stand inside a nearby storage closet.

Khalil Ahmed, 30 years old, the brother of two of the victims and cousin with a third, wept when he described to me how after executing the three men the soldiers completely destroyed the home, using Humvees with machine guns, small tanks, and gunfire from the many troops on foot and helicopters.

'We don't know the reason why the soldiers came here. They didn't tell us the reason. We don't know why they killed our family members.' Khalil seemed to demand an answer from me. 'There are no weapons in this house, there are no resistance fighters. So why did these people have to die? Why?'

Khalil told me that the day after the executions took place, soldiers returned to apologize. They handed him a cake saying they were sorry that they had been given wrong information by someone that told them there were resistance fighters in their house."

Contemplating Armageddon

John Steinberg (Senior Recidivist with the Poor Man Institute for Freedom and Democracy and a Pony) writes in Raw Story this chilling account of the way the administration's currently employed twisted logic would make nukular destruction of Iran not only thinkable but a definite political plus. Yikes.

Do those costs outweigh a thirty or forty point jump in Bush's approval ratings? I am afraid it depends upon who you ask.

For The Record: 06/24/2004

Things to Google for fun: Ptech, Chertoff, FBI, Homeland Security.

For The Record: 06/24/2004: "Among the more alarming details about the Ptech debacle concerns a statement attributed to the president of Ptech. He allegedly told a subordinate that Yaqub Mirza—a member of the board of directors—had connections high up in the FBI! Mirza set up the organizations targeted in the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002! “Furthermore, the FBI was aware that Ptech provided computer software for several government agencies, including the FBI itself, the FAA, the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Defense, the IRS, and the White House, proving a visible and viable threat to national security. The FBI ignored the repeated requests of concerned employees. Frighteningly, when an employee told the President of Ptech he felt he had to contact the FBI regarding Qadi’s involvement in the company, the president allegedly told him not to worry because Yaqub Mirza, who was on the board of directors of the company and was himself a target of a terrorist financing raid in March 2002, had contacts high within the FBI. "

I've mentioned before that Ptech apparently supplied the software (an evolution of the Promis software) involved in coordinating all aspects of those government agencies, including security codes. Think about that.

For another fun Googling adventure, try: Promis software, Harry Martin. Harry is currently on the city council in Napa. He's published a newspaper there, since, I think, the 1980s.

Can you imagine an article linking this Promise software, Osama, Ed Meese, Lyn Cheney, the Israeli Mossad, and billionaire Jackson Stephens? Hold on to whatever grip on reality you have, and check this.

Yet another Bush Family connection you won't believe

So George left for Cancun a day early, and so missed a talk at the Washington Hilton, which would have been on the day before the 25th anniversary of the attempted assassination of President Reagan. Surely he wasn't afraid of anyone making the connection between his family and that of the assailant...

The Wayne Madsen Report: "'Houston, AP, March 31, 1981: The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign, the Houston Post reported today.

The newspaper said in a copyright story, Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley Jr., who allegedly shot Reagan, was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the vice president's sons.

The newspaper said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice president of his father's Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corp., for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, where he works for Standard Oil Co. of Indiana.

In 1978, Neil served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the vice president's oldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock throughout much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980.

On Monday, Neil Bush said he did not know if he had ever met 25-year-old John Hinckley.

'I have no idea,' he said. 'I don't recognize any pictures of him. I just wish I could see a better picture of him.

Sharon Bush, Neil's wife, said Scott Hinckley was coming to their house as a date of a girl friend of hers. 'I don't even know the brother. From what I know and I've heard, they [the Hinckleys] are a very nice family and have given a lot of money to the Bush campaign. The dinner was canceled, she added.

George W. Bush said he was unsure whether he had met John W. Hinckley.'"

Professor of Military History at Hebrew University: Impeach and put on trial

Linked from the previously linked article is this article, also worth reading:

Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War,
by Martin Van Creveld ("He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers") is a striking indictment of the Bush administration. Here's is his conclusion:

For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.

The Kingness of Mad George

Bonnie sent me this article by Jeffrey L. Pasley about the Bush and Cheney idea of Presidential power. Here's a snippet:

This is where Bush and Cheney’s views and actions seem quite breathtakingly dangerous. There have likely been absolute monarchs whose lawmaking was more procedurally constrained than that of the present administration. "We have a system of law," Senator Russ Feingold said of the NSA spying program. "He just can't make up the law . . . It would turn George Bush not into President George Bush, but King George Bush." While I hope and believe that George W. Bush has no intention of crowning himself, his mentor Cheney has been seeking "unimpaired" presidential power ever since his days as a junior aide in the Ford White House. Why should his president/boy-prince be forced to endure the insolent effrontery of pesky reporters and congressional investigating committees? For Cheney, the Imperial Presidency is a matter of personal and ideological conviction.