The Agonist - Opinion

Fear-mongering riles OSU security expert

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 06:26:19 -0700

Tom Feran | Columbus, OH | March 17

PD - Fifteen or 20 years ago, John Muel ler thought about writing a musical version of the bitingly comic Cold War satire "Dr. Strangelove." It would have combined two of his big interests, as a political scientist -- he holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at Ohio State University -- and as a recognized authority on dance who counts the scripts for two produced musicals among his credits.

Someone beat him to the stage with "Strangelove," but Mueller might find material for another musical in GWOT, pronounced Jee-watt, short for the Global War on Terror.

Mueller blames "fear-mongering bordering on hysteria" by politicians, bureaucrats, security businesses and the media, all of whom have vested interest in exaggerating threats. This, he says, is exactly what al-Qaida wants, quoting Osama bin Laden saying, "What we're trying to do is spend the U.S. into bankruptcy" and "America is full of fear -- thank God for that."

All roads lead to Rove

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:42:18 -0700

Sydney Blumenthal | Salon | March 15

The Bush administration's first instinct was to shield Karl Rove from scrutiny when Congress began inquiring about the unusual firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Among the replacements, the proposed new U.S. attorney for Arkansas happened to be one of Rove's most devoted underlings, his head of opposition research, Tim Griffin, who boasted during the 2000 presidential election about the effectiveness of the negative campaign against Al Gore: "We make the bullets!" Griffin also posted a sign in his department at Bush headquarters: "Rain hell on Al!" A letter written by the Department of Justice in late February informed Congress: "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." Despite this categorical disavowal, a sheaf of internal Justice Department e-mails released this week to Congress under subpoena revealed Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, writing in mid-December 2006, "I know getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc." Harriet, of course, was Harriet Miers, then the White House legal counsel.

grab a bowl of popcorn and read the rest

God's dupes

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 05:31:12 -0700

Moderate believers give cover to religious fanatics -- and are every bit as delusional.

Los Angeles Times, Sam Harris, March 15

Pete Stark, a California Democrat, appears to be the first congressman in U.S. history to acknowledge that he doesn't believe in God. In a country in which 83% of the population thinks that the Bible is the literal or "inspired" word of the creator of the universe, this took political courage.

Of course, one can imagine that Cicero's handlers in the 1st century BC lost some sleep when he likened the traditional accounts of the Greco-Roman gods to the "dreams of madmen" and to the "insane mythology of Egypt."

Mythology is where all gods go to die, and it seems that Stark has secured a place in American history simply by admitting that a fresh grave should be dug for the God of Abraham — the jealous, genocidal, priggish and self-contradictory tyrant of the Bible and the Koran. Stark is the first of our leaders to display a level of intellectual honesty befitting a consul of ancient Rome. Bravo.

Whose Oil Is It, Anyway

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:33:09 -0700

Antonia Juhasz | March 13

New York Times - TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.

Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.

Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world — have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.

A. Gonzales aka Robert Bork ?

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:31:50 -0700

Mr. Joshua Marshall sees the forest through the trees regarding U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, the now-fired prosecutor of incarcerated U.S. Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham:

"What people tend to overlook is that for most White House's a US attorney involved in such a politically charged and ground-breaking corruption probe would have been untouchable, even if she'd run her office like a madhouse and was offering free twinkies to every illegal who made it across the border. Indeed, when you view the whole context you see that the idea she was fired for immigration enforcement is just laughable on its face. No decision about her tenure could be made without the main issue being that investigation."

The job of a U.S. attorney is to successfully prosecute those who have broken federal law. Res ipsa loquitur.

U.S. Attorney Lam did this -- and up to her recent firing -- was doing this in spades.

So how could Ms. Lam be fired for "performance problems" ?

For putting U.S. Congressmen into jail for committing serious crimes while in office?

Wouldn't this be called exemplary performance by any metric of prosecutor effectiveness?

So putting people in jail who committed substantial and damaging crimes is now a bad thing?

And a "performance problem" ?

These are the questions Mr. Gonzales, the White House and Congressional Republicans now must answer.

Is putting Congressmen who break the law into jail now grounds for the dismissal of a U.S. Attorney ?

How is what Mr. Gonzales has done different from what Richard Nixon asked Attorney General Elliott Richardson to do about special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox ?

What role does Mr. Gonzales now play in the Bush White House, as its walls begin to creak and plaster chips fall from the ceiling into the tomato soup ?

Mr. Robert Bork, meet your doppelganger, Mr. Gonzales.

Postscript:

The firing of 8 U.S. attorneys in quick succession carries the stench of the "multi-tasking approach" the Bush administration used to justify invading Iraq: rely on overlapping, internally contradictory explanations to cover the logical flaws in the whole thing and each part of the whole thing, respectively.

As Mr. Joshua Marshall points out, Alberto Gonzales could not just fire U.S. Attorney Carol Lam without it looking like an obvious move to quash a corruption investigation that is politically damaging to the Republican party.

The solution?

Lump Ms. Lam's firing in with a whole bunch of others and let the resultant flotsam and jetsam confuse and conceal what had just occurred until the debris has either sunk or floated well down past the river bend.

And hand some nice plum appointments to loyal staffers as a way of keeping them loyal and not so apt to jump ship and bite back (the image of mollifying hyenas suddenly comes to mind, I don't know why).

Thoughts ?

Playing Monopoly with Iraqi money

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:46:59 -0700

The biggest transfer of cash in history took place from May 2003 to June 2004 when the U.S. Federal Reserve of New York shipped $12 billion in bills of various denominations to war-torn Iraq. Over the course of one year, a fleet of C-130s carried, from New York to Baghdad, 484 pallets weighing a total of 363 tonnes and holding 281 million banknotes. This is not an advertisement for a new board game but the summary of a memorandum prepared for a meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, which is examining the "reconstruction" of Iraq under Paul Bremer.

No proper record of the funds, which were distributed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, is available. They seem to have been disbursed like Monopoly money.
http://www.straight.com/article-73998/playing-monopoly-with-iraqi-money

'Real ID' threatens everyone's privacy

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 01:24:11 -0800

Hedy Weinberg | March 10

Tennessean - We are, after all, for the first time in the history of a liberty-loving nation, creating a national identification card … with all the ramifications of that. … Real ID was stuffed into the supplemental appropriations bill for Hurricane Katrina and the troops in Iraq, so of course, we had to vote for the bill, but we had no chance to amend it — no debate, no hearing, and no consideration of other alternatives, And now we impose on the states an $11 billion unfunded mandate. … I would say we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't stop and think about what we've done."

Sen. Lamar Alexander's recent comments about the Real ID Act echo the widespread bipartisan resistance to this new law.

How to Save Internet Radio

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:45:09 -0800

Bennett Lincoff | The Register | March 9

Consumers and webcasters are outraged at the license fees that the Copyright Royalty Board (the CRB) has determined will be charged under the webcasting statutory license in the United States. Everyone except spokespeople for the record labels expect that these fees will drive nearly all independent webcasters out of business.

Bennett Lincoff portraitBut inhibiting the growth of webcasting was the goal from the outset, with passage of the anti-webcasting provisions of the DMCA. The impossibly burdensome music use reporting requirements and now these grossly unreasonably statutory license fees are part and parcel of the over all effort to put an end to webcasting.

Bush: U.S. isn't ignoring Latin America

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:41:26 -0800

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer 39 minutes ago

SAO PAULO, Brazil -
President Bush on Friday denied charges that the United States under his leadership has ignored Latin America's poverty and problems.
(Advertisement)

"That may be what people say but it's certainly not what the facts bear out," Bush said. "We care about our neighborhood a lot."

Bush's eighth trip to the region was widely viewed locally as a counter to efforts by the president's nemesis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to use his vast oil wealth to court allies. After Brazil, Bush goes to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.

But, asked about this, Bush refused to even use Chavez' name.

Priests to purify site after Bush visit

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:25:06 -0800

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 9, 12:20 AM ET GUATEMALA CITY - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after
President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites — which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles — would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:43:23 -0800

Washington's escalation of threats against Iran is driven by a determination to secure control of the region's energy resources

The Guardian (comment is free), Noam Chomsky, March 9

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq - a country otherwise free from any foreign interference - on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

In the cold war-like mentality in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shia crescent that stretches from Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon, through Shia southern Iraq and Syria. And again unsurprisingly, the "surge" in Iraq and escalation of threats and accusations against Iran is accompanied by grudging willingness to attend a conference of regional powers, with the agenda limited to Iraq.

Presumably this minimal gesture toward diplomacy is intended to allay the growing fears and anger elicited by Washington's heightened aggressiveness. These concerns are given new substance in a detailed study of "the Iraq effect" by terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, revealing that the Iraq war "has increased terrorism sevenfold worldwide". An "Iran effect" could be even more severe.

Let the Vast, National Enema Begin!

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 09:39:03 -0800

When the verdict came down in Scooter Libby's perjury case I was glad to see that Patrick Fitzgerald had managed to convince eleven peers that Libby lied to the FBI and a grand jury. Less encouraging was the post-verdict commentary of some jurors that they felt sorry for the lying, justice-obstructing bastard. After all, Libby wasn't simply the "fall guy" for Rove, Cheney and Bush. Libby was protecting his own ass, too. These people have committed titanic acts of treason against the United States of America, so their asses are all at ultimate risk.

Despite the misplaced compassion for Libby, I feel guardedly hopeful. Democrats in the House and Senate now have graphic, jury-validated evidence that the Bush administration covered up the crime of outing an undercover CIA agent. Why they would commit such a dastardly betrayal is the next thread to unravel. Libby lied to protect the conspiracy, and now he's going to prison for it. What's the truth behind Libby's lies? Who committed these acts of treason? Was it Karl Rove? Dick Cheney? Did George Bush know? Did Bush order Plame's outing?

Of course they knew. They all knew. None of this makes any sense unless they're all in on it.

As Bush dines on quail at Karl Rove's house, Karl casually tosses table scraps to the pets outside, which squabble over the bones in the cold night air. Bush could hardly fire Rove for following orders, could he? How could he ever replace such a witty host? Besides, Bush will just pardon everybody on his last day, right? That's the ticket...

Meanwhile, in a basement workroom in the House, John Conyers scratches his head over what's on the table: twelve feet of fire hose, an inflatable children's wading pool, and a roll of duct tape. Somehow Conyers must assemble these things into the world's largest enema bag. There's a sick elephant in Washington with six years of shit built up inside. Conyers has the unsavory task of flushing out all that shit, and he knows it won't be pretty.

He picks up the tape and gets to work.

The strangle hold on America

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 09:03:30 -0800

In recent years, our government has slowly started reaching into what has until now been issues of states rights. They are putting us into a political strangle hold. The newest example is the Executive branch firing the US attorneys that they don't agree with. But this is only one of the multitude of things they are doing to split the masses into certain groups and put a financial noose around our necks, and the necks of generations yet unborn.

Since the 1980's, we have been told of the looming crisis in the Social Security System. Nothing was done to it until the 1990's, and what was done then amounted to a no more than a single drop of water in the ocean. And during the past 6 years, it has been purposefully put in even greater risk of failure. With the tax cuts of the past few years, we are all but guaranteed its demise.

Our current Administration, along with the NeoCons, have had a plan for years on how they were going to get out of paying the Social Security that we were already promised. They would cut taxes to the point where the government was always in a deficit mode. Then they would borrow us into such a huge debt that all the tax money that should have gone into shoring up the Social Security network was being spent on repaying the debt. This went throughout the entire social safety system in place in America. And it has worked very well up until now. For the most part the public is blissfully ignorant about the coming financial crisis.

But then they got an unexpected bonus. We were attacked on 9/11. Now they have a war to further drain the coffers. So they increased the military budget to just under $100.000 per second. And then still asked for more to fight the war. If that wasn't enough, they started another war that was totally unnecessary. Before Bush leaves office, we will have spent over 1 trillion dollars on these wars. That covers the cost of fighting, rebuilding, replacing equipment, and repairing our damaged troops. And we borrowed all of this money as well. To make matters worse, we borrowed the money from China, Japan and North Korea. We already had a huge trade gap with them.

So now we will be repaying this debt until our children's grandchildren are broke. A recent GAO study showed that in order to pay the social security debt, that really isn't a debt at all, and keep up with the cost of future growth in the other Social Programs, we would have to increase the tax rate by 3.5% for every American, every year for the next 75 years. All the trillions we are wasting fighting an unwinnable war would really help matters. And I would bet my last dollar that all of this will be blamed on the democrats because we were asleep at the wheel when we were being driven off the cliff.

Dollars, Not Sense

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:29:17 -0800

Dollars, Not Sense

From the site:
The costs to the taxpayer of contract mismanagement are enormous, but they are often hidden from public view. There is no existing database available to the public that systematically tracks the extent of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal contracts. The Dollars, Not Sense database is an effort to remedy this deficiency.

And as I look at my paycheck every other week and the taxes withheld, I try to wrap my head around the numbers involved in this administration's horrid mismanagement of funds and good ol' boy payouts. I think about my job. My work ethic. My pride. My dignity. My sense of accomplishment. Every other person out there who does their job only to end up funding incompetence.

The thought of cutting a corner or slighting a client doesn't cross my mind. I wouldn't want someone else to do that in my backyard. How do you take money and NOT do your job? How do you GIVE money to people for NOT doing their job? Why does my hard work continue to finance these vultures with easy payouts?

And I don't understand how money just disappears. On all government contracts I've worked under, if you want to get reimbursed and paid, you bet your sweet ass you better have receipts, invoices, tracking numbers, and work orders or you don't get squat. So how does this fly at the upper echelons? Why does accountability and responsibility not matter?

If someone has an answer, I'm all ears.

The brotherhood is gathering outside the pharaoh's palace

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:53:51 -0800

Timothy Garton Ash | Aswan | March 8

The Mubarak regime is heading for a succession crisis. By trying to strangle Egypt's Islamists, it has strengthened them

The Guardian - In front of the towering golden sandstone entrance to the temple of Edfu stands an imposing granite statue of a falcon, some 12ft tall, representing Horus, a premier league Egyptian god. Sculpted into his chest is a small figure of one of the Greek rulers of Egypt at the time when the temple was built. To buttress his political legitimacy, the alien neo-pharaoh had not merely wrapped himself in the flag but carved himself into the stone of a powerful god. The rulers of Egypt have been playing this game for thousands of years - and they are at it again today.