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.