HongPong's blog

Minnesota notes: Punk the tea party, then a grand jury detains people without trial

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:33:58 -0800

Strange days up here in Minnesota. A guy by the pseudonym Robert Erickson spoke to an anti-immigrant Tea Party rally at the State Capitol on Saturday. Turns out he punk'd them and demanded "Columbus Go Home" and the deportation of all these European immigrants. The videos were hits on YouTube. I got the reverse angle of the crowd in HD, now we've got a bit of a viral event unfolding!

Far from this prank, meanwhile, a much darker story is happening in town. A couple days later, two Twin Cities activists refuse to testify at a grand jury in Davenport, Iowa. A little over a month ago I was walking around south Minneapolis & I saw Carrie Feldman who has done a lot of prisoner support at the RNC and for the Green Scare (the feds' so-called eco-terrorist thing). She said she'd just been pulled over by a black SUV with FBI agents from Iowa. They gave her a subpoena to appear in a couple days. She went there and told them she wouldn't comply. They told her to come back in a month. Another subpoena came for Scott DeMuth a few weeks later.

DeMuth and Feldman had a rally in Iowa today. After defying the grand jury (which can demand information about anything), they had a contempt hearing. A prosecutor demanded to know from Feldman's dad if she was an anarchist, which the judge allowed upon objection. The prosecution brandished a photo of Feldman wearing a shirt with "LF" visible and said it must have been ELF or ALF. And Feldman even had a white pet rat -- thusly somehow implying she supported the 'terrorism' ALF vandalism incident at the University of Iowa when Feldman was 15, living in Minneapolis. The federal judge threw Feldman and DeMuth in jail yesterday without a trial, for up to 11 months.

That's all it takes, folks. There is a nationwide network of grand juries running in parallel, fishing around radical communities across America. An Indiana grand jury demanded all of Indymedia.US' server logs in January. A New York 'complex and multi-state' grand jury is after anarchists who Twitter, Iowa is pursuing vandalism. At least one more is happening out west.

Bankers and powerful people don't get these subpoenas. On CSPAN I just saw a presser from that day: cynical journalists ask Attorney General Eric Holder why they haven't shut down more financial criminals, after he and Geithner just propped up a new task force... Who cares about billions in bank fraud when there's anarchists a-twittering, doing prisoner support and in DeMuth's case, confidential sociology research?

Nearly time for a torrent of teabags, but liberals question if it's grassroots or astroturf action

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:27:01 -0700

[PoliticsinMinnesota.com - I wrote this up for work] One major dynamic of political action these days is the constant battle of perception over whether a given demonstration or political organization is really an authentic "grassroots" wildfire rising up from the people. As one local tea party supporter put it to PIM, this is really a "liberty movement," not a partisan movement, but are political opportunists of every stripe trying to reshape perceptions?

The first argument from detractors is often a claim that their opponents are really getting played or co-opted by a fake grassroots "astroturfing" operation staged by "the usual suspects," namely public relations firms, think tanks and the other institutional infrastructures dedicated to propagating ideas and influencing policy.

Overall, it seems like the big national players want to stay on top of emerging movements, regardless of how one wants to analyze "authenticity," while locally, Pat Anderson and Sue Jeffers, both of whom have strong credentials with Minnesota's libertarian circles, seem to be in charge of things today. (Anderson is the event's official media coordinator.)

On the national level, liberal media types and bloggers are rounding up evidence that today's tax day tea parties have been thoroughly co-opted -- not directly by the apparatus of the Republican National Committee, but rather, in their view, Fox News, the big PR firms and other players are "taking over" the staging of the tea parties. On MSNBC last night (video), decidedly liberal analyst Lawrence O'Donnell and host David Schuster attributed the whole scene to conservative luminaries like Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey. Paul Krugman and ThinkProgress have been all over the case as well.

The leading astroturf suspect at the leftie Talking Points Memo is FreedomWorks, which is chaired by Armey, and FreedomWorks' website currently promotes the demonstrations. (Here's the messaging kit.) Citizens for a Sound Economy created a site that has a retro/amateur look to it. "American Solutions for Winning the Future" also sent out a tea party toolkit. Others have pointed to the Beltway corporate lobby and PR shop Shirley & Bannister, which runs a lot of conservative message campaigns, as a player.

Meanwhile, the local anti-tea party message will be backed up by Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which is sending a giant inflatable eagle to be towed around the Capitol area by driver Joe Davis.

Around the nation, liberal folks are having some fun of their own, in one case planning to pretend to be reporters. Matt Taibbi jokes about how conservative messaging these days is like a "Farrelly Brothers version of right-wing political agitation ... A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded and full of misdirected anger," arguing that the whole spectacle is designed to redirect anger away from the various financial players that essentially caused this situation.

[Sidebar: For fans of political intrigue, exploring the idea of the "foundation-financed left gatekeepers" (who theoretically keep debates patrolled within "safe" boundaries) is an area with plenty of data points over the decades. Money often comes with strings attached ... and MoveOn.org doesn't seem too interested in advocating policies that would infringe on George Soros' freedom to speculate on currencies, for example.]

Here's most of a memo just sent out by Alliance for a Better Minnesota that features plenty of links and references to the mesh of political actors getting involved all over the country -- and a reminder that the Minnesota GOP is supporting many of today's events. [And what better way to round out talk of grassroots and astroturfing than to reference local tea party organizer Toni Backdahl's Twitters about the infamous Bilderberg Group?]

MEMORANDUM
April 14, 2009

To: Interested Parties, Minnesota members of the media
From: Denise Cardinal, Executive Director Alliance for a Better Minnesota
Re: Minnesota's "Tea Party" activities on April 15

This memo outlines the facts behind the fiction of the Minnesota "Tea Parties." Like the other ones around the country they're organized by DC-based corporate lobbyists who protect big business, including oil companies. Much of this information can be found online at: www.savetherich.com.

Freedom Works -- one of the lobbying firms behind the tea parties -- is headed by prominent D.C. lobbyist and former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey.

Freedom Works:

Coordinates conference calls among tea party protesters, contacting conservative activists to give them "sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country."

Moved to "take over" the planning of local events in Florida

Provides how-to guides for delivering a "clear message" to the public and media.

Owns several domain addresses -- some of them made to look like they were set up by amateurs -- to promote the protests.

Americans for Prosperity run by Tim Phillips, who was Ralph Reed's former partner in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. The group is funded by Koch family foundations -- a family whose wealth is derived from the oil industry. Americans for Prosperity staff are writing press releases and planning the events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states.

These Tea Parties haven't all been peaceful -- In Cincinnati reporters "had to seek police protection."

At a tea party in Cincinnati, "Several reporters and photographers were chased, spat on, and verbally harassed. No one was arrested. [Cincinnati tea protest, 3/17/09]

The Tea Parties are not really about "average" citizens -- but Neo-nazis, militias and secessionists are among the most active organizers.

Fringe elements and extremists are appearing at tea parties:

Neo-Nazis: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=581332

Militias: http://www.michiganmilitia.com/SMVM/field_reports/2007/apr007/militia_field_day_2009.htm

Secessionists: http://www.star-telegram.com/elections/story/1305537.html

Racists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhlLdy3Er4c

Minnesota's chief organizer is particularly hateful and bizarre; her twitter posts (all sic.) include the following statements (saved PDF is available for reference):

Geitner, Paulson, Bernanke, Daschel, and even Condi. Rice! Bilderberg 2008 and the beat goes on... working on it since 1907 #teaparty 7:14 PM Mar 30th

@BarackObama Since you are working for Bilderberg, Trilateral and appealing to the World, your not really working for US. #teaparty

@BarackObama How come ACORN went global after Katrina and using same oppressive platform in all 50 countries? #tcot #dontgo #limbaugh #sgp 9:18 AM Mar 27t

@BarackObama is it true that you are just @NancyPelosi (aka Satan) 's puppet? Your ears grow larger when you lie! #tcot #teaparty #limbaugh 9:02 AM Mar 27th

@BarackObama I feel like I have been gang raped by YOU and YOUR LIBERAL thugs! I am not the only one! #tcot #sgp #mntcot #limbaugh #hhrs 6:40 PM Mar 13th

Citizens across the nation are now demanding @BarackObama to prove that the votes for him were actually from American citizens. #tcot #sgp 9:35 AM Mar 5th

I am getting my sons 6 month insulin supply ordered... In case of complete ANARCHY! Oh, thats right, the Govt started it! #tcot #diggcons12:41 PM Feb 23rd

@BarackObama Are you going to change our US Preamble to ACORNs National Preamble? Is ACORN going to take over the UN? OPPRESSED! #TCOT

@NancyPelosi Satan! I rebuke you! 8:37 AM Feb 21st

Obama on tv, get ready to feel raped 7:01 PM Feb 9th

@BarackObama AZ CO FL MI MN MO NV NH NM OH OR PA VA WI No photo id required to vote loop hole, I know the Palestinians will go here #tcot 9:21 AM Feb 8th

More on the Minnesota Tea Parties:
The Tea Parties are not really being organized by "average" citizens -- they are being organized of the fringe conservative groups, with strong coordination with state and national Republican groups.. Many are being organized by prominent, long-time local GOP activists, party insiders, or fringe elements of the right wing.

Bemidji
The Bemidji Tea Party is being organized by Kenneth Cobb, the Chairman of the county GOP.

Willmar
The Willmar Tea Party is being organized by Rollie Nissen, former chair and current board member of the county GOP.

A puff piece promoting this party appeared in the West Central Tribune.

Nissen attended the "Grassroots Campaign School," sponsored by the MN GOP and put on the the Leadership Institute. The Leadership Institute's annual budget of $8 million is financed by contributions from wealthy conservatives (New York Times, 06/2001). Numerous conservative foundations, such as the Coors-funded Castle Rock Foundation, the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, have also provided funding to the Institute.

Among the "resources" offered to Leadership Institute patrons is a documentary produced by the Leadership Institute titled: "Roots of the Ultra-Left: What They Really Think." A trailer for the documentary and the full script are available here.

Rochester
Sponsored by the Olmstead County GOP with various resources from American Solutions, DontGo, Smart Girl Politics, and TCOT, according to their website.

Duluth
The Duluth Tea Party website uses information and content from the lobbyist groups.

Elbow Lake
The Elbow Lake Tea Party is being sponsored by the County GOP.

Fairmont
The Fairmont Tea Party is being organized by Neal Breitbarth, a local GOP fundraiser, and longtime activist. Breitbarth has attended the RNC and sat on the Rules Committee.

In 1994, Breitbarth supported Quist over Carlson at the GOP State Convention.

He was an early supporter of Mitt Romney in the 2008 primaries, and served on the State Central Steering Committee.

Mille Lacs
The Millie Lacs Tea Party also had a puff piece printed in the local paper. One of the local organizers, Wendy Stomberg, says the American Family Association recruited her to organize the tea party. "They sent it to me as an opportunity to express, at a grass roots level, the disappointment at the current administration and the policies that are being placed into law." The American Family Association is a fundamentalist Christian lobbying group, which has a Minnesota affiliate. The AFA is known for its campaigns against abortion, pornography, and gambling and its unapologetic stance against "the homosexual agenda." AFA has boycotted American Girl, Family Guy, Campbell's, and other companies.

Dave and Lisa Otey are also listed as organizers for this tea party. Dave has made comments on the State Budget (here and here).

Owatonna
The Owatonna Tea Party uses video and other resources from American Solutions to promote their event.

Twin Cities
The Twin Cities Tea Party lists many sponsors with fringe conservative ties, including:

Minnesotans for Immigration Reform

A member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

In response to a comment Liberian president Ellen Johnson made in front of a Minnesota audience, regarding the progress being made in Liberia, FAIR president Dan Stein, said "It is time for people to go back and rebuild their country. . . for Liberians to stay when their country is at peace would be an abuse of U.S. hospitality" More here.

These groups will leaflet the Minnesota state capitol to recruit new members to support anti-immigrant policies.

A part of MCFIR, which put up a billboard in Albert Lea depicting a road sign featuring a family of migrants running across the highway.

Minnesota Majority

MPR: Minnesota Majority Under the Microscope

Minnesota Majority Targets Private Citizen Karl Bremer in Nastygram Campaign

MN2020: Conservative Extremist Group's Racist Leanings Exposed

Prominent Republicans involved nationwide include:

Sen. David Vitter introduces bill honoring tea parties:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/03/vitter-wants-national-tea_n_183044.html

Majority Leader Boehner thanked the Cincinnati tea party participants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56v3qiRgdD0

The rallies are being officially supported by Newt Gingrich and his organization American Solutions for Winning the Future.

At least a dozen other prominent Republicans are scheduled to speak at the April 15th tea parties:

Rep. David Davis (R-TN) and representatives from Sen. Bob Corker's (R-TN) office will be speaking at the Kingsport protest.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) will be speaking at the Salt Lake City protest.

Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) and a representative from Rep. Sam Graves' (R-MO) office will be speaking at the Overland Parkprotest.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) will be speaking at the Shreveport protest.

Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) will be speaking at the Jacksonville protest.

Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) will be speaking at the Wauseon protest.

Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) will be speaking at the Phoenix protest.

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) will be speaking at the Charlotte protest.

Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) will be speaking at the Brevard protest.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) will be speaking at the Longview protest.

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) will be speaking at the protest in Columbia.

Other conservative activists will be speaking at events as well, including anti-health reform activist Rick Scott and Joe the Plumber.

In any case, here's the schedule of speakers for the State Capitol today, as we received it:

6:57 – 7:03

Jim Schottmueller

7:05 – ?

Chris Baker KEYNOTE SPEAKER

7:30ish – 8ish

5 pm – 5:55 pm

Music

Announcements

Declaration Signing

Post Card Signing

5:55 – 6:05

Billy Franze / Forest Wilkenson

(Billy playing the Star Spangled Banner. During the middle of the song, the color guard (Forest Wilkenson) will make his way to the stage. Once song is finished Forest will recite the pledge of allegiance

6:06 – 6:08

Sue Jeffers Rallying the TROUPS!!!!!

6:09 – 6:14

Barb Davis White

6:15 – 6:20

John Salsbury

6:21 – 6:26

Harold Hamilton

6:27 – 6:32

Scott Nehring

6:33 – 6:38

Twila Brase

6:39 – 6:44

Stephen Parente

6:45 – 6:50

Dave Thomspon

6:51 – 6:56

Bill Jungbauer

Tea Dumping Ceremony

Wikileaks kicks out the jams: 1000s of Congressional Research Service reports now released!

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:50:23 -0800

The Congressional Research Service is an obscure wonky staff office (annual budget: $100 million!) of the U.S. Congress that releases policy analyses on a variety of subjects, but these reports are traditionally not released to the general public. If you somehow caught word of something good in one of their reports, you had to either get it through skeezy Beltway info peddlers or via the offices of your congressional representatives. Interestingly, the CRS has lobbied to prevent its own work product from going out to the general public.

Fortunately, the rockstars at Wikileaks.org have gotten ahold of BILLION DOLLARS of research, more than 6000 new documents out there. Here's the chronological index, the alphabetical index, and OpenCRS.com must be having a party right now. NICE!! (And if you have a spare dime, increasingly popular/legally embattled WikiLeaks could really use it!) If anyone finds anything interesting, post it!! (h/t cryptome.org)

George Mitchell gets Hamas & Israel to promise at least a year of peace!

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:34:40 -0800

The appointment of George Mitchell as special Middle East envoy for the Obama administration was fantastic news: everyone was afraid that lame squares like Dennis Ross or Martin Indyk would end up calling the shots, in particular since a lot of AIPAC-style foreign policy wonks appeared to be saturating new appointments. Fortunately, Mitchell is a serious guy, and he's already been working the case for years, so he knows who's who and what the angles are. Since the Obama administration appears to be avoiding the total rejectionism and "surrender first, then we'll talk" neo-conservative approach, an entirely new tray of carrots and sticks have appeared! And thus, Israel and HAMAS are falling all over each other to offer cease-fire terms: HAMAS wants a year, and Israel 18 months! Mitchell is expected to roll up his sleeves and head over there next week.

There's a good "sanity dividend" from having the old liberal internationalist set in charge: containment, and leaning on all parties involved to tamp down the cycles of violence, appears to be working immediately: after all, lots and lots of people are newly pissed at both HAMAS and Israel. (Have you ever seen knee-jerk support for Israel so badly shaken as in this most recent round?) Both parties have to rein in their more hardline elements for the moment, lest they look stupid. Middle eastern affairs tend to get a momentum all their own: during periods like the 1990s, HAMAS and Yasser Arafat discreetly agreed to suspend suicide bombings for quite some time.

This turn of events should leave the New Republic/Marty Peretz hawk set looking grumpy and stupid: Ezra Klein's taunting of their increasingly tinny calls of anti-semitism for any and all anti-Israel criticism looks like the next evolution of the domestic discussion. [though some appointments are another matter, he notes.] Plus J-Street, the plucky, sane new antiwar counterpart to AIPAC, gets advantage from not having dumb old chumps calling the shots. (they like Mitchell!) It's been a long time since good foundations appeared to be in place; now, at least, the gory, smoking battlefield is tilted towards forcing reconciliation upon all parties!

My own angle into this: once upon a time, late 2002 to be specific, I met Mitchell, along with former Shin Bet Chief Ami Ayalon and Jerusalem's Al-Quds University chief Sari Nusseibeh at a sort of second-track peace talk/negotiation my sophomore year at Macalester College. They went for chewing on the two-state solution and the usual nitty details about Jerusalem, and the whole thing seemed overwhelmingly sane and calm. Good times. (I wrote an op-ed praising the effort, got accused of believing Israel didn't exist by a doofy classmate, and contributed to a story on the event that I now can't find online :-/ ) It was good to talk with Ayalon for a couple minutes: despite his leadership of Israel's secretive internal security force, the tough little bald guy with the piercing eyes had become well-known as a staunch opponent of the settler movement, since he could clearly see the strategic disaster for his country lying at the end of their dumb scheme. Nusseibeh, one in a 700-year family of Jerusalem leaders, chain smoked and fiddled with his prayer beads a lot, rather the classic figure.

Ahh such heady times.... [well, Paul Wellstone's plane crashed right after that, so it felt pretty gloomy soon thereafter. Anyway...] The best of luck to Mitchell & company: good judgment and American leverage can deliver a lot right now!

Seeing Darkness: New video angle on the BART police platform execution

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:47:56 -0800

Here's a grim scene: A new video surfaced of Oakland, CA police detaining several people -- and suddenly fatally shooting one of them. The video was shot from the open door of a train car, and its angle and long running time clearly show that nothing much was going on. (FLV here)

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content.

Meanwhile the Pentagon's "Small Business Innovation Research" wing wants contractors to develop AI video games for the children of deployed soldiers, to replace the lost affection from their missing parents. (h/t cryptogon) An interesting example of PSYOPS for the youngest & most harmed by all of this... Domestic, military, international... Yeah it's looking bad out there. Will people challenge the authoritarian, violent drift of events? What new tactics will they try to normalize perceptions of this -- besides Daddy Soldier Tamagochis?

Pass the cookies: Minnesota State Canvassing Board starts reviewing ballots, eating snacks

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:21:22 -0800

[Originally posted @work.] A little while after noon today, the State Canvassing Board began evaluating the challenged U.S. Senate race ballots. Some cookies and coffee are making the rounds; they just joked the cookies made everyone more amicable.

On the ballot where someone marked "Mickey Mouse" for president, and made a small dot on Al Franken's oval, Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson is getting a little snarky: "This isn't a voter who cared a lot... or maybe cared too much, I don't know." The small dot was ruled, with a dissenting vote, to not constitute a vote for Franken.

For the most part, things are moving along fairly smoothly, and generally everyone seems to be in good spirits. Franken's lawyer, Marc Elias, has gotten razzed for being blustery at press conferences (most memorably in a great MinnPost article by Jay Weiner), but he seems cool and collected today, as does U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's team. Evidently, these lawyers know that ticking off judges is a bad move.

Several outlets are streaming live: WCCO, the Star Tribune, and The Uptake are all putting up video feeds. The Uptake also has a nifty live chat widget going, as does Bob Collins' News Cut.

Several heavily disputed ballots have been set aside to evaluate later: it's probably a wise move to drill through the easier challenges first. The Franken campaign touted a report by one of the AP's Capitol writers, Brian Bakst, which suggested that their camp might finally have the edge because of around 200 easily determined ballots in his favor. Of course, the Coleman camp doesn't buy it.

Goldbugs Unite! Time to crash COMEX paper gold!

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:22:58 -0800

Gold finally posted its biggest gain in three months last week. On December 2nd, goldbugs said gold futures went into backwardation, which suggests supplies are drying up. What does this mean? I can't possibly claim to get this stuff; however, there are crazy bastards trying to spark a COMEX futures gold 'bank run' of sorts.

The artificially tilted gold market could likely get a huge thrashing at the end of the month. The idea: everyone trades on gold and silver futures - bets of delivery at a certain price and time. Normally all these bets get rolled over to cash and extended into the next cycle -- so the gold that's being bet on never has to leave the reserves.

To crash this parlor game, the goldbugs are going to try to buy out all the COMEX gold warehouses. They are now 43% emptied of real gold. COMEX is putting the word out warning of a potential disruption.

Without all of that 'paper gold' to bend the situation, the gold bugs think that gold might finally take off, in this stolen trillion-dollar fiat currency environment - but what will happen?

Meltdown 2011 seems to have the plan. Here's the log of progress in crashing COMEX precious metals buffer. Comex Gold Deliveries/Warehouse Supplies Consider:

COMEX trades hundreds of times more gold & silver than they actually possess. If enough investors demand delivery of PHYSICAL gold & silver COMEX stockpiles will be depleted. If COMEX runs out, the ensuing rush to grab physical metal to settle contract obligations *could* be the spark that ignites the long-awaited precious metals wildfire.

Explanation:
COMEX warehouses contain both “registered” and “eligible” metals. The “registered” metals are available for physical delivery. The “eligible” metals are not ready for delivery until they become “registered.” Although this pool of “eligible” metals is stored at COMEX warehouses there is no obligation to “register” these metals for subsequent physical deliveries.[......]

Sources:
[1] COMEX precious metals warehouse stocks:http://www.nymex.com/warehouse.aspx
[2] COMEX precious metals daily deliveries: http://www.nymex.com/media/delivery.pdf

Meanwhile at the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (which sounds like an awesome place to work) WE find out that COMEX sez its time for the big squeeze?!

Comex said warning brokers about December gold squeeze
Submitted by cpowell on Sat, 2008-12-13 04:11. Section: Daily Dispatches
From "Midas" Commentary
by Bill Murphy
LeMetropoleCafe.com
Friday, December 12, 2008
I received a call this morning from a commodities broker who told me that the Comex is alerting various futures firms about the potential of a squeeze on the December contract and is advising the $840 December shorts to exit their positions. That is the remaining open position.
There have been 12,636 notices of delivery. The shorts have until December 31 to make delivery. Normally they deliver early to take in cash and earn the interest. They must be delaying. As I understand the situation, that represents about 40 percent of the gold available at the Comex, and of course someone could enter the scene late, buy February gold, and then spread into December, which would stun the shorts.
My broker friend said his back office said this sort of alert is highly unusual and that the concern is real, not only for gold, but for other commodities too, like copper and palladium, as there is a good deal of talk of taking deliveries there too. But gold is the one for which the advice to cover went out.
This is an extremely productive development and could spur the price of gold up quickly as word spreads. As we all know, buying Comex gold and silver (the cheapest way to buy precious metals) makes all the sense in the world in this financial environment.

How much farther can things go? From that first link, the widely circulated essay by Antal E. Fekete: Gold Red Alert- Gold Price Backwardation first time in History!

Once entrenched, backwardation in gold means that the cancer of the dollar has reached its terminal stages. The progressively evaporating trust in the value of the irredeemable dollar can no longer be stopped.

Negative basis (backwardation) means that people controlling the supply of monetary gold cannot be persuaded to part with it, regardless of the bait. These people are no speculators. They are neither Scrooges nor Shylocks. They are highly capable businessmen with a conservative frame of mind. They are determined to preserve their capital come hell or high water, for saner times, so they can re-deploy it under a saner government and a saner monetary system. Their instrument is the ownership of monetary gold. They blithely ignore the siren song promising risk-free profits. Indeed, they could sell their physical gold in the spot market and buy it back at a discount in the futures market for delivery in 30 days. In any other commodity, traders controlling supply would jump at the opportunity. The lure of risk-free profits would be irresistible. Not so in the case of gold. Owners refuse to be coaxed out of their gold holdings, however large the bait may be. Why? [.....]

I have often been told that the U.S. Mint is already open to gold, witness the Eagle and Buffalo gold coins. But these issues were neither unlimited, nor were they coined free of seigniorage. They were sold at a premium over bullion content. They were a red herring, dropped to make people believe that gold coins can always be obtained from the U.S. Mint, and from other government mints of the world. However, as the experience of the past two or three months shows, one mint after another stopped taking orders for gold coins and suspended their gold operations. The reason is that the flow of gold to the mints has become erratic. It may dry up altogether. This shows that the foreboding has been evoked by the looming gold backwardation, way ahead of the event. Now the truth is out: you can no longer coax gold out of hiding with paper profits.

If the governments of the great trading nations had really wanted to save the world from a catastrophic collapse of world trade, then they should have opened their mints to gold. Now gold backwardation has caught up with us and shut down the free flow of gold in the system. This will have catastrophic consequences. Few people realize that the shutting down of the gold trade, which is what is happening, means the shutting down of world trade. This is a financial earthquake measuring ten on the Greenspan scale, with epicenter at the Comex in New York, where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood. It is no exaggeration to say that this event will trigger a tsunami wiping out the prosperity of the world.

So what's the plan?! See also Cryptogon: Comex Said Warning Brokers About December Gold Squeeze, Gold In Backwardation? Not So Fast .. - Seeking Alpha, for the 'reconstructed' real economic numbers, Shadow Government Statistics, Credit crunch? What credit crunch? report says - Forbes.com, Will We See a Big Upward Move in Gold? - Seeking Alpha. Meanwhile, the shock absorbers get thousands more strings attached... JPMorgan Chase: Poisoned by Bear's 5,000 Counterparties....

The unmaking of a Democratic governor: Part Three

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:55:24 -0800

Yesterday the Chicago window workers' sit-in looked like it was gaining momentum - national press, a huge deal, an icon of a nation whose economy is parked in free fall as companies get denied the credit lines needed to keep rolling debts over. Now, that demonstration is off the news.

Today, former Democratic Alabama governor Don Siegelman's appeals case started: he got yanked out of office, convicted in a faulty process by the corrupt local U.S. Attorney's office, and tossed in prison. Siegelman also off the news.

Today, SEIU no longer appears on the side of the burgeoning righteous labor revolution; its president, Andy Stern, is apparently the 'SEIU official' contemplating inserting Rod Blagojevich into a cush job.

Today, Treasury Department officials will continue to hand out mysterious swaths of money, in all likelihood failing to log who the hell they are giving the cash to. However, we'd bet a mountain of Collateralized Debt Obligations that the Department of Justice isn't bugging the Free Cash for Cronies office. Treasury off the news.

Today, the appointment of one U.S. Senator, from New York, will not be handled by the anti-Wall Street Eliot Spitzer because he got taken down - again, by a weirdly obvious vulnerability. A second U.S. Senator, from Illinois, is entirely up for grabs; the very ability of a sole official to make this selection has been put into a radical focus, much to the delight of the chattering class (who have been noticing the peasants are getting restless and hungry).

Has anyone noticed that powerful politicians - Dem governors in particular - that are more on Wall Street's side never seem to get knocked out by surveillance, espionage, the information warfare hits, the 'Justice' political plays?

Can we seriously believe these days that the closed rooms of the powerful financial guys really sound any better than poor ol' Blagojevich's expletive-laden, desperate grabs?

I mean, I haven't even been paying close attention to Illinois, but I'd heard that this guy was marked to take a fall, he was super tainted. How could he not have expected wiretaps? It seems like he didn't give a damn, even with the Obama camp's tense distancing from him and the Feds' multi-year corruption investigation into the whole state government!

As a media play, it yanks attention off the nearly critical-mass labor conflict at the Republic factory, and in an almost COINTELPRO pitch-perfect wedge cuts SEIU into the 'bad guys' pile. That's impressive!

Side point: the triangle between the Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy, the cajoling about Wrigley Field, mixed with the paper's editorial board, just illustrates how these massive corporations fuck up conflict of interest for everyone.

Spitzer, Siegelman, and Blagojevich (the D3) are all part of a pattern: what they're all accused of seems par for the course, even timid by modern standards. Foundation seats? Appointees? How the hell does this normally work? Isn't this circle of chumminess the true texture of America's power, politics and cash allocation? Delete the expletives and imagine the variety of politicians who would likely say this stuff, servicing their patronage networks with all available appointments at their discretion.

Another fun bonus: Illinois, in an effort to dent the circle of state contractors giving political contributions, had set a deadline for the end of this year limiting contributions from parties scoring $50K or more from the state. So Blagojevich was sprinting to the finish line!

(Blagojevich gets a bonus for raising the profile of politicized foundation appointments: that overlooked feature of the tax system, foundations, so beloved by conspiracy theorists as 'skeleton keys' to webs of intrigue. The notion of President Obama controlling foundations, it's almost as if Blagojevich knew where Obama had worked around town!)

Perhaps it's good that Fitzgerald fires another warning shot at politicians, generally. But will he get into the true context of the thing? Will his gig here lead to more transparent government, or a diversion from the massive systemic breakdown that the D3 were pretty much not party to?

New RNC documentary "Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut" released, online for free!

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:30:15 -0800

Fellow Agonistas, there's one documentary you should check out, perhaps even before you go vote tomorrow (if you choose / are able to do so). We worked really hard over the last seven weeks to get this feature on the violent repression of political dissent at the Republican National Convention out the door. "Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut" was produced by Twin Cities Indymedia and Glass Bead Collective of New York, along with several other collectives and Indymedia chapters, cut from hundreds of hours of footage that people gave us.

In four parts, we cover key events and people at the RNC in St. Paul. Undercover cops in the marches get exposed after the Feds issue threats; the mechanics of how everyone's messages were stifled by the heavy hand of the police state are explored.

In particular I'm hoping Agonistas look @ Part 3, "And then they came for the anarchists," which breaks down how Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher staged a whole media campaign to demonize demonstration organizers. For the first time on video, the accused "RNC 8" of the RNC Welcoming Committee explain on their own words what it's like to be held out as symbols of terrorism (they are accused under the MN Patriot Act of "conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism".)

It was really weird how the Republicans started accusing Obama / Ayers / ACORN / Rashid Khalidi of being terrorists while we were trying to finish this film.

The whole thing is Creative Commons / Copyleft and everyone is encouraged to BitTorrent the heck out of it. It is also finally up on YouTube now. You may wish to select "watch in high quality" on YouTube.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5eDQKaKLYE
Part 1: Fall in St. Paul http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNDQmm_TEMw
Part 2: Gassing at the Diner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1_21-66Iek
Part 3: And then they came for the anarchists http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYLyoSBr5YA
Part 4: And then they bombed the peace march http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSqTa4SWTCA

BitTorrent - full DVD image: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4478060/Terrorizing_Dissent_Election_Cut
BitTorrent - 1 GB Quicktime 720x480 - more-or-less HD: http://www.mininova.org/tor/1970973

I guarantee you have never seen a film like this!

Iran-Contra Cliff's Notes on hostage crises, PSYOPS, parallel intel and GOP perception management, see 1991's "October Surprise"

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:37:37 -0700

There is another category of offenses, described by the French poet André Chenier as "les crimes puissants qui font trembler les lois," crimes so great that they make the laws themselves tremble. We know what to do with someone caught misappropriating funds, but when confronted with evidence of a systematic attempt to undermine the political system itself, we recoil in a general failure of imagination and nerve.

-- Gary Sick, October Surprise (p 226)

******

I have never understood why "normal" people are supposed to believe that the Iranians let the hostages go during Reagan's inauguration because he intimidated them, but then Reagan quickly pivoted to sell them all those weapons in the 1982-1986 period traditionally known as "Iran Contra". [Crossposted @ hongpong.com]

It seems like a pretty half-assed coverup, really.

I mean, look at all these damn data points we have to digest. And we're supposed to somehow forget, hold as innocent / benign, fail to comprehend, etc.

The terrible thing is, I'm beginning to understand it.

Byzantine accounts of shell corporations (aka brass plates) get quite addictive. I think it's worse than the cocaine & cash they funneled in the good old days.

This gets back to the intersection of the Savings & Loan scandals & Iran-Contra, as well as many other choice items... Stew Webb is his own case altogether, he made the mistake of marrying into a high level Bush-affiliated fraudster family, the Millmans, out in Denver.

Webb launched a website with perhaps the ugliest color scheme I have ever seen (including the once-thought-extinct HTML blink tag), but there are plenty of awesome primary source documents linked off this page... Be sure to hit up the Sarah McClendon 1991 Washington Report October Surprise items, which explain quite clearly the coverup of chemical weapons to Iraq that later contributed to Gulf War Syndrome, Webb's fate and the general 1991 coverup in Congress.

Before I run the book back to Minneapolis' fab new Central Library, I have to post a review of "October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan" by Gary Sick, the 1991 first edition version.

In a lucky break, I finished this book the evening before a fresh new fake hostage crisis in Colombia. It felt like a lightning bolt to have another cheesy hostage rescue thingy, the very next day! The secret to the FARC Colombia scenario was much like the 1979-1980 classic episode: pay off the bad guys and put on a good show for the American press! CNN and the rest of them will believe every fucking word for two news cycles, and then forget it!

*****

The vast reservoir of cognitive dissonance embedded within the brains of America's Establishment political journalists and analysts makes up the foundation of accepted "consensus political reality." The weird stuff is never talked about, yet becomes heavier by the day. The room's elephants are becoming... super elephants? (Ask the accountant @ Fannie Mae.)

Prior to the emergence of the Internet, all and sundry could easily agree that if a given political fact or event did not get placed in the Washington Post, the New York Times, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, the Associated Press wire or a couple other key press outlets, everyone could safely agree the proposition in question did not exist, and they were safe from being 'burned' by further revelations. "We didn't know, it wasn't in our favorite paper!"

Of course, these outlets occasionally cut to the quick of matters like the Pentagon's military analyst PSYOP news manipulation program, the domestic wiretap program, or other affairs. However, the unique class of Establishment douchebags like David Broder will always fail to synthesize a new analysis of political/government affairs by taking into account their own paper's muckraking, and thus the ruling class can avoid swallowing the bitter pills of their own complicity in general malfeasance and alarming trends of criminality.

(Or shorter: the analysts will never place the results of muckraking in context).

*****

Such is the case with many of my favorite topics, in particular areas with huge layers of documentary evidence, eyewitness accounts and other "weird things" that get left by the wayside all too often. In the last two years I have been fascinated by the historical period of about 1977-1992, the period between when Pres. Jimmy Carter's CIA director, Stansfield "Choir Boy" Turner, fired hundreds of incensed CIA agents, and the election of Bill Clinton.

"October Surprise" was written by Gary Sick (a Carter-era National Security Council staffer with a role in the Middle East) after allegations surfaced in the 1988 presidential election that George H. W. Bush had attended secret meetings in Paris including himself, former CIA honcho and Reagan campaign manager Bill Casey, and various Iranians, with the intent of preventing the hostages from getting released before the November 1980 election. This was the famous, mythical "October Surprise".

Sick provides a sober and cautious synthesis of everything he can, without going out on a limb or offering extraneous, false nuggets that were surely offered by the shady characters that were his sources. He keeps the case minimal, and where he can't verify the names, he doesn't name them.

The American intelligence community in general got pissed at Carter after he took such measures against them, in the wake of partial exposures like the 1975-76 Church Commission, ominous mind control programs and other awesome items. Hundreds of pissed off CIA operators were suddenly cast off the government payroll, and some who you might call "The Cowboys" of the original school were pretty tight with George Bush - after all, he was a player with them since his earliest days. Many of the Cowboys entered fuzzy cargo aviation businesses and other cool cat fronts designed to be geopolitically useful.

In the old days, they knew how to fly copters in hot zones, dammit!

Gen. Claire Chennault put this all together, back then... The survivors of a geopolitically awkward venture, they deserved better than a pink slip from a uptight dude like CIA director Stanfield Turner. Back in China, Nam, elsewhere.... Many died to bring the guns over the line that the pukes in Washington didn't dare tell the public about.

This is true. And under-appreciated. If people in Washington had the guts to be more honest about things (and the press held them to it) then people like Air America and Southern Air Transport (way to go Wikipedia) would never have gotten the short end of the stick. The same is true today.

In the 1980 election, Bush elbowed aside the more regular GOP establishment for the role of Vice Presidential candidate. Bush had a lot of friends in the intelligence community, still, and the unemployed freelancers felt ready to participate in organizing serious operations monitoring Carter. After the Iranians captured the hostages (where was Ted Shackley during the pre-coup period... not sure), Bill Casey, of all people, the grizzled ex-CIA honcho and "half crazy" by all accounts, was suddenly Reagan's campaign manager.

I mean really. The ex-CIA honcho is the campaign manager, and George Bush, ex-CIA director, is the VP candidate, and somehow this does not become a huge mess of covert operations and total PSYOPS subversion?!

How is that no one reminds us how hardcore cool kats in intelligence community put together the whole Reagan campaign?

Damn...

And thus began the Perception Management expertise we know and love today... [see below]

It all began with making sure that FUCKING CARTER couldn't get the FUCKING HOSTAGES out. And all it took was some arms dealers, some arms and some of that old backdoor, secret hotels in Madrid/Paris, don't tell the nerds in the "elected" Democratic White House, old wheeler dealer Texas-sized gambles.

And where did it lead? Getting Felix Rodriguez into the White House? Hurray!

When you wins, you gets ta write the history, eh?

*****

I gotta throw in one of my favorite smoking guns: a rare 1985 document that survived the shredder, wherein Ollie describes the "Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into U.S."

They do NOT show this one on FOX News War Stories!

*****

Some morons on Amazon are claiming that Sick claims that George Bush flew to Paris in an SR71 Blackbird, which is never floated at all. In fact, Sick provides a good analysis of how the Bush-in-Paris claims acted as a "poison pill" or intentional red herring diversion to embarrass journalists and drive them away from further inquiry.

*****

Apart from the facts of the hostage crisis, the way the whole press coverage got manipulated by disinformation (propaganda) specialists becomes quite important.

Grizzled Iran-Contra-exposing reporter Robert Parry recently put out the formerly "lost chapter" of the Democrats' whitewash committee report, which has TONS of details about how the disinfo experts manipulated the scene in the 1980s. GET THE PDF fools!

In a rare new addition to Iran Contra documentation, an awesome "Lost Chapter" of the Democratically-controlled investigation committee has been unearthed. The Lost Chapter got deleted from the Final Report, because it spelled out how "perception management" type dudes got brought into the inner circle, running interference all around. The tone and substance of how these guys operated gets explained in a choice narrative style.

Of course, this surfaced from Robert Parry, who got the tar kicked out of him by pursuing Iran-Contra deeply and professionally. This turned out to be a terrible mistake, since the Establishment coverup took hold and Parry went down some of the many cul-de-sacs put there by the disinfo Beltway experts. So instead of a fancy TV spot, he is here & there, and this lost chapter turned up not in Newsweek but on ConsortiumNews.com.

*****

I will add the October Surprise book jacket notes because they encompass the most important dimensions of the case, and are well-substantiated:

This book was never supposed to have been written. It is an account of a political mystery never intended to be solved, a tale of bold deception by a few powerful men who apparently calculated that political manipulation, if conducted on a sufficiently grand scale, would be essentially invisible and ultimately beyond the law.

October Surprise reconstructs the story of how the 1980 Reagan-Bush presidential campaign, intent on delaying the release of the fifty-two Americans held hostage in Tehran until after the election, made clandestine overtures to Iran and arranged illegal arms shipments through Israel. Thiss effort, spearheaded by Republican campaign manager William Casey, not only prevented President Carter from reaping the political benefits of an early hostage release, but also hobbled his ability to exercise the full powers of his elective office.

This book brings to light startling new information, including:

• The Reagan-Bush campaign's systematic penetration of the national security complex of the U.S. government, through which a network of former and current intelligence agents kept Casey--not then in any government position--informed of highly classified military movements, diplomatic initiatives, and policy decisions.

• The secret meetings that took placed in Europe during the summer and fall of 1980, at which Casey hammered out the deal with the Iranians.

• Israel's shipment of arms to Iran during the last weeks of the presidential campaign (in deliberate violation of the U.S. embargo) and the massive covert arms transfers between the two nations that begin immediately after Reagan's inauguration.

• The connection between the Republicans' 1980 arms-for-hostages deal and the Iran-Contra Affair five years later.

The result of three years of research and hundreds of interviews, October Surprise lays bare an elaborate network of political intrigue and treachery, subversive in its actions and chilling in its implications. It is a cautionary tale about the seductions of power and the fragility of our democratic system.

He spells out the series of events, including the weird and messy power mesh that made up the nebulous Iranian ruling circles, which, in their splintering, oddly mirrored the splintered American side. (Numerous arms dealers and shadeballs, (in particular the Hashemi brothers as channels), "fairly" offered similar terms, separately, to Carter and Casey's people.)

His conclusion chapter was really interesting, as it encompassed the case of the United States of America v. Richard J. Brenneke, as they were ticked off that Brenneke

"had been accused of falsely stating that William Casey, Donald Gregg and possibly George Bush were in Paris on that particular weekend, and that he was employed by the CIA at that time.... Although this case received virtually no attention in the national media, it marked the only time that the U.S. gvoernment had systematically and athoritatively attempted to refute the allegations of an October surprise. All of those accused had an unparalleled opportunity to rebut the charges, and they had all the resources of the U.S. government at their command to research and document their case. To my surprise, and to the surprise of nearly everyone who followed the trial closely, they failed." (p 212)

All they had to do to win the case was prove that George Bush or Casey or Gregg were anywhere but Paris, in the middle of the damn campaign. And they failed. And it was forgotten.

*****

In my own fishing in the murky waters, I would be wise to remember this conclusion about the general morass.

This is hardly earth shattering, but it's a clear explanation of a fundamental principle of all stories about espionage and Deep Politics: (p 214-216):

Over the course of the next two years, during the research and writing of this book, I would meet many men like Richard Brenneke. To my frustration, Brenneke's idiosyncrasies and character flaws were too often representative of the general nature of the sources. These mens were denizens of a shadowy yet flamboyant subculture who expected absolute discretion in dealing with outsiders but tolerated boasting and exaggerated tales of past exploits among the members of the fraternity. They took pains to conceal key facts from an obvious outsider, and when they chose to talk they routinely embellished the facts and inflated their own importance.

Such characters are a researcher's nemesis; they are meant to be. When the CIA or other intelligence agencies need to hire a "contractor," who may be required to carry out tasks that are potentially dangerous and of questionable legality, they look for three things: a specific and useful skill (a knowledge of money-laundering, for example); a romantic streak that glorifies both the secrecy and the risk; and a propensity for exaggeration and trouble. One former CIA officer, David MacMichael, has said that the agency looks for these free-lancers at small community airports and gun ranges--places where men go to escape the boredom of everyday life. Looking for adventure, these men are fascinated by the imagined glamour and excitement of the world of espionage. MacMichael said that often, after one or two assignments, the agency will put the contractor on a case in which he runs afoul of the law. The contractor finds himself in a compromising position--nothing so major as to put him permanently out of commission, but significant enough that if he ever starts telling tales out of school about covert operations, his record will discredit his testimony.

Essentially, such a free-lancer is a skilled Walter Mitty, who delights in possessing arcane knowledge and who imagines himself the instrument that secretly drives events behind the scrim of history. It is a profile, alas, of a less-than-credible witness. Intelligence agencies understand this very well, and bank on it. A free-lancer is inherently difficult to control; if he wanders off the reservation and begins blabbing, it is helpful if no one believes him. A retired CIA covert-operations officer, when asked about the extravagant behavior of a former contract employee, said: "The agency likes things that way... The wilder and crazier and sillier the story, the more they like it. The agency indulges people to come up with that. It's the best defense." MacMichael confirmed that the agency permits contractors to become entangled in a legally compromising position, so that if an operation goes awry they can be cut loose. "When a contractor gets caught," he said, "all their 'friends' disappear. It happens over and over again."

In a story in which the principal actors have no desire for the facts to come out, one does not have the luxury of choosing one's sources. The "respectable" people who plotted and carried out a covert operation refuse to comment or, at worst, fabricate stories to protect themselves and their reputations; because of their "respectability," most people are inclined to believe them. The contractors who were hired to do the dirty work are not "respectable" at all, and if they decided to tell their story, most people assume they are lying.

And sometimes they are. These free-lancers, on occasion, are deliberately recruited as front men for disinformation campaigns. In 1988, when stories about possible Republican tampering with the hostage issue began to emerge in the national media, Oswald LeWinter said he was contacted by some people he had known through his intelligence background. They were concerned, he said, that the United States was once again facing the possibility of a Watergate-type scandal that risked tearing the country apart, discrediting the candidacy of George Bush, and electing a Democratic candidate who was unsympathetic to the intelligence community. He claimed to have been offered $40,000 to undertake a disinformation campaign designed to discredit the stories about the 1980 elections and the Paris meetings. He agreed, and for several months he spoke to journalists and others who were investigating the allegations of an "October surprise." He said that he used the pseudonym "Razin," and refused to be interviewed in person. INstead he spoke to reporters only by telephone, offering a few bits and pieces of accurate information laced with fanciful inventions and false leads. His purpose, as he now freely admits, was to throw dust in the air, to invent tantalizing leads that would eventually prove to be false, and thereby generate so much fruitless commotion that the story would be discredited and abandoned.

To get at the truth, one must listen to those who know something about what happened and who are willing to talk, even if they exaggerate and embroider the truth. Then every significant statement must be carefully weighed against the known facts -- dates, places, times, identities -- and other witnesses. A bald assertion, however intriguing, must be regarded as false unless it can be corroborated independently, and not just from one of the sources' cronies who may have compared stories. When the allegations of Casey's participation in the secret talks with the Iranians surfaced in 1988, the CIA director's defenders swore up and down that Casey had not traveled abroad on the dates that the Madrid meetings were said to have taken place. However, one of my researchers found an obscure item tucked away in the second section of The New York Times of July 30, 1980, in which the following sentence appeared: "A spokesman at Reagan headquarters said that the national campaign chairman, WIlliam Casey, would begin negotiations with the Right to Life group when he returns today from a trip abroad." Suddenly the denials were less convincing.

Casey died of a brain tumor on May 6, 1987, making it impossible to get his side of the story. Nevertheless, he had made several public statements which I now viewed in a new light. For example, when he was questioned in the 1984 Senate investigation into the mysterious theft of President Carter's briefing book four years earlier, he described his knowledge of the hostage crisis at the time as follows: "Information about negotiations for the release of the hostages in Iran came to me from many sources, including bankers involved in loans to Iran and frozen Iranian funds." That Casey admitted, under oath, that he was privy to inside information about the negotiations between the government of the United States and the government of Iran is itself revealing.

All right, I have to put in a couple more passages... This is taking a while, but key to the case: (p 222-223)

I would not be human if I did not confess that I have at one time or another awakened in the middle of the night with the thought: what if all of these people are lying to me? Is it possible that all of these accounts are themselves a conspiracy of lies?

In the early stages of the research, when the descritpiton of these events relied on only a handful of admittedly unreliable source, I had to take that possibility seriously. But as time went on and the number and diversity of sources increased, the likelihood of a concerted, organized disinformation campaign dwindled. At some point, I had to ask myself why all of these individuals might have decided to propagate false statements, and how they had managed to coordinate their stories. Most of these men did not know one another, and those who had met or talked at some pont in the past frequently distrusted one another. Most of them did not come forward of their own accord to publicize this story. On the contrary, most of them were discovered only as the result of persisten digging by journalists and researchers. To believe that there was an orchestrated effort to plant these individuals in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, and that each was supplied with the same false story, required a considerable leap of imagination -- a grand conspiracy theory to counter a conspiracy theory. Is it easier to believe that all of these sources surreptitiously coordinated their stories to create trouble for the Reagan and Bush administrations, or alternatively, that each of these sources may be telling the truth (or pieces of the truth) as perceived on the basis of his own personal background and personal experience? The answer seems obvious: The chance that these sources are telling their version of the truth is much higher than the chance they are all lying in concert. These sources seemed to be describing the same event, albeit from different perspectives, rather than merely improvising a description based on sketchy published accounts.

In the absence of convincing corroboration, however, I have reserved judgment. For example, several reports have surfaced claiming that vice-presidential candidate George Bush was present at least briefly in Paris during the course of negotiations in October. I have always been incomfortable about this allegation. There was little reason for a vice-presidential candidate to take such an extreme risk at the very peak of a political campaign. Besides, it would have been difficult for any candidate to slip away from his campaign responsibilities, not to mention his Secret Service protection, for a transatlantic flight. Even if the Iranians insistend on very high-level personal assurances as part of the final agreement, which would be entirely characteristic of Iranian bargaining style, surely someone would have been found to stand in for the candidate.

I was also aware that the allegation about Bush might have been deliberately floated in order to discredit the story. An effective way to divert attention from what really happened is to invent a sensational story and send the media scurrying off on a wild-goose chase. That is essentially what happened in the Iran-Contra Affair, where all journalistic resources and public attention were fixated on the question of whether the President knew about the diversion of Iranian arms-sales profits to the Nicaraguan contras. When that could not be proved, because the original memos with identifying signatures had been destroyed and because Admiral Poindexter testifeid that "the buck stopped here, with me," the entire congressional case came to an end. Other important constitutional and legal issues simply faded into the background or were shunted off to the special prosecutor's office.

When the "October surprise" story first received wide publicity in 1988, much of the media attention was devoted to the question of whether or not George Bush had been in Paris. When the evidence proved to be ambiguous, and especially after Bush won the 1988 presidential election, the entire story was shelved.

We gotta get to the nut grafs, the finale..... (p 226-228)

In the end, it is irrelevant whether Bush went to Paris or whether Reagan approved or knew of the deal. The critical question is whether representatives of a political party out of power secretly, and illegally, negotiated with representatives of a hostile foreign power, thereby distorting or undermining the efforts of the legitimate government. Even today, more than a decade later, it is still difficult to imagine that an opposition political faction in the United States would employ such tactics, willfully prolonging the imprisonment of fifty-two American citizens for partisan political gain. Nevertheless, that is what occurred: the Reagan-Bush campaign mounted a professionally organized intelligence operation to subvert the American democratic process.

We are accustomed to the petty scandals of Washington politics: A candidate for high office is a lush or a compulsive womanizer; a member of Congress diverts campaign funds to a private account; an official lies to cover up an embarrassing policy failure. These are misdeeds on a human scale, and these miscreants who are unfortunate enough or careless enough to get caught are pilloried and punished by the press and their peers in periodic cleansings. We regard such rituals with a certain satisfaction, evidence of our democracy at work.

There is another category of offenses, described by the French poet André Chenier as "les crimes puissants qui font trembler les lois," crimes so great that they make the laws themselves tremble. We know what to do with someone caught misappropriating funds, but when confronted with evidence of a systematic attempt to undermine the political system itself, we recoil in a general failure of imagination and nerve.

We understand the motives of a thief, even if we despise them. But few of us have ever been exposed to the seductions of power on a grand scale and we are unlikely to have given serious thought to the rewards of political supremacy, much less to how it might be achieved. We know that groups and individuals covet immense power for personal or ideological reasons, but we suppose that these ambitions usually will be pursued within the confines of the laws and values of our society and democratic political system. If not, we assume we will recognize the transgressions early enough to protect ourselves.

Those who operate politically beyond the law, if they are deft and determined, benefit from our often false sense of confidence. There is a natural presumption, even among the politically sophisticated, that "no one would do such a thing." Most observers are predisposed toward disbelief, and therefore may be willing to disregard evidence and to construct alternative explanations for events that seem too distasteful to believe. This all-too-human propensity provides a margin of safety for what would otheriwse be regarded as immensely risky undertakings.

Illegitimate political covert actions are attempts to alter the disposition of power. Since all of politics involves organized contention over the disposition of power, winners can be expected to maintain that they were only playing the game, while those who complain about their opponents' methods are likely to be dismissed as sore losers. Even if suspicions arose, the charges are potentially so grave that most individuals will be reluctant to give public credence to allegations in the absence of irrefutable evidence. The need to produce a "smoking gun" has become a precondition for responsible reporting of political grand larceny. The participants in political covert actions understand this and take pains to cover their tracks, so the chance of turning up incontrovertible documentation of wrongdoing--such as the White House tapes in the Watergate scandal--is thin.

This leads to a journalistic dilemma. In the absence of indisputable evidence, the mainstream media --themselves large commercial institutions with close ties to the political and economic establishment -- are hesitant to declare themselves on matter of great political gravity. The so-called alternative media are less reluctant, but they are too easily dismissed as irresponsible. By the time the mainstream media are willing to lend their names and reputations to a story of political covert action, the principal elements of the story have almost always been reported long before in the alternative media, where they were studiously ignored.

When the Iran-Contra scandal exploded in 1986, both the Congress and the media pulled up short. Neither had the stomach for the kind of national trauma that would have resulted from articles of impeachment being delivered against a popular President who was in his last two years of office. So, when it could not be proven conclusively that the President saw the "smoking gun" in the case--a copy of the memo to Reagan reporting in matter-of-fact terms that proceeds of Iranian arms sales were being diverted to the Nicaraguan contras-- the nation seemed to utter a collective sigh of relief. (The original memo, bearing the signatures of those who had seen it, had been deliberately destroyed.) The laws trembled at the prospect of a political trial that could shatter the compact of trust between rulers and ruled, a compact that was the foundation upon which the laws themselves rested. The lesson seemed to be that accountability declines as the magnitude of the offense and the power of those charged increase.

The ultimate dilemma, which Chenier captured so perfectly in his comment on the revolutionary politics of eighteenth-century France, is the effect of very high stakes. A run-of-the-mill political scandal can safely be exposed without affecting anyone other than the culprits and their immediate circle. A covert political coup, however, like the one engineered by Casey in 1980, challenges the legitimacy of the political order; it deliberately exploits weaknesses in the political immune system and risks infecting the entire organism of state and society. Such a virus of secrecy and subterfuge would permeate the Reagan administration and would culminate in the Iran-Contra Affair, the contours of which bore an uncanny resemblance to Casey's 1980 deal to swap arms for hostages. One of the more puzzling aspects of the Iran-Contra Affair was the Reagan administration's dogged pursuit of a deal in the face of repeated Iranian demands. Yet Reagan's men refused to take no for an answer. The reason now seems plain: The same parties had cut a deal once before.

The weight of the evidence speaks for itself - and the establishment arms/drugs/coverup pattern is damn thick. You can't wrap your head around the JFK assassination, 9/11, other weird political events, without taking into account the real substrate of covert operations, 'perception management' AKA PSYOPS, and the dumb rules that control Washington journalists.

After trekking through the murky wasteland of mirrors, I cannot help but reach the conclusion that the extended cloud of covert activities behind Iran-Contra makes up a totally pivotal - and misunderstood - episode of American political history. The history isn't even past. In order to process the ugly stack that makes up today's political perceptions, the old affairs have to finally get digested.

As long as the rules of the game stay this way, Iran-Contra will never be seen as a complete mesh, the opening episode of total mindwar domination, total PSYOPS, the surrender of Beltway journalism, the death of that heady Woodward-Bernstein take-em-on era.

Oliver North has his TV show, we have the Internets. One of them will finally win.

In the words of Al Martin, a self-described "fourth-level player" in Iran-Contra,

"Iran-Contra is still alive."

Breaking: Obama has arrived in Afghanistan!

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:53:59 -0700

We were about to call it a night, and had drifted past a CNN rerun of Bill Nye and Larry King rambling about UFOs. Suddenly this secret variant of CNN known as "CNN International" broke in, and unknown anchors announced Barack Obama has arrived in Afghanistan. They said their staff had only learned in the last 30 minutes - it is still not on Google News (although the Wapo called it "coming days").

With a little luck our guy from Registan can peer sideways at the spectacle there? First post?!

SEC proposes rules on National Rating Organizations

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:05:50 -0700

Ok here's a pretty good one. From Cryptome.org, which appears to be the only place regularly monitoring the Federal Register (essentially like a cash register receipt declaring new and exciting autonomous plots of the executive branch agencies... Once it's in the Register, it's Reality!)...

Well, in this case there are marvelous new proposals from the SEC for so-called "ratings agencies," aka groups of shady morons agreeing everything is fine, truly sure that blocks of goo can inflate in value through Magic Confidence in Bubbles.

We further believe that broker-dealers have the financial
sophistication and the resources necessary to make the basic
determinations of whether or not a security meets the requirements in
the proposed amendments and to distinguish between securities subject
to minimal credit risk and those subject to moderate credit risk. The
broker-dealer would have to be able to explain how the securities it
used for net capital purposes meet the standards set forth in the
proposed amendments.

As I read this, my roommate left the TV on Sgt. Schultz from Hogan's Heroes, who declared "I see nothing!!!!" I decided more precise analysis could not be offered.

Notwithstanding our belief that broker-dealers have the financial
sophistication and the resources to make these determinations, we
believe it would be appropriate, as one means of complying with the
proposed amendments, for broker-dealers to refer to NRSRO ratings for
the purposes of determining haircuts under the Net Capital Rule. As
such, if we adopt the proposed amendments, after considering comments,
we expect to take the view in the adopting release that securities
rated in one of the three highest categories by at least two NRSROs
would satisfy the requirements of proposed new paragraph (c)(2)(vi)(E)
and securities rated in one of the four highest rating categories by at
least two NRSROs to satisfy the requirements of proposed new paragraphs
(c)(2)(vi)(F) and (c)(2)(vi)(H). We emphasize, however, that references
to such NRSRO ratings would be just one means of satisfying the
requirements of the proposed amendments but would not the only means of
doing so.
We are also proposing to remove references to NRSRO ratings from
Appendices E and F to Rule 15c3-1 and make conforming changes to
Appendix G of Rule 15c3-1 and the General Instructions to Form X-17 A-
5, Part IIB.\51\ Appendix E of the Net Capital Rule sets forth a
program that allows a broker-dealer to use an alternative approach to
computing net capital deductions, subject to certain conditions, most
importantly the broker-dealer's ultimate holding company consenting to
group-wide Commission supervision as a consolidated supervised entity
(``CSE'').\52\ Appendix F to the Net Capital Rule sets forth a similar
program for OTC derivatives dealers. In each case, the program sets
forth an alternative means of establishing net capital requirements
under the Net Capital Rule by which the broker-dealer or OTC
derivatives dealer, as applicable, may elect to determine counterparty
risk. This may be done either based on NRSRO ratings by requesting
Commission approval to determine credit risk weights based on internal
calculations.

Also there are a lot of references to "haircuts", which I think are both a humorous metaphor for such a dry context, and also worth further examination: who do the nerds want to cut?

'The Wire' ends this week - Woe is me!!

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:40:28 -0800

I will really miss The Wire. We are gonna watch the last episode the second it comes on OnDemand in a ~~couple hours~~ whenever they finally post the episode. Damn.

At the end of the second-to-last episode, Clay Davis tells Detective Freamon that Levy, the gangsters' lawyer has been buying secret documents from someone at the Courthouse. My guess is that the Judge was selling the documents -- that would bring the plot full circle, since the Judge and Detective McNulty set the whole plot in motion at the very beginning of the series' first episode. The Judge has been signing the wiretaps all along, hence The Wire merely working out to supply info to the highest bidder, would be a pretty good final joke.

Let's have one final moment with Clay Davis, the time he talks about not collecting money from some damn Korean Grocers....

And this one just got put up a couple days ago, it'll probably get pulled, but it's his fifth season panache at its best!

I will have to write something about the show later... but I have to put in my prediction now!

City of St. Paul opens RNC park permit lottery process - for a few days!

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:58:31 -0800

Hey everyone, I caught some important news late Friday afternoon (And I've got a cold right now and nothin' better to do!).

The big news is that the City of St. Paul would take all applications for demonstrations and space in parks on March 3rd. Naturally the City put out the news very late on Friday to keep it off the news radar. There are only a few days to offer some kinds of finalized plans for the permitted use of public space during the Republican National Convention.
http://www.stpaul.gov/convention/rncpermits.html

Since the process apparently involves a drawing/lottery, it may be a good idea for many groups of people (bands?) to enter into the lottery system and win space/time in a park.

There was a brief story about it in the Star Tribune: http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/15883057.html
Protesting at the RNC? Forms due March 3

St. Paul outlines its process for getting permits for demonstrations or large-group park space during the Republican National Convention.

By CHRIS HAVENS, Star Tribune
Last update: February 22, 2008 - 11:06 PM

Protesters, parkgoers and parade organizers, put March 3 on your calendar.

That's the day permit applications will be accepted for demonstrating or getting park space for groups of 25 or more during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Applications are available now.

The permits would cover the time between Aug. 30 and Sept. 4. The convention will be held Sept. 1-4 at the Xcel Energy Center. More than 45,000 delegates, members of the news media and protesters are expected.

"We hope to accommodate as many people as logistically possible," said Erin Dady, the city's marketing director and convention planner.

Demonstration applications are available at the city website or at the Police Community Services Office, 1169 Rice St. The office is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Some people want a protest area within sight and sound of the Xcel, and that space hasn't been determined yet, Dady said. "By no means will free speech be limited to one area," she said.

Applications will be reviewed by police and decisions made in a timely manner. More specific guidelines might be forthcoming, Dady said. Approvals could be delayed if more clarification or information is needed.

For more information on the city's rules regarding demonstration permits, go to www.ci.stpaul.mn.us/code/lc366a.html.

Applications to use space, pavilions and boat slips in the city's parks system for parties of 25 or more people are available at the city website and at the Parks and Recreation Permit Office, 1100 Hamline Av.

Parks permit applications will be accepted until 2 p.m. March 3, and a public lottery drawing will happen at 3 p.m. Applications received later will be handled on a first-come, first-serve basis.

A limited number of parks have been held for security reasons or convention activities.

Applications are online at www.stpaul.gov.

********

This was posted on the City of St. Paul website and I think matched the initial press release:

http://www.stpaul.gov/convention/rncpermits.html

Applications for City Parks, Demonstration Permits during Republican National Convention Now Available
Permit applications to use space, pavilions, and boat slips in Saint Paul 's parks system for parties and gatherings of 25 or more people during the Republican National Convention Aug. 30 to Sept. 4 are now available online and from the Saint Paul Parks & Recreation Permit Office, 1100 Hamline Ave. North.
In addition, permit applications for demonstrations during the same period are also available online and through the Saint Paul Police Community Services Office, 1169 Rice Street .
A limited number of Parks have been held for security purposes and convention activities, but the vast majority of Saint Paul Parks are available for permits. The City of Saint Paul Division of Parks and Recreation manages over 160 parks and open spaces, the Como Park Zoo and Marjorie McNeely Conservatory, 41 recreation centers, a 9 hole and three 18 hole golf courses, over 100 miles of trails, indoor and outdoor pools, a public beach, sports and aquatics facilities, and wonderful rental facilities for public and private gatherings.
“Hosting the Republican National Convention gives us an incredible opportunity to showcase the city's world-class parks system to visitors from around the globe,” said Bob Bierscheid, director of Saint Paul Parks & Recreation. “Park space will be in high demand, and we want to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity to access our parks and enjoy themselves during this exciting event.”
Similar to the process in which the city awards permits for park use through a lottery at the beginning of the year, permits during the RNC convention period will be accepted up to 2 p.m. March 3 at the permit office.
A lottery drawing from permit applications will then follow at 3 p.m. The drawing is open to the public and will be broadcast through the city's cable channel soon after the drawing. The permit office will notify people of the status of their application by mail.
Based on park availability, permit applications received after March 3 will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis.
Demonstration permit applications will be accepted starting March 3, at which time applications received through the mail also will be opened. Community Services Office hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Applications will be reviewed and decisions made in a timely manner. However, if there are more questions or clarification is needed, the application approval can be delayed until the information is gathered.
More information on the city's rules regarding demonstration permits can be found in the City Charter and Codes section on the city's Web site at www.stpaul.gov/code . Reference Chapter 366A, which describes the procedures for applications as well as the rules, regulations, and fees.
“The City of Saint Paul is committed to accommodating as many people as logistically possible while ensuring a safe and enjoyable convention for residents and visitors,” said Erin Dady, Saint Paul marketing director. “Hosting a national event of this magnitude takes a lot of coordination from many city departments and outside groups. This permitting process facilitates the necessary planning for a successful event.”

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That's all. Thanks for reading through! (hopefully not spam to ya!)
--Dan Feidt - dan.feidt@gmail.com

On the Iowa Scene: Ron Paul rips War on Drugs, we YouTubed it

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:15:14 -0800

Hey all I am wandering around with my friends in Des Moines today, and finally in a press conference I got Ron Paul to rip on the war on drugs and recorded it for the Internets. Apparently there is a YouTube lounge in the convention center and we are going to demand entrance despite our lack of credentials.

Mission accomplished today. More video coming probably tomorrow. Party Tonite!