leviathan

welly, welly, well then, looks like the isaelis gots themselves some gas mejor.  just the other day, Noble Energy -- no shit -- announced the discovery of 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The rally at Ratio is thanks to the company's 15% stake in a giant offshore gas field called Leviathan, operated by Houston-based Noble Energy Inc.

On Wednesday, the frenzy got fresh fuel: Noble confirmed its earlier estimates that the field contains 16 trillion cubic feet of gas—making it the world's biggest deepwater gas find in a decade, with enough reserves to supply Israel's gas needs for 100 years.

It's still early days, and getting all that gas out of the seabed may be more difficult than it seems today. But Noble and its partners think the field could hold enough gas to transform Israel, a country precariously dependent on others for energy, into a net-energy exporter.

ya know, the iranians and the ruskies have been yakkin' 'bout an "opec-like" natural gas cartel. bahrain has said, shit, buds, we're in! ben doin' it for awhile now, if i recall.

welly, welly, well, then. how's 'bout a new partner, neighbours? can you imagine israel teaming up with iran and the russians on an opec-like global gas cartel?

we can put aside our rancid, racist, irrational bigotry, informing the brunt of our world view, to team up in a cooperative effort to control global gas supplies, screw the world, and make a fucking fortune doing it.

sounds like it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

lawless rare earths area

did you know there existed such wondrous places, these "lawless rare earths" areas?  the wild wild rare earths area.  bit wordy. they're in northern Guangdong.  wild wild guangdong. uh. wild wild rare earth west. that's not bad.

anyway, beloved ol' nyt is happily ladlin' up another woe are the prospers of china story.  they be damned for their monopoly o' those luscious rare earths, those marvelous elements of the modern must have age, by bands of rapacious buccaneers, mining their own rare earth loot in wild wild guandong, absconding with thence toward vietnam, where japanese business yops hover, scooping up the contraband, banging it off to nippon, thereby subverting china's embargo of rare earths to japan.

that won't do.

What is new are efforts by China’s national and provincial governments to crack down on the illegal mines, to which local authorities have long turned a blind eye. The efforts coincide with a decision by Beijing to reduce legal exports as well, including an announcement by China’s commerce ministry on Tuesday that export quotas for all rare earth metals will be 35 percent lower in the early months of next year than in the first half of this year.

the problem? CHIGOV only has control of half of it.

Rogue operations in southern China produce an estimated half of the world’s supply of heavy rare earths, which are the most valuable kinds of rare earth metals.
...
China mines 99 percent of the global supply of heavy rare earths, with legal, state-owned mines mainly accounting for the rest of China’s output. That means the Chinese government’s only effective competitors in producing these valuable commodities are the crime rings within the country’s borders.

just how competitive are these rare earth rivals?

Someone abducted the general manager of Pacific Ores, Constant Li. The kidnappers brought Mr. Li to Mr. Crawley’s Hong Kong office one night, bound him to a chair with duct tape, gagged and blindfolded him and ripped open his throat with box cutters.

lawless rare earths area.

out of iraq ... ish

the lede begins with a bold statement by Maliki:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011."

whew, potent stuff, which receives a quote from the PM himself.

"The last American soldier will leave Iraq" as agreed,  ... "This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alteration. It is sealed."

sealed! says the pm. and so definitive!  the very essence of definitive.  sealed with a kiss.  us troops out!  every last one, by the end of 2011.  finally.

or          not

But Mr. Maliki said the only way for any of the remaining 50,000 or so American soldiers to stay beyond 2011 would be for the two nations to negotiate—with the approval of Iraq's Parliament—a new Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, similar to the one concluded in 2008.

ah, yes, just like then. we remember fondly those busheoise days of the panic attack SOFA and Maliki's bold, firm statements of the ultimate fate, the scrabbling and haggling, threats! oh, it was a juicy time for awhile. immunity! we must have immunity for this and for that.  dates!  a date for withdrawal is a must.  naw.  hate them dates.  gives the damnable terrorists a timeline to terror! generals back pedaling and tsk-tsking the need for realism and "conditions on the ground."  glorious stuff.

 oh well, well, oh my, we'll just have to have a lookie at what's goin' on when it's goin' on, see what happens then.

 'member that?

well, who knows whether Maliki will retain resolve?  he is feeling a tad kingly these days.

hugo hitlerez

readers no doubt will have already surmised, had to readjust the take on the whole winkinglinks thing.  'cause buddy these damnable state cabes have been a hoot, a genuine one.  quite apart from the media dick spin on chosen features. ("hey, all our oppressive dynastic arab leaders want to hit iran!  that must be the right thing to do then!")  not the kind one gets from slomo psyops, but a genuine ass-baring hoot.  makin' all kinna of dumdums look like, well, just what you'd expect. us embassy in honduras: we got us a coo day taah down here! white house: nahh.

gotta say though, doesn't look like manning's imagining that hillary would take a hit came to much.  whiff.  dna grabs and iris scans; barely fluffed her hair.

gotta luv michael freakin moore bustin' a state cable sayin' that cuba had banned Sicko.  Imagine what the exact opposite of a state banning something would be, and that's what actually happened in Cuba.  Cuba honoured Moore, played the film everywhere, even broadcast it on national television.

here's the relevant part of the cable:

XXXXXXXXXXXX stated that Cuban authorities have banned Michael Moore's documentary, "Sicko," as being subversive. Although the film's intent is to discredit the U.S. healthcare system by highlighting the excellence of the Cuban system, he said the regime knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.

that's what winds its inglorious way to washington. some state dept goober hears from who knows what bimbo pouring the noxious liquor of us interests into his ear that cuba banned moore's lefty anti-american healthcare movie when cuba not only did no such thing, cuba honoured moore and the film.  thur's yur state department classified intelligence.  guess walking to the local cinema required a bit too much diggin'.

actual good stuff is popping out here and there.  not that you'd know from the bastions of merkin media, but faves have been learnin' of coercing Spain and Germany over investigations of war crimes.  the spanish jerk was obvious, wide open.  The Germans?  well, that appears to have been handled a little more discretely.  'til that dag blasted wikifukinleaks came along.  spoilt the good germans' name, it did.  actually, all the exposure did do was make us realize that the us are strong-armin' their way around all the time.  luv that ohfukinbama is strong-arming nations to protect bush et al.  didn't know he had it in 'im.  dink.  manages to get all tuff protecting yet another criminal gop dynasty, goes all gushy doing anything else 'cept ampin' up the wars.  head of the snake!  cut it off!  the Great Satan and the snake at each other's throats.  marvelous.  shouldn't you two be gettin' along better than this?  aren't satan and the snake kinna the same thing?  can't we all just get along, brothers?

anyway, 'nother bunch of cabes have been looked at, turns up a whole lotta stuff 'bout tryin' to whack chavez. yeah, shocker. turns out at some point, some surely more perceptive state goober than the one in cuba is yakkin' wit ol' death squad uribe, who apparently tells our man in bogatá, along with a buncha faithfully attentive us congressmen who came to hear what they wanted to hear, just what they wanted to hear:

Uribe "likened the threat Chavez poses to Latin America to that posed by Hitler in Europe."

zipptydooda, jus' what we wanted to hear. got ourselves another hitler!

murder inc.

ya wonder what that dubya is in the george dubya bush?  yuve heard sum shit about "walker" as in the ol' Harriman george herbert, dealin' up wit his own son-in-law, and fellow Harriman chum, grandaddy prescott, double dealin' and helpin' keep the nazi dream alive.  uh uh.

if ya didn't know it by now, the dubya stands for wrong.

"The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder.”

-- George W. Bush

"Former Canadian Prime Minister Adviser Calls for Assassination of WikiLeaks Founder Assange"

"Fox News Calls For Assassination Of Julian Assange"

"WikiLeaks: guilty parties 'should face death penalty'"

one assumes the lower court there all think they love and adore 'democratic values.'  couldn't live without 'em, they'd surely say.

not just bad ... islamabad

"...several US media outlets did not name Banks, citing national security concerns."

and they didn't, howling away mostly 'bout those dastardly pak isi fucks, outin' thur man in the 'bad.  brits didn't care though. hell, brits splash the cos' name all over the freakin' headlines.  beautiful.

CIA chief in Pakistan leaves after drone trial blows his cover

Jonathan Banks, station chief In Islamabad, back in US after calls for him to be charged with murder over drone attack.

... with little or no resistance

doncha love how easily the repub/obama "tax deal" whizzed through congress?  amazing, really, given the howling we heard the tired demos unleashing about it and how it will not stand.  just a week ago, ol' bernie was doin' his song and senate dance, pledging to do everything he could to the stop the tax deal.  guess that wasn't much.  didn't hear 'bout any filibuster.  you know, like the repubs use on every freakin' bill?  didn't see that happen.

nope.

so there is the courageous dem stand against continued tax breaks for the two percenters.  one eight hour speech.

king nouri

in back to iraq 4.0, OR,

it's good to be king!

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki sat in a gilded chair Tuesday at the start of the three-day Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice.

He rose to greet his guests in a newly furbished palace, built under the late dictator Saddam Hussein.

Politicians came in their elegant dark suits; sheiks approached in their brown robes; generals marched in crisp uniforms, emblazoned with swords and epaulets. All kissed him twice on both cheeks. And Maliki smiled and whispered into their ears, or chuckled.

On previous holidays, he received guests at his office. But his government has completed renovation of one of Hussein's palaces in central Baghdad, so this holiday he greeted dignitaries in a giant reception room, with calligraphy etched on wood partitions.

Maliki sat by a member of his Islamic Dawa Party, who had been tortured under Hussein's regime. The elderly man watched proudly as his successors occupied one of their vanished oppressor's ornate residences, renamed the General Command Palace.

school's out

so, what's got ol Sec Ed Arne Duncan all riled up 'bout the education of amerjca's children, and therefore, the future of america?.  arrrrggghhh!! those godamCHIneeze!  them and their smarts and schoolin' 'n all.  somethin' like that.

“We have to see this as a wake-up call.”

his "wake-up call" was an international standardized test, one in which the chinese would debut. shanghai went to the plate and nutted it outta there! the us dithering in the teenths, if not lower.

that's the secretary of education's wake up call that something is amiss  in american education. chinese test scores.  not the crumbling urban schools, leaks and no heat, not the rising damp of grinding poverty and want that make an education susceptible to the daily crises poverty inflicts, and certainly not the education gap between rich and poor schools. not the toxic political environment doled out to teachers in the us. cuts and jabs from the establishment, constantly -- mostly 'cause teach has some unions around still, and they just hate that.  as long as teachers have unions, they're just like jimmy hoffa.  best just whack 'em.  the solution to the education problem in america is seen as canning all the teachers!  that'll fix it.

so, no, none of that is a problem, let alone a wake up call.  but the blasted chinese, making us look bad -- really bad -- again!  launch forth Arne! an american educational jihad against chinese test scores.  of course, in the real world, this would not translate into grandly more money and resources going to education.  in all likelihood what would happen is that chinese test taking students would be assassinated or detained by jsoc hunter-killer squads, their violation, of course: undermining the interests of the United States.

gordon's gin

funniest headline in awhile. intro a michael gordon story, natch.

Meddling Neighbors Undercut Iraq Stability

 meddlers! buggering up iraq stability like they do.

the firm

amblin' along some days ago, started wondrin' 'bout the bona fides of this assange "rape"  accuser.  which means, of course, what's the shit goin' on there?  actually, it started out wondering if the whole ridiculous rape charge was all just a set-up.  and then it was onto the who the hell is Anna Ardin track.  like that.

well, sure 'nuff, a rekindle is tossin' about, reminding us of some minor news that the swedish accuser, Anna Ardin, has got all kinna ties to CIA funded, anti-castro organisations in ... sweden, ferfucksakes. do swedes care about castro that much?

Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here. Note that Ardin was deported from Cuba for subversive activities. In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter.

she also appears to have another charming characteristic.

Anna Ardin apparently indulges in her favorite sport of male-bashing. A Swedish forum reports that she is an expert on sexual harassment and the male “master suppression techniques”. Once, as she was lecturing, a male student in the audience looked at his notes instead of staring at her. Anna Ardin reported him for sexual harassment because he discriminated against her for being a woman and because she claimed he made use of the male “master suppression technique” in trying to make her feel invisible. As soon as the student learned about her complaint, he contacted her to apologize and explain himself. Anna Ardin’s response was to once again report him for sexual harassment, again because he was using the “master suppression technique”, this time to belittle her feelings.

a keepah!

kirk james murphy offers up a summary.

chargin' the angler

now, who ain't bustin' a gut 'bout those freakin' nigerians sayin' , what was it? oh yeah, "We are filing charges against Cheney"?  sweet mother.  that just sounds grand, even though i didn't actually hear anything, just imagined a haughty African official proudly declaring that dick freakin' cheney was to be charged!  who cares with what?  somethin'.  fuck, the guy's got his plump soft hands everywhere.  anyway, just sayin', lovin' it!  while it lasts.

which ain't long at all, one expects.  but let us rejoice in a summary of the story so far, and try to ignore the phrase, "Nigerian anti-corruption police."

Nigerian anti-corruption police said today that they will charge former US vice-president Dick Cheney over a $180m bribery case involving energy firm Halliburton.The announcement follows a probe into the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in the conflict-ridden Niger Delta.

Halliburton's top official in Nigeria has been summoned and 10 of its Nigerian and expat staff detained for questioning after a raid on the company's office in Lagos. Cheney was head of Halliburton before becoming George W Bush's vice-president in 2001.

"We are filing charges against Cheney," said Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), adding that the charges were likely to be brought next week. He declined to give any further details on what the charges were or where they would be filed.

Houston-based engineering firm KBR, a former Halliburton unit, pleaded guilty last year to US charges that it paid $180m in bribes between 1994 and 2004 to Nigerian officials to secure $6bn in contracts for the Bonny Island Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in the Niger Delta.KBR and Halliburton reached a $579m settlement in America but Nigeria, France and Switzerland have conducted their own investigations into the case.

turns out, those halliburton lunks think that they're suffering a hit in a covert corporate proxy war  where bought and paid for officials remain the currency of the realm.

Halliburton said last year it had "reason to believe" payments may have been made to Nigerian officials by agents of its TSKJ consortium, which built the Bonny Island facility.

and this is great. as usual, it all comes down to local politics. nigerian local politics. and apparently the cheney-halliburton guilt cow just keeps on getting milked in nigeria, squirting out a somewhat substantive political nectar that keeps an incumbent well nourished.

Nigeria will hold presidential elections in April and some analysts have suggested the sudden revival of interest in the Halliburton case is no coincidence.  Incumbent Goodluck Jonathan faces a challenge for the ruling party nomination from former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, who was in office between 1999 and 2007. Abubakar's opponents have in the past tried to link him to the Halliburton case,

well, goodluck jonathan. we'll see how the cheney angle plays out.

dontcha love how dick cheney is being used as a pawn and framed as a political liability in the presidential elections in nigeria?  i know i do.  i hope goodluck jonathan manages to arrest the prick and toss 'im in the can.  and then, amidst much rejoicing, win the election.  if that is what it takes, by god, do it, man.  just do it.

the edukator

diane ravitch is over thur, pounding away on bill gates' sniffing and facetious "questions" about her opposition to his and other edu-privateers plans t' do nuthin' but test test test.  the questions are remarkable for what they show about gates, that he is basically an intellectual adolescent.  does he think these are serious questions?  if he does, and i see no reason not to believe he does (i can freaking hear that nasally whinge in my head), then bill gates ought to be kept out of the public sphere by his handlers.   at least when he's writing anything.  he comes off as a petulant buffoon.

in a huff to the first in a series of unserious jabs, ravitch makes these observations:

"I don't hear any of [the corporate reformers] worried that a generation will grow up ignorant of history and the workings of government."

no.  no, diane, dear. they don't worry about that. in fact, they'll be more than happy with that putative "side effect."

she keeps railing: where's the "$100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument"? ibid.

face it, diane. the "corporate reformers," are in this for two things: more public money shunted to private corporations, and, most importantly,  corporate control over education pretty much ensures a certainly even less uncomfortable future for america's corporate titans and all their attendant lamprey.

this is but probably beyond the ken of bill gates, a man who became the richest person in the world by buying, stealing, and acquiring, by means both lawful and unlawful, other peoples' stuff, jamming it together with some ungodly glue, also, by the way, other people's stuff, and selling it to lots of people as his own.  good at, apparently.  but as an education reformer, probably not someone from whom you would want take advice.  all a guy like gates sees is automatons, toiling without complaint, chips building chips.  that's what gates sees.  he's said it.  it's basically the message behind the glowing a good education leads to good jobs! malarky.

without knowing it at all, in his last "question" to ravitch, gates drops the bomb on his privateering test-mania education reform buddies

"If there’s some other magic way to reduce the dropout rate, we’re all ears."

so, gates thinks he and corpoChums are "all ears" for "some other magic way" to fix the schools. are they not entirely convinced by their magic way? perhaps there are several magic ways to defraud, deceive, and further de-educate the dyspeptic american public.

actually, there is a way to dramatically improve education outcomes.

Mr. Gates, why don't you address the root causes of low academic achievement, which is not 'bad teachers,' but poverty."[?]

Dear Diane,


Hate to break this to you, but the fixing poverty thing is pretty much a no go.  No magic there.

Nope.


We'll stick to our plan.


Thanks Diane.


Love, Bill.

bugman bagman

some while ago, the delay question popped up, nothin' then directly nailing him, but some related conspirators.  Well, they finally nailed the bugger.  on money-laundering charges.

Tom DeLay, one of the most powerful and divisive Republican lawmakers ever to come out of Texas, was convicted Wednesday of money-laundering charges in a state trial, five years after his indictment here forced him to resign as majority leader in the House of Representatives.

After 19 hours of deliberation, a jury of six men and six women decided that Mr. DeLay was guilty of conspiring with two associates in 2002 to circumvent a state law against corporate contributions to political campaigns. He was convicted of one charge of money laundering and one charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

As the verdict was read, Mr. DeLay, 63, sat stone-faced at the defense table. Then he rose, turned, smiled and hugged his wife and then his weeping daughter in the first row of spectators. He faces between 5 and 99 years in prison, though the judge may choose probation.

A few minutes later, Mr. DeLay said outside the courtroom that he would appeal the decision. He called the prosecution a political vendetta by Democrats in the local district attorney’s office, and revenge for his role in orchestrating the 2003 redrawing of Congressional districts to elect more Republicans."

tom delay, money launderer.  wow.  what a down grade.  how's that feel, tom,  to be on criminal record as a mere bagman?

"It’s a miscarriage of justice." 

yep.

these are not the drones you are looking for

checkin' in on riz khan, chat about pakistan, drone wars, all fucked up.  jabber, jabber, jabber, and then, well, this one seemingly pleasant woman, Christine Fair, said what i considered to be a rather amazing thing.   She said something to the effect that all those reported airborne deathbot civilian deaths were all lies.  lies! she told us.  fabrications of a bought and paid for pak press.  all of it!  i guess is what she meant.  drones are perfect, killing only those rightly killed.

huh.  statistically, that seemed a tad extreme a claim.  so, rather than quibble over numbers and such about the admitted ramped up aggression with drone strikes in pakistan, and all that policy's attendant terrorism, i thought it would be much more interesting to dive into the who the hell is "Christine Fair" thing.  funny name, that.

turns out that lovely ms. fair has been a tried and true us intelligence groper for quite sometime, humping RAND Corp and, once satiated, thence to the marvelous usip, where establishment gherkins perform "cutting edge research,"  one supposes, into all the money making peace that's breakin' out all over the place. actually and among other things, they churned out anti-Nicaraguan propaganda in support of the contras in those glorious days covert proxy wars, and only covert, or perhaps "covert", proxy wars.  fair moved onto georgetown, all cpass professorial and legit now.   it seemed certain she was some sort of war establishment propaganda droid.  RAND and usip certify that.  especially usip.

usip is interesting, i must say.  once again, a liberal cave in gave way to the United States Institute of Peace being co-opted by the executive and/or us intelligence, and being used for pysops, disinformation and other io, mostly in latin america in its early reaganesque version, wherein iran-contra players figured prominently.  doubt it's changed much, a few new targets on the map.  actually, a lot of new targets on the map.

so there's christine fair, the bombs are not falling, the dead are not dying, the terrorism is not real, its all a lie, christine fair.  outta usip.

a vague and nebulous term

"The CIA will also influence public opinion by planting stories in the media through unwitting journalists or willing ones."

-- The Gleaner

readin' on over at ol' glenn, ragin' as he does, goin' on 'bout the latest drummed up nonsense about the latest islamic "cleric" who now poses a global threat to the united states of shitm'pance.  now, i love the rant, don't get me wrong.  he manages to remain all fired up, and kudos for that!  but don't really need glenn to dig into what i'm after, the more interesting facets, shall we say, of the name Abdullah al-Faisal, who apparently has decided that he wants to be the next big thing in terror!  Did we mention that he is a Muslim cleric?

It should be obvious that we just can't have that next door to the Homeland, now can we?  No ho ho! we cannot.

Weird how all these threat-down Muslim clerics are popping up in various geo-strategic locations, near and far abroad.  shazam!

The first interesting and notable note, the organization "freedetainees.org," an ostensibly well-intended group that still manages to pop up on the first google page, but these days, who the fuck knows? but, if this is the case, what is notable is how effortlessly a putative "left," i.e. human rights, organisation happily publishes articles about Abdullah al-Faisal spat out by Jamaica's The Gleaner. The Gleaner has an interesting and long history of association with the CIA.

"... the charge that a destabilisation campaign was waged against the Manley government in 1976 is easier to substantiate. A ‘smoking gun' was found , but the weight of evidence makes it likely that the CIA was at work, in league with the JLP, the Daily Gleaner, and opposition businessmen and trade unionists, to undermine the elected government in Jamaica.

"US Senate sub-committee which had investigated the CIA's covert action in Chile, prepared a pamphlet for the Press Association of Jamaica. This unhesitatingly compared the Gleaner's role with that played in helping to overthrow the Allende regime by the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, which had consistently and scurrilously attacked Allende and his colleagues and was shown subsequently to have received CIA finance and encouragement to do so.

Today? Today, they seem to be pretty much doing the same thing:

"the Budget can be challenged for the lack of credibility of the entire government, led by the prime minister..."

been there. done that.

anyway, what is interesting in this iteration is The Gleaner's mightier than thou tone in this missive, blaming, in a ballsy hang out, the vile CIA and the UN for Jamaican woes, but cautioning Jamaicans that, oh well, there's nuthin' you can do about it, so shut the fuck up. besides, when the cia does meddle, it is only with the best of "US national security" intentions.

bear in mind, this is Jamaica's The Gleaner, telling people that the cia is there, sometimes stirrin' up the shit, like they do, and it's for the good; Caribbean laziness overcome.  just so there is no doubt, i am putting quotes on this:

"This might be necessary when a public does not take a situation affecting US national security seriously. When there is apathy or a tendency to joke away a serious problem, the CIA might stir up anger by placing anxious stories locally and internationally. We know that the Coke story has appeared in respected and widely read magazines like the Economist and most recently the Globe and Mail. The State Department has experts in communications analysis and its bureau of intelligence and research is good at putting its stories out to counter the spin of government communications departments and public-opinion sympathisers."

got that, lunk heads? you pathetic "public-opinion sympathizers"!  what dopes, you people are! coups and whatnot are strictly decisions for "Government and CIA," and that's comin' from "lefties" at the Gleaner, who used to front for the cia, maybe didn't even know it.

anyway, The Gleaner still gleaning away, and there they are to pop up the tale of Abdullah al-Faisa, ladling out the goop from "senior officers" of the police about all kinna super dooper spy shit on ol' al-Faisa, who is suddenly a super dooper threat to "US national security."  time to send in some troops.  now that gazprom will dive deep off cuba, and CNCP will set up a $6 bill cuban refining shop.  yikes!  better cover all the bases 'round those bastards.  contagion and havoc in haiti, islamic terrorists in jamaica.  it's what they do.

the academic environment

by some weird and shambling way, i bumbled across the Joint Special Operations University website.  Did you know there existed such wonderful place?  JSOC U, though they are careful to call it JSOU.  Which is, frankly, suckass lame.

Hilariously, a little threatening pop-up storms the perimeter, warning infiltrators that they may be subject to "COMSEC monitoring," "penetration testing," and other horrors of the flesh.  Meanwhile, the sub-warning, one guesses one might call it, declares that JSOU is,

"a Direct Reporting Unit to USSOCOM, resides at MacDill Air Force Base, FL and is co-located with the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)."

Upon hitting the militarized academic spectrum of JSOCU, one immediately encounters this charming introductory missive, not dissimilar to those issued potential witnesses to a crime.

ain't that the shit?  did you know you could be COMSEC monitored?  and, may i say with all due sincerity, that it is of great relief to learn that

"using this IS does not constitute consent to PM, LE, or CI investigative searching or monitoring of the content of the privileged communications,, or work product, related to person representation or services by attorneys, pysychotherapists, or clergy, and their assistants,."

whew.  gonna sleep better starting ... now!

on the other hand, at least they do tell you, right up front: expect to be spied upon.

is this sort of academic environment most folk aspire to?  happily, no.  but those that do, manage to stir up a lotta shit.  it's a special few.  if there were more, we'd all be dead.

ever see a "university"pop up shit like that from their website?  gleefully, i click, "OK"!  damn, i wanna see the shit behind this.  naturally enough, nothing at all. just branes and branes of militarized nonsense.  hammer, nail.

JSOCU.  bloody effin marvelous.

"If they start anything, I say nuke 'em"

whew! how 'bout that dprk doffin' a few turds onto the good koreans?  tensions mount.  mmmm, lekker!

sure 'nuff, now that those hostile northern commies, the last vestige of the evil empire, have done their worst, the yowling begins, and begins enjoyably enough, with threats of nuclear obliteration.  from the thoughtful brainstem of glenn duke nuke 'em reynolds, master dipshit:

North Korea fires artillery barrage on South. If they start anything, I say nuke 'em. And not with just a few bombs. They've caused enough trouble — and it would be a useful lesson for Iran, too.

a glennren twofer!

and, can't help but enjoy and loathe the fact that the feckless obama administration is flapping around on the sidelines, proving again just how inept his administration truly is.  as i've said before, in way over his head.  the sharks are circling.

the other side

readin' up on the latest statement from the land of the afghans islamic emirate.  a good barb is always worth a read, is what i'm thinkin'.

For the past nine months the Americans have been attempting their utmost to achieve some sort of military or political gain in Afghanistan. They employed all the propaganda tools at their disposal to turn the people away from the Mujahideen. However, failing to win the support of the people, the invaders resorted to the indiscriminate carpet bombings of the people’s lands and the mass murders of the innocent civilians. All this has caused the displacement of thousands of families from their lands and villages. However, despite all their trickeries and force, the battle for Kandahar has settled steadily in the Mujahideen’s favour.

The Mujahideen were, from the start of these operations, to carry out precise Commando-led operations against the nerve centres of the foreign forces and their puppet partners, thus seizing the initiative from the foreign occupiers. Not only did the Mujahideen conduct these operations in Kandahar city, but also extending to surrounding areas such as the airport, Dand, Arghandab, Zhiri, Panjwaee, and Maiwand districts. The head of the foreign barbarian forces, Nick Carter, last month, could not give any information on these operations to the media. This is mostly because the enemy neither knows the military strength of the Mujahideen nor their main bases. The Mujahideen, profiting from the Dagger and Marjah operations, were able to introduce several new tactics that have completely demoralised the invader forces. These tactics are the main reason why the Mujahideen have not abated their operations in the area in the winter season. These new tactics have placed the foreign invaders under significant military and domestic pressure.

claims of massive commando operations, decimating us forces.  nutters,  it would seem.  'course, this is exactly the same kind of shit we hear from the breathless pentagon.  so, who knows?  there is so much slag out there, so much cover up, and accounting fraud, that it is unlikely that any solid numbers of dead and wounded will ever be firmly established.  kinna the point, really.  hordes more dead than as revealed by the pentagon!  yeah, that's a shocker.

ol' talibaners go off the rails, though, when they start commenting about american domestic politics, vis-a-vis us mid-term elections.  really, lads, you need to study up a bit.

Their failure in the Kandahar operations was also the main reason behind Obama’s supporters, the Democrats, defeat in the mid-term elections.

dude, hate ta break this to ya, but you, "Kandahar operations," and afghanistan are so far beyond the consideration of the us elections, they, and you, merit almost no discussion.  war is a bipartisan political winner in america now.  trying to stop war is what gets you into hot political water in america now.  It would appear the Taliban do not know this.

pat down

just got back to sauseizenbroodjeville after a marvelously inverted decamp across the pond, harpoonaleways. course, airwaves freakouts were in full force.  bombs, bombers, black box packages, missiles flying up,  america just ain't america anymore without a daily panic, admixed with a larger scale weekly panic, and all jumbled up with the big scale monthy-yearly panic.  The big big panic -- holy fuck! what the fuck is wrong with us and we gotta fix the whole damn thing -- is lost, beyond the pale of the daily human scale, where avoiding death by murderous terrorists seems to rank as the single most glorious thing one can do in a given day. panic, people, is the one thing i can safely report that is being delivered with a great deal of vim and vigour.

so, get back, an' waddya know?  all sorta false flag shit flyin' out all over the pipes and tubes.  we got our earlier little hocus pocus fox-cnn shitstream streamin' into world wide eyeballs, oh those blasted mysterious packages!  oh those dastardly aqap! yemen!  global threat!

trouble is, the only fuckin eyeballs on the planet that believe what it is they are actually seeing are lodged in the skulls of  The American People, perhaps the single most credulous population of withering saplings e'er to have populated this wondrous planet.  this is not to say that they are not pleasant people.  indeed, they are -- like any reasonably mannered four year old. but while much of the world is in open and sometimes violent protest against what is actually happening, in america, the concern is gubmint gropin' yer nethers.  if yer gonna yell and howl about something, best it  not be about the destruction of the social fabric, the desolation of the ecosystem, the monstrous maw of the corporate police state, but rather, your personal space.  oops.  guess what?  that monstrous maw just took a chomp at your crotch.

this isn't an accident, of course.  can't be stormin' off, wrecking murderous havoc around the globe, or aiding and abetting the financial rape of the land, and have those good 'n simple folk know about this and that mindless atrocity, bankster fraud, mass killing, market manipulation, death squad scalp taking.   no.  no, no, no.  might upset 'em.  in fact, we know it will upset them.  if ya wanna be dark, go dark.  which is fairly easy to do with the 'merican corporate media.

anyway, peeling back onto the the original notion of the travel experience.  Turns out, wasn't quite the horror i've been seeing.  then again, i ain't some three year with a creepy uniformed blue hand freak grabbin' my nithers.  figure i lucked out on that count.  'course, the trip was coming hither from the terrified yon.  going the other way?  as i heard in MAD : mucho tiempo.  and much indignity.

why is this?  because known US intelligence agencies, in conjunction with the US State Department, conspired to allow the pants-on-fire (it was never a bomb) Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab onto a US bound flight that would lead the world's bastion of freedom and democracy to allow its collective groin to be pawed by the national security police state, and pin the blame for it all on the black guy.

which black guy?

take your pick.

and behind the whole ridiculous scene lies the hilarious and potentially lethal money-making scam, one egged on by the always ghoulish michael chertoff.  a chertoff-connected terror-profiteering scam or a legitimate effort to catch underwear bombers us intelligence agencies do not have "eyes on," one supposes.

nice work, gentlemen.

to dry run or not to dry run

".. both mail bombs, one recovered in Dubai and the other in Britain on Friday, were wired to detonators that used cell phone technology. It still was not clear whether those detonators would have been set off by telephone calls or by an internal alarm."
-- Officials suspect Sept. dry run for bomb plot
02.11.2010

"...a suspicious package was identified at Windhoek airport in Namibia on Thursday, the flight was halted, the Munich-bound passengers delayed and news sped round the world that an x-ray scanner had been found with batteries attached by wires to a detonator and a ticking clock."
--Fake bomb made in the US caused Germany terror alert,
19.11.2010

               ~~~

"... officials now believe the September shipments were a dry run for the Yemen-to-Chicago mail bomb plot uncovered last week.
-- Officials suspect Sept. dry run for bomb plot
02.11.2010

"Initial theories that the bomb might have been a dummy run by terrorists were dismissed by US security sources who told German television such "dry runs" were not typical."
---Fake bomb made in the US caused Germany terror alert
19.11.2010

well, if ya don't feel like you're gettin' played yet, chances are these jokers can and will get away with almost anything.

afpak coin to bidenesque

bemusement settles o'er like a pale cast of thought upon learning that the ceefreakingeffarrr is now recommending that the US toss COIN altogether, go CT.  huh.  if i recall, blowhole joey biden was sayin' that shit  a year ago, back when 'bama was pondering afpak porridge: 20 thou, 30, 40, hmm, middle one's jus right. little one's too hot.  and the big one's ... too freaking hot too!  a grave decision, that pentagon demanded number, lower and upper bounds delineated.  and "no" is definitely not on the table.  otherwise, they just whack ya, where "whack" has a very broad meaning.  though he gets whacked all the time, if we know anything of obama, it is that he goes out of his way to avoid getting whacked some more.

biden, though, he said no to whatever stupid number of surge troops would supposedly save the afghan people.  go ct, coin is doomed, was pretty much biden's message.  dork.  as a fully-vested and studiously documented blowhard, biden was easily marginalized, if not outright ignored.  there was something remarkable in this, and little commented upon.  here was the vice president of a still freshman administration, taking a direct and opposing stance against the pentagon, and, as we witnessed, the white house and the president himself.  hardly a whiff of it was noticed.  everyone moved on to the greater carnage agenda, biden disappeared for quite some time, then started yakkin' bout healthcare.

looks like now, the estab wants to roll back on afpak and do a bidenesque ct op.  after the massive deployment, thirty billion and running, the rising ghoulishnss of us soldiers, the pitch of night special ops raids that take out pregnant women, the vile and corrupted contractor profiteering, the taxpayer funded corruption of the entire theatre, now the font of establishment fp wisdom says that the us ought to toss coin and go ct.  go ... what biden said a year ago.  it's all either a grand and brilliantly evil war scheme or the manifest blundering of nincompoops.  it's so hard to tell these days.

of course,  the afpak strat flop is largely an unseen one, as the political establishment focuses on the serious things, and there is nary a discouraging word about the american military mission in afghanistan.  hell, little word there's war on at all.  guess we'll find out when palin tweets it, or faces it, ... whatever those odd people do.  nyt will sure pick it up then, 'cause nyt wants -- needs -- desperately to be hip and on it.  and hip in american politics is whatever the fuck sarah palin is twittering.

doomed.

thought experiment

pose the question to this presumed presidential candidate and wannabe head of the american state,

what is your position on the recent Council on Foreign Relations recommendation that US military operations move from instituted counterinsurgency operations to dynamic counterterrorism operations in the afghanistan theatre?  

Normally in thought experiments, one is supposed to constructively imagine how the experiment proceeds.  in this case, however, i would prefer the question were posed live, so that we all might observe.  And definitely record.  because, frankly, i cannot imagine the answer.

okay, so not really a thought experiment.  fault tolerance error: deviation of variable "palin" exceeds 3 sigma.

agents and ages of akays

checkin' on fp's interview with c.j. chivers and the history of the dastardly akay; it's myth, it's backstory, it's proliferation, it's infuriating durability.  new book, 'n all.  The Gun.  some funny sounding parts have yanks all annoyed that the same gawdamn akays they gave those muthafukas in the eighties are shootin' at 'em today.  blowback is a bitch, as they say.  somehow, it all becomes the ruskies' fault.

sounds like an interesting read considering how chivers got the story -- at least what he could get.  which appears to be a fair amount.  old soviet archives, dirty double dealings, back stabbing, gettin' into the social dynamic introduced by the firearm and it's proliferation, shit like that.  seems ol' kalashni grabbed all the credit, stole all kinna others' designs, even fought one guy on design, and, when the design proved superlative, claimed it his own.  usual human crap.

anyway, not far along, discussion vectors in 'bout the akay's symbolism in various contexts,

This is a rich and rewarding line of reporting. In it is a pantheon of modern war. Saddam Hussein handed out rifles that were plated in gold; they were strongman party favors. Bin Laden has made a point of being photographed with the version of the rifle carried by Soviet helicopter crews in the 1980s, a clear case of the rifle, almost like a scalp, signifying martial cred.

firstly, and in consideration of what US troops have allegedly been doing in Afghanistan of late, it seems to me that  the word "scalp" really ought to be avoided via-a-vis the whole terrorBinLadenMuslimAfghanistanInvasionGwotDroneDeathSquadScalpTaker context.

but back to that big fat ol' symbolism; there's ol' bin laden, horking up a chunk load of verbal abuse, and or instruction, depending upon perspective, and posing with a soviet air crew akay.  big, symbolic thing, right?  if we know anything, that ol' bin laden likes his symbolism.  big symbols. took ya down, and booted your ass out!

which is why i find this next parenthetical remark by the author a tad curious:

(In this case, he might be trying a little too hard, because there is no credible evidence I know of that he was ever involved in downing a Soviet helicopter.)

you've just written a book detailing the history of the Avtomat Kalashnikova 47, recounting the symbolism of the weapon as a tool of resistance and revolution, and you really think that the message binny is sending you is that he personally shot down a soviet helicopter, killed the crew, took the guns?  and that's it?

you think that's the message?

sign reads: when you come here, we will fight you, we will kill you, we will take your guns, and you will leave.  we have done this many times before in the stan of the afghans.  nunuhyuh ever seem to learn.

worse now though.  pipelines planned for all over the place, got all them ever more desperately needed gems and metals in a ground just itchin' to be scratched by foreign direct investment.  chinese shuttin' down, or threatening to shut down, re exports; got a few shittin' a brick.  hell, last i saw, the chinese were already in ghan'stan minin' away with US troop protection, if i recall that bizarre tale correctly.

can't not agree with chiver's on one thing, though.  the age of the akay will be a long one indeed, while the pentagon and every other major weapons dealer dole them out by the truck, ship, and plane load.  no end in sight.

a quiet bipartisanship

for all the public bluster and fuss stirred up atwixt dems and repubs these oh so many long and shriek filled obama days, can't help but notice upon readin' 'bout some veto that supposedly took place -- didn't seem to cause too much of a fuss -- the gleeful bipartisanship the two parties can muster when it comes to letting the banks run free, free like wind.  like m'ry-ah.

which is obviously why the veto didn't cause too much of a fuss.  no palinesque yowling in the streets, no fox news obama vetoes america! hysteria.  weird.

but not.  cause we know these fucks are thinkin' they're sneaking this under the radar.  unanimous, in both houses of pox.  making a stink about the veto might actually bring attention to the actual bill and what a ratfuck racket the banks could run then!  ack!  can't have that.  and check how well those shambling villains manage to come happily together in the face of the big bank threatening foreclosure  fraud scandal.

In the senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, reportedly sped the bill’s passage last Monday, after being pressed by “constituents,” he told Reuters. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, also a member of the judiciary committee, helped Leahy move the bill to the floor for the vote.

yes, leahy carried one page of the bill, and sessions carried the other.  skipping down the aisle, tossing posies to the throngs of banskter gangsters, i imagine.

oh, and leahy.  go fuck yourself.

shitless shitstorm

The boys are not easily dissuaded from using the same spigot over and over again. I'm sure Mr. Assange will happily oblige, while the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel will happily perform as channels. Stay tuned for any buildup.

well, we got us some buildup, didn't we? pentagon came out all screamin' meanness: more documents! about Iraq! that wikileaks will destroy us all! something like that.

so, gettin' us all primed up for some good shit, but since we know from the last effort just what that "good shit" will be, we won't, in fact, be getting any good shit at all. expected reams of stuff we already know, mixed in with some psyopy messaging and blame casting. as predicted, the media troughs spill the runoff each in their own preferred direction. take, for example, the New York Times' chosen priority angle on the "leak": a first up slug on iran:

Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias

pentagon's surely quaking that that got out. damn you, Wikileaks!

guanodian's priority take on the leaks was to firstly point out how those lumpen american forces "ignored" torture being conducted by those friggin ... Iraqis! Which the NYT also happens to ladle out with the marvelously titled,

"Detainees Fared Worse in Iraqi Hands, Log says"

and Log no lie. ya see how barbaric those people are? hell, abu ghraib was a breath of fresh air and justice for those folks.

anymore? anything at all actually leak worthy? is it leak worthy to learn that civilians "have borne the brunt of modern warfare"? to recount the reports of many deaths already reported? do we not know this? what this heartless prattle serves is to reaffirm pentagon establishment iraqi casualty figures and to marginalize, if not outright ignore, the far more credible studies suggesting close to a million dead. early on, when initial civilian death estimates were hovering around a hundred thousand, pentagon yowling was fierce. anti-american lefties! we've only whacked thirty thousand, tops. believe or it or not, that was an american discussion at one time.

well, now the pentagon has been wound up the fatality pole, right up there at a hundred thousand. no further. all those "controversial surveys" of civilian deaths in iraq assiduously cast adrift amidst the swirl of a hang out media frenzy about an undiscovered trove of fifteen thousand heretofore "unknown" deaths found in the docs.  Like the last time, the limited hang out serves to legitimize the messaging on iran, and legitimize the blame cast to those dastardly iraqis and their gruesome shit. so, thank gawd we're there!

tell

recalling fondly some heady days of not so yore, the high dudgeon unleashed when iran detained those three yank hikers. good times.

three young americans chose, oddly enough, to go hiking in a war zone, apparently because their are "talented" and "fiercely intellectual." yanks are warned -- buncha times -- by the Iraqi police that they are near the border. cop says flat out, don't go. "When they told me that they are planning to go to Ahmed Awa, I told them, 'Don't go there ... ' " so they go there. get nabbed. my oh my, what an outrage! those ghastly iranians punishing gifted americans. typical!

those were some tasty days of international tension. mmmm. still goin' on happily.

part of this recalling exposed, rather re-exposed, to mine own skewed eye a rather curious moment in the initial telling of the tale.

you see, the group actually comprised four yanks, one of whom decline to hike toward iran because he says he "felt sick." i'd be feeling a little sick at that prospect too. then again, i find it exceedingly unlikely that i or most other folk would choose to walk about kurdifukinstan in the midst of the iraq war. nonetheless, off the merry three traipsed toward iran. after the nabbing, the one who remained behind called his dear ol' gran. explains things. three fierce and talented friends have just been arrested by Iranian authorities at the border. fright and frantic must surely be the normative state of mind in such dire situations. yuud think, right? then gran tells us:

"My grandson has asked me not to talk to the media."

really? from the comfort of the us embassy in baghdad, a comfort granted by illness sparing a dastardly fate, that's what pops into your weird head to tell dear ol' gran thousands of miles away and frantic with worry? don't talk to the media? in whose buggered up head does that concern pop up first and foremost? can't help but think whether dear ol gran wondered what the fuck you were doing over there, too.

export to nowhere

here's german economist Rolf Langhammer laying down the awful truth behind the howling us politicos and their high dudgeon over China's currency policy. An higher yuan will help US exports, supposedly, in one of those thought experiment kind of ways. there's an ugly reality confronting this experimental thought.

SPIEGEL: China's currency reserves have grown to a breathtaking $2.65 trillion (€1.9 trillion) and the imbalance in world trade is growing larger all the time. Can a revaluation of the yuan, as the US is calling for, halt this trend?

Rolf Langhammer: It would be welcome -- and also in China's own interest -- if the yuan exchange rate was more flexible than it has been up to now. China's recent moves in that direction (i.e. the small revaluation since June) are far from sufficient. I would caution against overblown expectations, though. It would hardly be possible to eliminate the global imbalance in that way.
SPIEGEL: Why not?

Langhammer: A weak dollar won't automatically allow the Americans to export more goods. We shouldn't be under any illusions about that. In many cases, companies that are based in the US can't survive on the global market because they don't have innovative products or the qualified workforce required to develop them.

ouch.

the final thrust.

SPIEGEL: Are interventions in exchange rates even capable of eliminating global imbalances?

Langhammer: When China allowed the yuan to gradually appreciate by some 20 percent between 2005 and 2008, there were no signs that this helped US businesses on the global market. The crucial thing is that a country must be well positioned with the range of goods that it wants to export. The US is still lagging well behind in that respect.

SPIEGEL: As opposed to German industry?

Langhammer: Definitely. Germany produces high quality goods that, to a certain extent, are independent of international price competition. To put it bluntly, people outside the European Union who buy a luxury German car or a machine tool don't make that decision based on the exchange rate.

touché, sir. touché.

'course, the very large point that america just doesn't make much shit that anyone wants. 'cept guns 'n ammo, bombs 'n planes. aerial death robots. make a shitlooda that shit. sell it everywhere. weapons mill for the world america. 'part from that glorious shit, though, ya gotta wonder: what the fuck does america make anymore? it says there in that 'pedia thing that 50% of us exports are "capital goods" wonder if that means iphones made in china and then "exported" to the uk. shit like that.

the whole discourse surrounding temporal sino-us trade disputes is a veil over what is really expected, based on what is going on now. the fed looks certain to do some trillion of qe on your ass, and that money, just like the last $2 trill, rather than directed toward the purported intent -- swing the nation out of negative equity -- will be used, has been used, to create a series of currency runs, as hudson calls it "predatory finance: a new mode of global warfare." we've seen it already: yen, sterling, euro, cdn dollar, real, and on. next up is a big fat china. billions to be skimmed and creamed. hence the excitement by all the aspirants. can't help notice krugman leading the charge 'gainst bad ol' china. been harpin' on those chinese all of a sudden, hasn't he? does he really not know what is going on?

predatory finance. this is what the us exports now. that, and pointless, hypocritical political harping. not exactly coveted must-haves for the rest of the world.

well, there goes big mean china, with a big fat fuck u:

The Chinese government plans a further reduction, of up to 30 percent, next year in its quotas for exports of rare earth minerals, to try to conserve dwindling reserves of the materials, the official China Daily newspaper said on Tuesday.

Plans for smaller export quotas come just four days after American trade officials announced that they would investigate whether China is violating international trade rules with a wide range of policies to help its clean energy industries. One of the policies under investigation involves China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005 and its imposition of steep taxes on these exports.

finally, you really gotta wonder 'bout the strategic thinking going on in the hallowed halls of deep state security continuity when it apparently allowed this situation to develop.

China mines 95 percent of the world’s rare earths.

anyone ever notice the trajectory of this development there in that pentagon, or whatnot? ah, what the hell do they care? they gotts them some chinese makin' chips and stuff for 'em already.

this is news

here now, a current headline in the us political media:

Democrat says he's heard Pelosi won't run again for Speaker

talk death cult

dontcha love this arse who got all glen beck whipped, went off to shoot up "people of importance" at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU. 'cordin' t' wurldza-wreck-cuzza-theACLU beck, ... well, the world's a wreck because of the ACLU. And the Tides Foundation, whatever the fuck that is. you ever hearda this until now? until beck got some mouth breather all riled up 'bout the Tides and ACLU jewish cabal of global masters' master plan, no one outside the bizarro bubble world of screeching right wing talk radio could tell you what evils Tides had foisted upon the world, or would foist once their villainous plot took hold. they are apparently evil and run the world. yeah. The Tides Foundation and the ehseefukinelleyou. the real bilderburg. had to take 'em out!

debates is all flustered 'bout whether people can be persuaded to violence by mere suggestion. like the mere suggestion the people are susceptible to such persuasion is some sorta newfangled odd ball psycho babble hoohaa. really.

blanket of fiction

remember when i first saw news that some terrorist alert, issued by some gormless admin mandarin, had "shut down much of Europe." i started laughing. couldn't help it, really. effin' kidding me? everyone got pissed at the volcano, for crissakes, but white house political jerk off was all good. they were showing pictures of the frenchies shuttin' down le tour eiffel. "for the second time in two weeks," i remember hearing from the newser.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden defended the Obama administration's travel alert cautioning about terrorist activity in Europe,

"I think the administration handled this well," Hayden said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," a week after the State Department issued the alert. "They put the alert out. They let folks know that there was something different. But they also tried to simultaneously calm fears, tell people they shouldn't cancel travel to Europe.

congratulations, mr. president. fine work.

A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told the Guardian.

The non-specific US warning, which despite its vagueness led Britain, France and other countries to raise their overseas terror alert levels, was an attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan that have "set the country on fire", said Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the high commissioner to Britain.

... suggested the Obama administration was playing politics with the terror threat before next month's midterm congressional elections, in which the Republicans are expected to make big gains.

He also claimed President Obama was reacting to pressure to demonstrate that his Afghan war strategy and this year's troop surge, which are unpopular with the American public, were necessary.

bit of tell. got those euro's flappin', though. ha! that was a hoot. got 'em to shut down the eiffel freaking tower. twice!

gotta say, this gwot is great to watch. not the horrible, unjustified carnage of such reckless enterprise, but the the now globally interactive psyop maneuvering the poobahs think they're pulling off. what a show it can be. always impacting, demeaning, traumatizing the peasantry, of course. but, man, i almost look forward the next wan "terror plot" -- secreted onto the plane gonchbomber, or some Muslim dude playing in the snow -- who knows? what will be the next banned potion, humiliating contortion, or proscribed motion? point is, there's always something brewin' on up over at that dagblasted ephfukinbeefukineye.

speaking of which reminds me being rather amused to see a story about the DOJ telling Muslims down in murfreesboro 'bout how those ball busters at Justus have "got their back." this was amusing precisely for the fact that at the same time DoJ officials are assuring Muslims of the full protection of their civil liberties, DoJ muscle wing, the FBI, have been spending inordinate amounts of time, energy and resources, drumming their own, (taxpayer funded of course!) phony little faux Muslim "terrorist" crime spree: targeting poor communities with gobs of money, provo agents stirring juices, planting evidence, or just plain makin' shit up about pictures.

so, beware murfreesboro Muslims. should we transcend the current state of madness that so currently afflicts you, the DoJ may defend you with all due diligence now. they may also attack you with all due diligence, and phony evidence, later on.

afscamistan

the west, and this includes Russia/Soviet Union, have been fucking over afghanistan for so freaking long, it's amazing any of those poor, besieged people are sane in any way at all. but some of them appear to have remained not just sane, but have developed, or at least employed, a wily cunning. that the pentagon now knowingly funds the Taliban in all sort of ways is broadly known, and, as these things go, when we know about a few of the ways, there are probably others.

(worse ones, of course. like that erik prince and mullah omar are cousins in business together, urging the other cousins to keep those bucks spilling into the 'ghan'stan. how would that do ya for the whole global illuminati mind-fuck romp?)

the 'gon sends money taliban way through protection -- a basic mob op -- via those ubiquitous subcontractors, who pay out something on the order of 200-400 million pentagon-sluiced us taxpayer dollars per year to Taliban and linked forces.

seems, also through a network of shadowy contractors (amazing really, all the great benefits that privatization is having!) the Taliban have taken up host in US military bases as security guards, and, if that, probably every other kind of contractor, too. Nato supply line drivers, etc..

so, us taxpayer dollars are wending their way through the black box of the fucking pentagon, and into sub-sub-subcontractors hands, who happen to be Taliban dudes. paid by the pentagon to guard us military bases.

a thoroughly modern F Troop.

The Pentagon’s oversight of the Afghan guards is virtually nonexistent, allowing local security deals among American military commanders, Western contracting companies and Afghan warlords who are closely connected to the violent insurgency, according to the report by investigators on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The United States military has almost no independent information on the Afghans guarding the bases, who are employees of Afghan groups hired as subcontractors by Western firms awarded security contracts by the Pentagon. At one large American airbase in western Afghanistan, military personnel did not even know the names of the leaders of the Afghan groups providing base security, the investigators found. So they used the nicknames that the contractor was using — Mr. White and Mr. Pink from “Reservoir Dogs,” the 1992 gangster movie by Quentin Tarantino. Mr. Pink was later determined to be a “known Taliban” figure

of course, we've also got the marvelously profitable opium industry doing big business under cover of war, keeping more than a few banks afloat during some uncertain times recently. opium futures apparently were a stable hedge.

then comes the wondrous tale of how NATO sub-contractors are blowing up their own NATO fuel trucks, which have been emptied of NATO fuel in black market deals, and receiving insurance money from NATO: sell the gas in truck, pocket gas money, blow up truck, get new truck from NATO.

and, for all we know, these guys blowin' up the NATO trucks are sub-sub-subcontracted taliban dudes who are more than happy to blow up, and to keep blowing up, NATO fuel trucks, sell the fuel beforehand, and collect the generous NATO insurance for a brand new truck. that those same taliban dudes can then rehire to NATO all over again. rinse, repeat. truly, the work of Allah.

sweet deal. and what a great scam. 'cause, taliban dudes have attacked and do attack NATO supply lines. no stretch you got nailed by those taliban muthufuckas. 'lessin' anyone looks around the wreck, maybe finds some bombs parts stuck here and there. fuck. who'd do that? inspect? fuck that shit. taliban! only, the bad ones. not the ones driving your NATO trucks.

afghanistan is now one monstrous illicit, money swirling, scuz-filled scam pot, players across the board and all sides, raking in the cash that pours into afghanistan, precious little of which actually pours onto many afghans, other than as those money-making hellfire missiles. it is, or will be, a self-perpetuating money making enterprise, much of it on the backs of the us taxpayers, and the rest of those taxpayers governed by idiots still maintaining pretense enough to publicly claim that the war in afghanistan is "worth it."

problem is, they never tell you what "it" is.

the douchescape of spleenland

rarely have i enjoyed a romp like the one Phil Rockstroh gallops away on. bloody marvelous.

The Bigot-Whisperers of the Right

bones n' thug harmony

turriffic. they got some photos taken by some of Colonel Kurtz's boys over there in the ghan'stan, supposedly goin' all "rogue." ha. from what i've read, sounds like the lads were pretty much just shootin' par for the course. with a not entirely unexpected, if decidedly tart slice on the game.

seems the perturbed band o' brothers got all dark heart tribal, carving up and coveting victim's bones of various sorts, skulls among them. It remains unclear whether these collected bones are the bones of the reported spate of targeted victims, or a more generalized collection of afghan hard parts. very viet-kurtzy, though.

favourite testimony snippet:

"At that time, Staff Sgt. Gibbs had a cloth. He opened it, and three human body fingers fell on the ground. At that point, I kinda lost my head."

-- Corporal Quintal

5th Stryker Brigade

2nd Infantry Division

United States Army

pix are beauties, apparently. won't show the children. too traumatic for such innocent minds as those public ones. best keep 'em that way.

besides, it's those blasted photos of US troops posing and (i'm sure we can imagine) grinning over the Afghan corpses resulting from their super fun house live ammo "shoot the raghead" murder spree that will put the troops in harms way. 'cause otherwise, afghans would never know that US troops are shooting at them in their own country.

emmoh of the lordatheflies guys appears to be methodical targeting of a victim accompanied by planned cover up. followed by miller time. with bones.

'Cause ya know, once you got all methodical like that -- that grenade cover story was some fierce shit dude--whew, well, brother, let me tell ya, it is time to unwind! gets me sum bones!

whaddaya expect when you keep men in war for years on years, grow them addicted to it, jacked fulla red bull and roids? at some point, they will lose it. many have lost it already. take david petreaus for example. he has clearly lost it. mr. foreverwar. face it. he and the rest of the effete puffy war monger mandarins, indeed, much of the corporate state, are now addicted to war. hugely profitable. off your ass.

the system as configured today, sucks taxpayer money and debt money through the pentagon and def-cons to wage war in far away lands and waste it building destructive, worse than useless things. it's what they do. the afghan war is a profit pipe, and a hugely debt collecting waste pipe, waging war in far away lands. In and of themselves, the war pipes "america" runs today are at least as important as any far flung geo-economic-political fantasy pipes. the local citizens on the far end of those profit pipes usually fight their end of it, and usually because they face the effluence uitgang of an always profitable war machine. if anyone on the planet understands the dynamic of imperial war, afghans know it by heart. they are fighting the build-profit-war pipe from their end. why aren't we fighting it from this end?  because all it is on this end is a hate-making-death-and-debt pipe.  about as win-lose as it gets.

effort in the release

readin' on 'bout curly cued rand paul, his audacity 'n all. at first, i wondered whether reading a smudgy bio of this odd little twerp merited any time. but, actually, it's a hoot.

and why didn't he have himself called aynrand paul? randyayn paul (no, skip that.  seen her?  no randy there) or perhaps, randayn paul? that would be cool. looks very aryan. anyway ...

since rand paul does not occupy much of the time of any day, i'd forgotten about this little gem: at some point, and sometime after ... the maddow incident, ol' polly wolly found himself issuing a statement declaring that he, rand paul,

"will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

gotta laugh at that one. ya find yerself in a position like that, well, ya gotta figure yer in a hole. not with your base, but with, well, normal folk. but, he probably doesn't know that. but, then, if he didn't know that, he wouldn't be issuing statements meant to assuage mainstream concerns about what one must grant are rather retrograde views on American civic policy, dog whistling views that appeal to a certain demographic of the American population. paul's runnin' fur senate in k'ntucky.

tea parties offer further proof that they're just like their Iraqi Sunni brethren: convinced they are the vast majority of the population, at 20%.

turnin wee

British Cuts to Military Concern U.S. Officials

Ha! Of course they do. The US is mightily concerned when any war fighting ally cuts military spending.

good grief, man! what are you doing? ya wussin out on the grand plan?

Well, actually, yes. Yes, we are. In fact, we'd like to bloody well toss the whole pointless exercise, a selfish, paranoid, and mean spirited money gullet we can ill afford. You'd do well to trim back your own. Oh, and bugger off! mind your own tumbledown.

Further down, the British defence minister, LIam Fox, said that the primary role of the British military was to be a capable ally of the United States.

we need to concentrate on where we think we can be best contributors as an ally for the United States as well as ...

blah blah horseshit follows. but this was top of the ticket.

dontcha find it amazing that the British defense minister thinks that the British military's primary role is to be the "best contributors as an ally for the United States"?

Do the Brits know this?

joker's never wild

fuckdatshit!

Administration officials are weighing whether to put a prominent corporate executive in the NEC director's job ...

that it should even occur a "weighing" were in order for a "corporate executive" to be appointed director of the NEC is troubling enough. for it indicates that the trajectory of the corporate-societal complex remains unperturbed.

summers job

tuna-shaped larry summers is buggering off to get some shuteye. things have been stressful, what with the summers-aided global financial meltdown. obama, in auspicious dipshit form, said this of larry summers:

"I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry's brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team. Over the past two years, he has helped guide us from the depths of the worst recession since the 1930s to ..."

something. no one knows what yet. what obama said was "renewed growth," which is bullshit.

larry freakin summers has also helped guide us to the depths of the worst recession since the 1930s. it's like the whole global financial bubble-blow out was a giant make work scheme for ... larry summers!

done dirt cheap

readin' on this article called, shityaknot, "American Takfiris" by a guy who's yowlin' 'bout kos calling the nutwhacked xtian fundy conservative right "American Taliban." go figure.

anyway, hit upon this little blurb of neo-tribalism that ought to jolt:

It's worth noting however, that the Bush administration did not take full advantage of the wrongs that the lawyers in their Office of Legal Counsel would have enabled. My point is not to equate the deeds of AQ with the deeds of the Bush administration--merely to point out justification for acts that are on their face unjustifiable take a similar intellectual path.

firstly, how the hell does serwer know that the bush admin availed or did not avail themselves of all the "wrongs that the lawyers in their Office of Legal Counsel would have enabled"? It appears that they would have enabled anything asked. drill in the ass? drill baby drill! stomp some baby nuts? yaa buddy! now we know the CIA was using this program for human experimentation. it never fukking stops with them! hence all them vids that got themselves all blowed up: experimental data.

they were also quite awful, as one imagines, and when the shit hit the rim, well, the choice between "experimental data" and felony indictment became quite stark. a "no brainer," as they say. (It used to be the case that destroying evidence of a felony was a felony itself. Not for the CIA, it seems. 'magine that.) 'sides, the data can and will be recreated. probably is happening. like i said, they never stop.

but the real dipshit crap that yanks me askew is serwer's disastrous statement, one that exudes ritualistic, neo-triblistic American affirmation, the "My point is not to equate the deeds of AQ with the deeds of the Bush administration."

and why the fuck not, actually?

because such a task is, in fact, quite impossible.

given the broad swath illegality, mahem and death toll, one cannot possibly equate the "deeds" of the bush regime with "the deeds of AQ." how may one possibly equate with the "deeds of AQ" with illegal wars and hated occupations in two Muslim countries, illegal robot terror wars in at least three others, illegal surveillance, a global kidnapping ring, a global torture network, massive public indoctrination -- a generation of war and death?

trump that, "AQ."

black and princely sum

imagifukkinthat. erik prince's "former" shadowy Blackwater operation morphed into an intricate global "web" of multitudinous shadowy operations, front and faux, all still collecting those gushing US taxpayer/debt bucks, deniability "built in." socialism for the neosecurity state.

the limitless capacity for evil theory of human evolution would posit that this can only be considered par for the oft-trot course. Indeed, one might be disappointed had prince and his merry dotes not formed an intricate global web of shadowy companies, doing bad things by "built in" deniability proxy. To any naïve observer, this is surely the next course in what will be the long and shadowy life of erik prince.

success in the kush

Afghanistan Vote Count Begins Amid Fears of Fraud

NATO: Afghan Election 'Less Bloody Than 2009'

Bodies of Three Kidnapped Election Workers Are Found in Afghanistan

What's the upshot of all that? Why, it's a blazing sign of freedom!

Officials Portray Afghan Election as Success

The David tells us that all of this mismanaged, corrupted and deadly nonsense of fraudulently electing the Pentagon's favoured war/drug lords "sent a powerful message."

Yes, it did St. David. Yes, it did.

Balk Obama

he just had to do it, didn't he? balk on the warren appointment. what a fukkin dipshit. too, too afraid of any conviction whatsoever. fear of the banks? or fear of actually having to stand one way or another? it's not that Obama reneges positions, he does that all the time, it's that he often takes no position at all, apparently trying to hide taking a position. what a sorry ass dweeb.

to the ridiculous counter argument to this reaction: that this is some stealth move to really git 'er in there and shake 'em up. are you fucking kidding? you really believe that obama, fer fucksakes, is going stealth hardass against the banks with the stealthy "appointment" of warren? hope springs eternal.

we shall see.

tepid is as tepid does

How bout them apples:

Americans offer tepid support for much of the Republican Party's domestic agenda, including repealing the new healthcare law and extending tax cuts for the wealthy.

Hence, the lying, the cheating, the gay bashing, the race baiting, the abortion horror show, and election stealing. Which is how they manage to look like anyone would actually vote for the dickweeds.

cracker is as cracker does

"We're not crackpots."*

* Note: Wonder Woman belt buckle.

fade to black

what the fuck is up with this redeem conservatism messaging going on all over the freakin' place? io propaganda shells are landing hither and pointedly yon. first was this jackass, and the cosmic fuckin' "vision" of conservatism. Now, comes along some other as heretofore no name AEI welfare suckling nether dweller, unleashing his painfully pent-up constipation about just how wrong everyone is about the GOP and their racist and race-baiting modern history. Oh, sorry, conservatives.

'course, the very fact that this article exists in the first place, indicates that the GOP knows that it has been busted. Over and over again. They don't have to admit this, of course, until election season, when their racial transgressions might pop up onto the electoral radar. time to fade to black ... .

Well, ya see, all that nastiness, an killin' an lychin' and such, well, that's the just militant wing of conservatism, gettin' a little out of hand. hee haw! them critters do get riled up when ya poke 'em!

But ya gotta think of conservatism as, well, exactly like Hezbollah. the american right wing and Hezbollah are structurally similar conservative movements insofar as there exists both a political and militant wing. Sometimes, the militant wing gets a little out of hand. But then, you kind of like to see that, because a military wing that didn't get out of hand once in awhile wouldn't seem to be, you know, bristling for a fight. Any political leader appreciates bristling in the military ranks.

So, there is a notable current to redeem conservatism from its rather poor reputation. Why now? Part of a larger effort at short term mythologies of the past in order to make voting GOP somewhat more palatable than it might otherwise be. Natch, the Obama White House is helping by vocally praising George Doubleyou Freaking Bush. W T F ?

pump up the saudi arms volume

Back when the "Saudi arms deal" tickled $20 bills, thoughtful folks gave pause, and for rightful good reason. That was under Bush. Now, in the midst of an again faltering "economy," Obama has pushed the deal to $60 billion with nary a peep. Given the obvious economic distress the United States is currently suffering, even the Israelis are making no fuss.

The Obama administration is set to notify Congress of plans to offer advanced aircraft to Saudi Arabia worth up to $60 billion, the largest U.S. arms deal ever, and is in talks with the kingdom about potential naval and missile-defense upgrades that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more.

The administration plans to tout the $60 billion package as a major job creator—supporting at least 75,000 jobs, according to company estimates—and sees the sale of advanced fighter jets and military helicopters to key Middle Eastern ally Riyadh as part of a broader policy aimed at shoring up Arab allies against Iran.

Iran, shmearan. The weapons industry in now one of the sole job growth industries in the US. Certainly, it is the major "good jobs" growth industry.

If this is not what America has become, it appears to be on the path of being both a blunt instrument, and the global supplier of blunt instruments. A weapons mill for the world.

It is a weapons mill society consisting of, presumably, "farmers", possibly just Cargill and Monsanto, who grow some sort of "food", while those not fighting wars in foreign lands are busy in the homeland, making weapons in order to sell weapons to those parts of the world in which, oddly enough, the United States finds itself continually fighting. Of course, once engaged in said and now restive regions, America's war fighters get to amp up the gun fun and blow all sorts of expensive ordinance all over those very same places. Production of these weapons is good the for the economy. More weapons, better economy.

The US is drifting into weapons mill addiction, a place where the only "good jobs" prospect in the country lie in making weapons for second and third world tinpot kingdoms, balkanized satrapies, and newly minted NATO nations in Eastern Europe, among other vainglorious and idle fools. Looks that way, don't it? Making anything else other than weapons has been pretty much shipped out. And the "good jobs" arise in the shadow of a long war.

The swirl continues ...