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Observations (and occasional brash opining) on science, computers, books, music and other shiny things that catch my mind's eye. There's a home page with ostensibly more permanent stuff. This is intended to be more functional than decorative. I neither intend nor want to surf on the bleeding edge, keep it real, redefine journalism or attract nyphomaniacal groupies (well, maybe a wee bit of the latter). The occasional cheap laugh, raised eyebrow or provocation of interest are all I'll plead guilty to in the matter of intent. Bene qui latuit bene vixit.

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Friday, September 28, 2001

OPERATION NORTHWOODS
ABC News provides an interesting tidbit that may or may not be relevant to recent events.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.


posted by Steven Baum 9/28/2001 04:42:11 PM | link

ROVE AND HUGHES, TOGETHER AGAIN
A
New York Post gossip column item is just too fun to pass up, seeing how it describes the great discomfort of two of my favorite people in the world. It concerns the interview of Dick Cheney by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" on the Sunday following the attacks.
Karen Hughes and Karl Rove, two top aides to President Bush, were said to be angry because they felt Cheney took too much credit for running the country during the crisis. Cheney, oblivious to the fracas his comments could cause, gave a blow by blow of what happened in the White House on Sept. 11.

While President Bush was being flown around the country in Air Force One for his own safety, Cheney told Bush to stay away from Washington, the vice president told "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert five days later.

Cheney also said he ordered the Congressional leadership evacuated, dispersed Cabinet members to emergency shelters and urged Bush to scramble fighter jets to intercept any rogue airliners.

"I was in a position to see all the stuff coming in, receive reports, and then make decisions in terms of acting with it," Cheney told Russert. "The president made [the rogue airliner] decision, on my recomendation."

Rove and Hughes, according to spies, were "furious" with Cheney for "taking credit for all the major decisions made by Bush [on Sept. 11] and sidelining the President."

While most rational Americans were probably quite relieved to find out that the Smirking Chimp was relegated to reading comic books while the half-dead man made the important decisions.
"Everything [Cheney] said reinforced all the negative opinions about Bush [during the show]. He basically made the President look like his puppet."
Which provided needed comfort to those Americans more sentient than a bag of rocks. I'm not at all religious, but I was sure as hell praying for Cheney's pacemaker that day.
In the past, Rove and Hughes have had a rocky relationship and "hated" each other at times, spies said, but the two pulled together upon hearing the supposed slight on their boss.

Rove is said to have insisted that all future requests from Russert for White House guests would have to go through him, while Hughes screamed at Cheney's staff.

... breaking more windows than had been shattered by the airliner impact at the Pentagon.
"Karen was irate that [Cheney's staff] would let him say what he did and wanted Cheney to know he had made a mistake," a spy said.

One happy footnote is Rove and Hughes - whose relationship was icy in the past - are now said to be "good friends."

And you thought that bit about Dr. Evil getting together with his vicious hellbat of an assistant was just something Mike Meyers made up for a cheap laugh.
posted by Steven Baum 9/28/2001 04:27:28 PM | link

ANOTHER STRONG ALLY
Eric Boehlert's
Friends Like These offers some background information on Saudi Arabia, a nation that isn't listed among the "terrorist" states that have to be dealt with in the Holy War on Terrorism. The following excerpt sums up quite a bit of the problem, although there are further complexities described in the article.
Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, author and expert on Islamic extremism in Pakistan, writes that the problem is even more widespread: "If the U.S. wants to do something about radical Islam, it has to deal with Saudi Arabia. The 'rogue states' [Iraq, Libya, etc.] are less important in the radicalization of Islam than Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the single most important cause and supporter of the general fanaticization of Islam."

Why hasn't America raised that red flag? Consider that last May Saudi Arabia announced its most lucrative Western investment deal in nearly three decades, a natural gas project by America's ExxonMobil oil company valued at $100 billion.

Meanwhile, since 1989, Saudis have purchased $40 billion worth of military products from America.


posted by Steven Baum 9/28/2001 04:17:15 PM | link

SPOKESPERSON SHRUB
In
a speech at Chicago O'Hare International Airport announcing a $3 billion package of the sort of security measures the GOP's paymasters in the airline industry have been successfully lobbying against for a couple of decades, the Chief Spokesperson for Corporate America said:
"Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed."
Apparently the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Big Bend and the other national parks don't pay as well as Disney World, whose UberCorp also owns ABC broadcasting. They also aren't located in states currently run by the President's brother and, face it, all those unsightly oil rigs in the national parks just aren't very aesthetically pleasing. The Chief Corporate Shill also mentioned how it was time to "get back to work," a feeling undoubtedly shared by all except perhaps the tens of thousands being laid off and ignored in the $16 billion airline industry bailout.

In a related development, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld moved to further buoy the spirits of airline travelers by announcing ...

... new procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners that seemed to underscore the potential threats still posed by terrorists 16 days after three planes were crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Under the new rules of engagement, regional commanders - Air Force generals - may give the order to shoot down a hijacked airliner if time does not permit the president or other senior officials to be contacted.
Rumsfeld obviously wished to raise the spirits of those too busy or otherwise unable to make it to Disney World by offering the possibility of a thrilling rollercoaster-like ride on each and every flight.
posted by Steven Baum 9/28/2001 03:45:41 PM | link

SMEDLEY BUTLER, USMC
"There's only one [Smedley] Butler. He was one of the really great generals in American history."

Gen. Douglas MacArthur

An excerpt from a speech given by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC in 1933. I reread this every time I hear the sabres rattle. I wonder how Smedley would see the current situation, seeing how it wasn't a nation coming over here to fight, although it was an attack. He'd most likely be clever enough to see the oil subtext written all over the current situation, though.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

The Soundprint archives include a half hour program on Smedley Butler in RealAudio format. A longer article by Butler called War is a Racket is also available.

Butler was involved in thwarting a Wall Street plot against the U.S. government in 1934-1935:

Butler had friends in the press and Congress, so he could not be ignored when he came forward in late 1934 with a tale of conspiracy against President Roosevelt, in which he had been asked to take a leading role. At first glance, Butler seems an unlikely candidate for such a position. While Butler was a Republican, in 1932 he campaigned for Roosevelt, calling himself a "Republican-for-Ex-President Hoover." (Butler had a poor relationship with Hoover going back to their time together during the Boxer Rebellion.)
...
Butler testified that bond trader Gerald MacGuire had approached him in the summer of 1933. MacGuire claimed to represent wealthy Wall Street broker Grayson Murphy, Singer sewing machine heir Robert Sterling Clark, and other unnamed men of wealth. They asked Butler to speak publicly on behalf of the gold standard, recently abandoned by President Roosevelt. MacGuire's rationale for why Butler should ally himself with the gold standard cause was that the veterans of World War I were due a bonus in 1945. As MacGuire told Butler, "We want to see the soldiers' bonus paid in gold. We do not want the soldier to have rubber money or paper money."

It appears that the plotters underestimated Butler's intelligence and character. When this explanation failed to persuade Butler, MacGuire and Clark offered him money, abandoning any pretense of civic-mindness. Butler's sense of honor prevented him from speaking in favor of any policy for mercenary reasons.

MacGuire eventually told Butler their real goal. MacGuire asked Butler to lead an army of 500,000 veterans in a march on Washington, D.C. The stated mission was to protect Roosevelt from other plotters, and install a "secretary of general welfare" to "take all the worries and details off of his shoulders." But Butler saw through their supposed concern for Roosevelt. He testified before Congress that he told MacGuire:

" [M]y interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home.

Yes; and then you will put somebody in there you can run; is that the idea? The President will go around and christen babies and dedicate bridges, and kiss children. Mr. Roosevelt will never agree to that himself."

Butler eventually deduced that the real goal was a coup d'état to take Roosevelt captive, and force reinstatement of the gold standard, the loss of which many wealthy Americans feared would lead to rapid inflation. The plotters would keep Roosevelt as a figurehead until he could be "encouraged" to retire.

That MacGuire had significant financial backing behind him seems clear, considering the substantial bank savings books he showed to Butler. What remains unclear is whether the names MacGuire dropped (other than Robert Sterling Clark) were really involved, or whether MacGuire was a con man.

MacGuire's claims and financial resources alone did not convince Butler that such a conspiracy actually existed. The fulfillment of a series of startling predictions by MacGuire did finally persuade Butler that there was more than just hot air involved. MacGuire knew in advance of significant personnel changes in the White House. He correctly predicted the formation of the American Liberty League (the major conservative opposition to Roosevelt), and the principal players in it. Especially disturbing was that many of the supposed backers of the plot were also members of the League. MacGuire's claim that the League ("villagers in the opera" of the scheme, in MacGuire's words) was part of the plot could not be easily dismissed.
...
MacGuire, not surprisingly, denied that such a plot existed. Instead, he claimed his activities had been political lobbying to preserve the gold standard, but he quickly destroyed his credibility as a witness by giving contradictory testimony. While the final report agreed with Butler that there was evidence of a coup d'état plot against Roosevelt, no further action was taken on it. The Committee's authority to subpoena witnesses expired at the end of 1934, and the Justice Department started no criminal investigation.
...
The Committee's report excluded many of the most embarrassing names given by MacGuire, and repeated by Butler. MacGuire had claimed that 1928 Democratic President candidate Al Smith, General Hugh Johnson (head of Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration), General Douglas MacArthur, and a number of other generals and admirals were privy to the plot. Since Butler had no evidence of their involvement, other than MacGuire's claims, it was certainly reasonable for the Committee to exclude these details from the final report as "certain immaterial and incompetent evidence." But in conjunction with MacGuire's apparent advance knowledge of the details of internal White House staff activities, it certainly suggests that if a coup was planned, it had significant support within the Roosevelt Administration.

The plot was detailed in a book by Jules Archer entitled The Plot to Seize the White House.
posted by Steven Baum 9/28/2001 01:09:09 PM | link

CEO RELIEF FUND
According to
James Higdon, the airline bailout package does just about what I expected it would do.
Congress approved a fifteen billion dollar welfare package for corporate airlines which includes a doubling of CEO pensions should the CEOs retire in the next three years. For the thousands of employees who have lost their jobs through the gross malfeasance of airline CEOs and Congress, Congress has offered those laid off workers, and those workers expected to be laid off, an extra week of unemployment and medical benefits.
Ah, but if they invest that extra week of unemployment along with their $300 tax rebate, then they'll have a nice little nest-egg that'll see them through many a troubling minute, although the really patriotic thing to do would be to spend it immediately to get the economy, i.e. the Dow Jones, back on its feet. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for Wall Street.
posted by Steven Baum 9/28/2001 11:13:57 AM | link

THE SUN SETS IN FLORIDA
In a follow-up to a
recent item detailing the almost supernatural prescience of Jeb Bush in anticipating the terrorist attacks, a Palm Beach Post article tells how public records are in danger of becoming not so public.
Florida is under a state of emergency, legislators are considering closing committee meetings, and routine public records are being withheld in the name of a massive federal terrorism investigation.

In the two weeks since suicide attacks killed thousands, civil libertarians are growing worried that Florida's ironclad Government-in-the-Sunshine Law -- the most open in the nation -- could become collateral damage.

"I understand the fear because I'm afraid. But this rush to close access doesn't do us any good," said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation. "At this time of national crisis, it's more important than ever that we know how well our government is functioning."

Petersen's concerns weren't eased Monday evening when [GOP] House and Senate leaders announced the creation of special "security" committees assigned to coordinate Florida's response to the national emergency.

"The tragedies of Sept. 11 have prompted a nationwide effort to improve security measures, and it is important that the House of Representatives is equipped with the most current knowledge and technological information on anti-terrorism available," Speaker Tom Feeney, a Republican attorney from Oviedo, said in a release.

The story goes on to describe the last time Florida set up a special "committee" in a time of supposed crisis.
In 1956, when the nation was waging a Cold War, the Legislative Investigation Committee was born in Florida. Most often referred to by the name of its chief advocate, Sen. Charley Johns, D-Starke, the committee spent nearly a decade investigating suspected communists and subversives and rooting out homosexuals in Florida universities.

When the committee records were opened in 1993, researchers discovered that the committee had interrogated and harassed more than 1,000 suspects in motels, police stations and courthouses. Most were never charged with a crime.

Ain't it funny how the backwater province whose chief commissar did everything in his power, legal or otherwise, to ensure that his brother became supreme dictator, is now closing down public records in the state. Apparently he agrees with the sentiment his brother expressed about how "there's such a thing as a little too much freedom."

Infamous Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who basically ran a Shrub campaign out of her office, is also amongst those out to ensure that this freedom thing doesn't get so much out of hand that it leads to another "attack on freedom."

Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who heads the state library division, announced Tuesday her staff is working with county librarians to develop new "protocols" that would require "better identification" for using Internet-connected computers at libraries, such as those suspected of being used by some of the terrorists.

posted by Steven Baum 9/28/2001 10:31:58 AM | link

U.S. REVERSES ON CHECHNYA
A
Reuters item describes a predictable move by the U.S. concerning the Chechnya "rebels". This move will at least temporarily reduce the huge amount of hypocrisy surrounding the Holy War on Terrorism. Note, although, that they're urging the "rebels" to cut ties with the "terrorists". What the hell happened to "we're going to punish terrorists and those who aid or shelter them"? And I don't see the U.S. urging the hundreds of "suspects" they're rounding up and detaining to merely "cut ties with terrorist groups."
In a major diplomatic coup for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the White House on Wednesday urged separatist rebel leaders in Russia's Chechnya province to cut ties with terrorist groups.

The U.S. welcome of Putin's initiative for peace talks with Chechnya's rebels -- which the Russian leader reinforced with a 72-hour deadline for acceptance -- followed a Russian offer of limited support for the U.S.-led effort to combat terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

"The Chechen leadership, like all responsible political leaders around the world, must immediately and unconditionally cut all contact with international terrorist groups such as Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda organization," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told Reuters. His comments were the first official U.S. reaction to Putin's offer for talks.

I'm fairly certain this is the first time the U.S. government has officially admitted the involvement of bin Laden in Chechnya. But Fleischer, being Fleischer, couldn't stand uttering anything approaching the truth without having to follow up with an obvious lie to cleanse his mental palate.
He later denied there was any "deal" exchanging U.S. support on Chechnya for Russia's cooperation in the terrorism effort. "No such conclusion should be reached," Fleischer told reporters.

President Bush has accused bin Laden and his al Qaeda network of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that left nearly 7,000 dead or missing and presumed dead. There was no question that there was an "international terrorist presence" in Chechnya with links to bin Laden, Fleischer said.

The United States has long criticized Russia for using excessive force against the Chechen rebels, and in last year's presidential campaign Bush said he would cut off aid to Russia until it withdrew from Chechnya.

That is, Bush (or, more accurately, his string-pullers) threatened to cut off aid to someone fighting against allies of bin Laden. Cheney's not pathologically stupid, and he knew enough insiders to know what was really going on in Chechnya. Why? At that point oil was more important than revenge, although now we'll probably conveniently get both. Once the "ties" with "terrorist groups" are cut by Chechnya, they can more conveniently be referred to as "rebels", backed with U.S. aid to become an "independent" client state in the region, and be used against Russia in the very real war for oil and gas.
posted by Steven Baum 9/28/2001 09:51:07 AM | link

Thursday, September 27, 2001

TOM RIDGE, VEEP
From
CounterPunch, we find out maybe why Tom Ridge was appointed as head of the new Ministry of the Interior, er, Office of Homeland Security.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, vice president Dick Cheney was set to quit. President George Bush was preparing to nominate Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as Cheney's successor.

A prominent Philadelphia businessman and close friend of Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge has been telling friends that in late summer Cheney went to Bush and told the President that his health was so precarious that he would soon be forced to quit the vice presidential post. Bush had thereupon called the Pennsylvania governor and told him that when Cheney stepped down he wanted to nominate Ridge to the U.S. Senate for confirmation as the new vice president.
...
When Cheney was in the hospital for surgery after his last heart attack, Ridge was summoned to Camp David, where he appeared at a press conference standing behind Bush.

Ridge was also at the top of the list when Cheney was searching for a veep for Bush, that is, before Cheney recognized the superior qualities of Cheney. It probably would have been Ridge if he hadn't been pro-choice.
posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 04:49:51 PM | link

ASHCROFT'S WET DREAM
Gary Leech describes "anti-terrorism" legislation enacted in Columbia in an article at the
Columbia Report dated June 4, 2001.
In a throwback to the days of the Cold War counterinsurgency campaigns, the Colombian Senate recently passed a bill authorizing the nation's security forces to wage war against the Colombian people in the name of anti-terrorism. The new bill, now being debated in the lower house of Colombia's Congress, will unleash the army against the civilian population, especially in rural regions, using tactics that violate international human rights treaties to which Colombia is a signatory. The new policy is reminiscent of the counterinsurgency strategies promulgated by the United States throughout Latin America during the Cold War years. Recent decisions by the Bush Administration indicate it will be more than willing to support the re-implementation of such tactics by the Colombian army.
...
The likely consequences of the military's newfound freedom will be a dramatic increase in human rights abuses perpetrated by the army against the civilian population. The bill would allow an army unit to enter a village and detain citizens for seven days without charging them with a crime. There is little doubt this violation of international humanitarian law would be used against community leaders, human rights workers, union members and anyone else the army chooses to cast as a leftist or guerrilla sympathizer.

Secondly, under the new law soldiers would be permitted to force villagers to act as informants and intelligence agents, a tactic that will undoubtedly result in retaliation against the villagers by whichever armed group they are forced to betray. And finally, the proposed law allows soldiers to arrest anyone for subversion based solely on the statement of a fellow citizen--more than likely obtained under duress.

nevitably, the use of such tactics by the army will result in charges of human rights violations being leveled against overzealous troops. However, the new bill foresees this "problem" and addresses it by providing immunity to members of the armed forces who commit human rights abuses while combating "supposed" terrorist groups.

The new law also turns over responsibility for the investigations and autopsies of subversives killed in combat--currently performed by government officials--to the military. Furthermore, just to guarantee that soldiers aren't accidentally charged with human rights abuses in spite of these safeguards, the bill has a provision to ensure that all ongoing and future investigations into rights violations by security forces will become a matter for military justice and not civilian courts.

There is little doubt about who will become the principal targets of the military's tactics: any rural villager believed to be sympathetic to the guerrillas. Rural Colombians, already the principal victims in the nation's conflict, are now being offered up for slaughter by legislators in Bogotá rattled by the war's recent arrival at their doorsteps.

A campesino does not have to do much to be accused of having leftist sympathies in Colombia's volatile political and social climate, least of all anything that would be considered suitable evidence in a court of law. Often, villagers are deemed to be sympathetic to the rebels simply based on the geographic area in which they reside. Sometimes peasants aid the guerrillas out of fear, which also leads to their being labeled as sympathizers. And now, according to the would-be law, any Colombian could be arrested for subversion on the word of a neighbor who may bear nothing more than a personal grudge.

Thus, more dirt-poor peasants will die whether they're real "terrorists", sympathize with the "terrorists", live in the same area as the "terrorists", or even if they've just annoyed one of their neighbors.

And who will be utterly and completely safe, while profiting enormously from the drug trade? The AUC, a paramilitary group responsible for 80% of the killings in Columbia in recent years and which admits to obtaining 70% of their funding from illegal drug sales. Why? Because they're defined as "freedom fighters" rather than "terrorists," basically because they're more or less an unofficial branch of the official Columbian military. Whether a group is labeled as "terrorists" or "freedom fighters" is a matter of their ideology or usefulness rather than their actions.

And who else will be safe? Those hundreds or thousands of miles away who profit enormously from the illegal drug trade. Nick Trebat explains methods that can be used to cut down on the manufacture and distribution of illegal drugs - methods that are well-known to those who keep pouring money into military solutions anyway.

A more sensible U.S. policy should also include a focus on drug factors closer to home. For example, the Clinton Administration might consider cracking down on U.S and other Western corporations involved in exporting to Colombia the enormous quantities of the precursor chemicals required to process raw narcotic plant material into hard drugs. Drug processing, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is an extremely "complicated" process, requiring "sophisticated equipment and skills," as well as "expensive chemicals" like potassium permanganate, ether and acetone "that are harder to find and often not manufactured in the processing country." Those that bear the brunt of aggressive U.S. supply-side drug policies in Colombia-peasant cultivators, petty drug pushers, and the guerrillas-are clearly not the major players in the lucrative, transnational narcotics industry.

The U.S. should also consider devoting funds to an in-depth investigation of the major multinational banks and companies involved in laundering billions of dollars in drug revenues. If anything, the volume of money laundering has grown in recent years even as the U.S. public's consciousness of the problem has declined.

Alberto Galan, brother of murdered Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, emphasized the weakness of U.S. policy in not probing this link between private corporations and drugs. Washington, according to Mr. Galan, avoids "the core of the problem.the economic ties between the legal and illegal worlds.the large financial corporations.It would make a lot more sense to attack and prosecute the few at the top of the drug business rather than fill prisons with thousands of small fish."

It ain't gonna happen. More billions will be poured into purely military solutions, more thousands of peasants will die, and the rich will get richer.
posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 04:21:44 PM | link

OIL COMPANY SECURITY FORCES
Fred Goldstein lists the numbers and locations of U.S. forces on semi-permanent oil company business in the Middle East before Sept. 11, i.e. before the Holy War on Terrorism.
The Navy had 20,000 personnel and two aircraft carrier battle groups with 70 aircraft. In Saudi Arabia there are 5,200 U.S. troops, mainly from the Air Force, with Patriot missiles, F-15, F-16 and F-117 fighter planes, U-2 spy planes and AWACS flying command posts.

In Kuwait there are 4,800 troops from the Army and Air Force plus a prepositioned, reinforced brigade with two tank battalions, a mechanized infantry battalion and an artillery battalion.

Bahrain houses 1,000 personnel, mostly naval, and is the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet.

In Turkey, 2,000 troops, mostly from the Air Force, are stationed at a base used to fly over Iraq with F-15 and F-16 fighters.

Other U.S. forces are spread around the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and, in the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia.

Altogether the U.S. has 30,000 troops, massive numbers of aircraft, missiles, artillery and bases for rapid deployment in the region.

These forces were already there before the current crisis. They threatened the people on a 24-hour-a-day basis lest anyone in the region did anything to jeopardize the vast oil, financial and militarily strategic interests of the U.S. Now they are being vastly increased.

Is doubling or tripling the number of troops going to frighten any further those who are used to a more-or-less permanent regional occupation force?
posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 03:38:17 PM | link

MORE GOP FAMILY VALUES
An
AP story by James Jefferson provides further insight into the "family values party". The GOP used to be known as the party of the "twice born", but it would seem that "twice married" is now more appropriate.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A conservative, family values candidate's admission of an extramarital affair complicated Tuesday's special primary election in a race for a congressional seat vacated by the new Drug Enforcement Administration chief.

Four Republicans and three Democrats sought party nominations for the 3rd District seat vacated in August by Asa Hutchinson.

Hutchinson's nephew, former state Rep. Jim Hendren, had been the front-runner for the GOP nomination until the father of four admitted that he had a yearlong affair with a married woman.
...
The race came about in May, when the White House announced that President Bush planned to name Hutchinson the new DEA chief.

Hendren, 38, a plastics company owner, became the clear front-runner to succeed his uncle, but he dropped out of the race before the month was up, citing family considerations. He rejoined the campaign just days later, saying he would not let threatened personal attacks force him out of the race.

Hendren admitted the affair Aug. 21.

Criticism of Hendren by his Republican opponents was restrained, perhaps to avoid causing political damage to another uncle, U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., who two years ago divorced his wife of 29 years and later married a former member of his Washington staff.


posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 03:05:21 PM | link

FROM THE HORSE'S ASS
"The model of thought there, and quite frankly, the model of thought that says we need to go out and extend unemployment benefits and health insurance benefits and so forth is not I think one that is commensurate with the American spirit here."

Dick "Dick" Armey, the House Majority Leader during a debate about whether unemployment benefits and health insurance should be extended for the tens of thousands losing their jobs in various industries. On the other hand, Armey's all for cutting the capital gains tax, undoubtedly to ensure that the unemployed can afford to buy more food, shelter and insurance themselves when they sell off their stock options.


"You can support our troops but not the President."

Trent Lott, Senator and former cheerleader giving sage advice to those in the military during the Clinton years.


posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 02:44:19 PM |
link

NEXT YEAR'S MAP
BartCop's got a map of what parts of Asia are going to look like in a few years.

New Texas

posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 02:09:53 PM | link

SPINMEISTERS
Jake Tapper tells us of one of vital national security tasks recently undertaken by White House staffers:
On the same day last week that "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw sat down to interview former President Clinton, executives for the program received unexpected phone calls from senior communications staffers at the White House, expressing disappointment about the decision to spotlight Bush's predecessor.

While not asking the network to refrain from running the interview, they expressed the feeling that the Sept. 18 interview with Clinton would not be helpful to the current war on terrorism. Neither NBC nor the White House would comment on the phone calls, but sources familiar with the calls confirmed that they happened.

Or should that be "national insecurity task"? I wonder if they've started airbrushing Clinton's pictures out of official White House histories yet.
posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 12:45:15 PM | link

AN ANNIVERSARY
Roger Burbach discusses another event that took place on a September 11. It's another instructive lesson about the "T"-word and the creation of Frankensteins, and also recapitulates another incident of terrorism on U.S. soil, one that's usually not mentioned.
It is an uncanny historic coincidence that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred exactly twenty-eight years after General Augusto Pinochet toppled the elected government of Socialist President Salvador Allende in Chile. The bloody coup in Santiago on September 11, 1973, which I lived through, is widely believed to have had the backing of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

It marked the advent of a regime that systematically employed terror at home and abroad to remain in power for almost seventeen years. Prior to the attack on the Pentagon, the most sensational foreign-lead terrorist action in the capitol had been carried out by a team of operatives sent by the Pinochet regime. On September 21, 1976, agents of the Chilean secret police organization, DINA, detonated a car bomb just blocks from the White House, killing a leading opponent of Pinochet?s, Orlando Letelier, and his assistant Ronni Moffitt. Letelier, who I spoke to at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. before his death, was a man deeply committed to democracy and a more humane world who had served at the highest levels of the Allende government.

These assassinations were linked to the first international terrorist network in the Western Hemisphere, known as Operation Condor. Begun in 1974 at the instigation of the Chilean secret police, Operation Condor was a sinister cabal comprised of the intelligence services of at least six South American countries that collaborated in tracking, kidnapping and assassinating political opponents. Based on documents recently divulged under the Chile Declassification Project of the Clinton administration, it is now recognized that the CIA knew about these international terrorist activities and may have even abetted them.

The Chilean secret police, often with the assistance of other Condor partners, carried out a number of international terrorist operations. On September 30, 1974, retired General Carlos Pratts, who Pinochet replaced as head of the Chilean military shortly before the 1973 coup, was killed by a car bomb while living in exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In Rome in 1975, DINA operatives attacked and seriously maimed Chilean Christian Democratic politician Bernardo Leighton and his wife.

Papers found in Paraguayan archives in the 1990s reveal that Operation Condor was also linked to the assassination of a Brazilian general and two Uruguayan parliamentarians, as well as to scores of lesser-known political activists. After the murders of Letelier- Moffitt in Washington D.C., the CIA appears to have concluded that Condor was a rogue operation and may have tried to contain its activities. However, the network of Southern Cone military and intelligence operations continued to act throughout Latin America at least until the early 1980s. Chilean and Argentine military units assisted the dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and helped set up death squads in El Salvador. Argentine units also aided and supervised Honduran military death squads that began operating in the early 1980s with the direct assistance and collaboration the CIA.


posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 11:26:21 AM | link

THE "L" WORD
So how are terrorist groups around the world funded? There's some funding from "rogue" states, some from private individuals, some from large numbers of expatriates, but there's one really big and ubiquitous source, according to the
Media Awareness Project:
But these sources of funding are not the bread and butter of terrorism, Mr. Thompson said. "The big money earner for most of them seems to be narcotics."

Law enforcement agencies agree. In 1994, Interpol's chief drugs officer, Iqbal Hussain Rizvi, admitted that "drugs have taken over as the chief means of financing terrorism."

After the fall of the Soviet Union, terrorists quickly moved into the business that offers bigger, faster profits than any other. In Northern Ireland, both Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries traffic drugs to pay for weapons.

n Kosovo, "the creation of the KLA ( Kosovo Liberation Army ) was financed by intense heroin trafficking from Istanbul," Alain Labrousse, the head of Observatoire francais des drogues et des toxicomanies, a French organization that studies drugs, recently testified before a Canadian Senate committee. "The heroin was sold in Switzerland to buy Kalashnikovs and handguns."

n Peru and Colombia, leftist rebels have tapped into the illicit trade in cocaine and heroin to finance their activities. The leader of right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia recently admitted that they get 70 per cent of their funding from the illegal drug trade.

In his presentation to the Senate committee, Mr. Labrousse presented a list of countries in which armed insurgents have been financed to some degree by the black market in drugs. There were 29 nations in all.

ust how much of a group's financing comes from drugs varies widely, Mr. Thompson said. "With the Islamic fundamentalists, ( it is ) maybe 25 to 30 per cent. It's probably the single biggest money earner."

The drugs trafficked by Islamic terrorists include marijuana from Lebanon, but more commonly they distribute heroin. Afghanistan is one of the largest growers of opium poppies, the source of heroin.

Even Osama bin Laden may have his hands in the drug trade. According to a Russian report, Mr. bin Laden has bankrolled Chechen gunmen in Dagestan with funds generated from heroin trafficking.

The importance of illegal drugs to the financing of terrorism raises an obvious question. If illegal drugs are the single largest source of funding for terrorism, can you hurt terrorism by legalizing drugs?

"Probably," John Thompson said. "In fact I think you could hurt it considerably."

So we have another fun consequence of the Holy War on Drugs. There have been discussions amongst the G8 group about how to cut terrorist financing, but there's one sacred cow they won't even discuss:
The G8 and the United Nations have discussed the problem of terrorist financing over the past several years, but they have never discussed drug prohibition in that light. The G8 went so far as to explicitly refuse to talk about drug legalization.
We started with the Holy War on Drugs and now we have the Holy War on Terrorism on top of that. So's who's making money from both of these wars, and who's getting impoverished, jailed or killed? If one were conspiracy minded ...
posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 11:16:35 AM | link

THE NEXT TALIBAN
Another Frankenstein is being created in Colombia as a counter to ideological incorrectness and, of course, to ensure the availability of a source of oil. That Frankenstein is the AUC, or the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia. The
origins of the AUC can be traced to the 80s, when it began as a counter to the ideologically incorrect FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist organization that originated from the survivors of a 1964 Columbian military action against a peasant cooperative. If you haven't already figured it out, the AUC are the official "good" guys and the FARC the "bad" guys, according to both the U.S. government and the "fiercely independent" media curled up in its lap. Or, to put it in currently trendy terms, the FARC are the "terrorists" and the AUC the "freedom fighters."

The evolution and current state of the AUC is described at CIP.

The growth [of the AUC] coincided with the advent of Colombia's drug trade. Newly wealthy drug traffickers laundered their profits by buying up as much as 2.5 million acres of land in northern Colombia during the 1980s. These new landholders put together private armies to deal with the guerrillas who kidnapped and extorted wealthy ranchers in the area. One of the first, and most feared, was a group calling itself "Death to Kidnappers" (Muerte a Secuestradores, or MAS), active in the Magdalena Medio region of north-central Colombia.

With funding from drug traffickers and other large landholders, and close and open collaboration with Colombia's armed forces, the paramilitaries gained strength throughout the 1980s. Their tactics -- selective assassinations and forced disappearances, massacres, forced displacement of entire populations -- quickly made them one of the country's main human rights abusers. They also played a strong role in the decimation of the Patriotic Union political party (see FARC section above).

The abuses of groups like MAS caused paramilitaries to be declared illegal in 1989. Little was done to disband them, though. Human rights groups have documented widespread post-1989 collaboration between Colombia's armed forces and paramilitary groups.

In the early 1990s the United Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá, a group headed by brothers Carlos and Fidel Castańo, emerged in northwestern Colombia. (Fidel is now assumed to be dead.) Using extreme brutality toward civilian populations, the group has weakened guerrillas and established a permanent presence throughout northern Colombia. The ACCU forms the nucleus of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an umbrella group headed by Castańo and formed around 1997. The AUC began making inroads into FARC-controlled coca-growing areas in southern Colombia in the late 1990s.

The paramilitaries support themselves with donations from landowners and drug lords, and are increasingly involved in the drug trade itself. DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall explained the extent of paramilitary involvement to a congressional committee in March 2001.

"Carlos Castańo "has recently admitted in open press that his group receives payments - similar to the taxes levied by the FARC - from coca growers in southern Colombia in exchange for protection from guerrillas. Several paramilitary groups also raise funds through extortion, or by protecting laboratory operations in northern and central Colombia. The Carlos Castańo organization, and possibly other paramilitary groups, appears to be directly involved in processing cocaine. At least one of these paramilitary groups appears to be involved in exporting cocaine from Colombia."

Fueled in large part by drug money, the paramilitaries have have expanded ninefold since 1992 and have more than doubled in size since 1998, now counting with more than 8,000 members. The groups are growing about five times as fast as the FARC. They also currently commit about 80 percent of killings associated with Colombia's conflict.

While the hundreds of millions in counter-drug (i.e. military) funding the U.S. is giving to Colombia (with much more to come so even more Colombian peasants can die for the sins of American yuppie cokeheads in the Holy War on Drugs) is earmarked for use by the official government security forces, there's a long history of the official forces collaborating with paramilitary groups like the AUC.
Though their share of direct involvement in killings and disappearances has fallen sharply in recent years, the armed forces nonetheless continue to face serious allegations of indirect human rights abuse through collaboration with paramilitary groups. Except for a few high-profile cases, past abusers continue to enjoy near-complete impunity.
Colombia's also being dragged into the current Holy War on Terrorism, as evidenced by the following statement by Colin Powell on Sept. 23:
"We have designated three groups in Colombia alone as being terrorist organizations, and we are working with the Colombian Government to protect their democracy against the threat provided or presented by these terrorist organizations."
Wanna guess who's designated a "terrorist organization" and who's not? A 1999 State Department report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism" contains a key phrase explaining why so much additional money has been poured into Colombia for "anti-drug" purposes in the last couple of years:
In addition, both insurgent groups attacked the nation's energy infrastructure -- including US commercial interests -- by bombing oil pipelines and destroying the electric power grid.
A May 2000 article in the Nation by Ken Silverstein is also quite revealing on this topic. It begins with:
One of the world's hottest battles between indigenous groups and multinational oil companies is heating up in Colombia, where Occidental Petroleum is seeking to drill on land claimed by the 5,000-member U'wa tribe. Early this year, the Colombian government deployed several hundred soldiers to guard workers building a road to the multibillion-dollar project.
It goes on to reveal how the supposedly anti-business and anti-oil Al Gore is waist-deep in the "oil bidness", as was his daddy.

Until the recent bombings, I was almost sure that Colombia would be the next quagmire into which the U.S. gummint would sink huge amounts of money and lives.
posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 10:37:07 AM | link

IRAN THE ALLY?
Justin Raimondo has some interesting things to say over at the new, improved, 87% more democratic Pravda:
No, we aren't declaring a war on Islam, or on terrorism: we are interfering in a civil war between rival Muslim factions. The US has backed the fiercely secular Turks, who have taken up with the Israelis, but the rule of Turkey's generals is perpetually in doubt and their control of the country is tenuous. Likewise, the US is naturally intent on propping up the House of Saud in order to ensure that all those oil profits flow freely to US companies, but their rule is even more brittle. It was Bill Clinton who first struck out in a new direction, engineering a rapprochement with Iranian "moderates" and setting up an alliance with Balkan Muslims: Bush is backing their progeny in Macedonia. But an alliance with Iran the taker of American hostages, the nation identified by the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" as "the most active sponsor of terrorism in 2000," a country whose legislators openly list appropriations for the overseas "jihad" in the national budget is a different story altogether. The State Department goes on to report:

"Iran has long provided Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian rejectionist groups notably Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Ahmed Jibril's PFLP-GC with varying amounts of funding, safe haven, training, and weapons. . . . Iran also provided a lower level of support including funding, training, and logistics assistance to extremist groups in the Gulf, Africa, Turkey and Central Asia. Hezbollah has been credibly linked to the bombing of U.S. military barracks at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia."

The Iranians have eagerly signed on to Bush's "war on terrorism," a move of such breathtaking hypocrisy that it boggles the mind. But none of this bothers the War Street Journal, which admits the above but muses vaguely that "Iran will have to decide which side it's on. At this stage in the war on terror, it can't hurt the US to give it a chance to make the right choice." I realize everybody over at the Journal is in shock right now, but clearly the horrific events of September 11 have unbalanced at least one editorialist. For all we know, Iran could be the real perpetrator and/or sponsor of the Twin Towers atrocity a possibility made more prominent by the American unwillingness to release the alleged evidence against bin Laden & Co. Oh, but war, the Journal assures us, "makes for some strange alliances." Any war against terrorism that numbers Iran among the good guys is far too strange for my taste, and, I suspect, for the average American.

Raimondo also repeats something he wrote just after the Bush Dynasty stole the election:
Here, at last, is something Republicans and Democrats can agree on: the necessity of going to war for the profits of Big Oil. For President Bush, it would be a diversion away from political divisions at home that could give him much-needed legitimacy. He didn't quite win it at the polls: perhaps he can win it on the battlefield. In this way, a new precedent will be set, and the analogy with the old Roman Empire will be complete. On account of his conquests, Dubya, like Caesar, could win the crown and the accolades of the people. Few would notice what had been lost.
So one of the U.S. allies in the "coalition against terrorism" is the country the State Department called the "most active sponsor of terrorism in 2000." I'll have to dig up just where Pakistan, another ally of temporary convenience, placed in that competition. The U.S. was also well aware of how vicious and deadly the Afghans were back in 1979 when it whipped them up into a holy war against the Soviet invaders to satisfy the realpolitiking ambitions of Kissinger acolyte Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was quoted as saying, "Let's give them their Vietnam." Santayana (not, not Carlos) was right.
posted by Steven Baum 9/27/2001 09:56:51 AM | link

Wednesday, September 26, 2001

MERCHANTS OF DEATH
Stock market cognescenti always know where to find the big money. Even though the markets have gone down, down, down in the last couple of weeks, and on top of a long-term downtrend, there are still hot buys out there.
Tom Turnipseed lists some of the current hot "tragedy plays" in the market.
  • Armor Holdings, Inc. (up 39.9%), who specialize in bullet resistant vests and flack jackets for armored vehicles;
  • Northrop Grumman Corp. (up 21.1%), who make the B-2 stealth bomber, warshipss, and battlefield surveillance systems;
  • Raytheon (up 36%), who sell 66% of their aerospace products to the Department of Defense;
  • L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. (up 35.8%), who make specialized communications systems for satellite, avionics and marine communications, with the DOD accounting for 63% of their business;
  • EDO Corp. (up 24.8%), who depend on the DOD for 70% of their revenues;
  • Alliant Techsystems, Inc. (up 23.5%), who sell 75% of their gunpowder, smart bombs, tank mines and rocket propulsion systems to the DOD;
  • InVision Technologies (up 195.5%), who make NMR imaging systems to check baggage;
  • ICTS International (up 103.4%) who also make NMR imaging systems for checking baggage;
  • Visage Technologies (up 175.8%), who develop biometric technologies for face recognition and fingerprinting.
I'd sure like to know who the heavy players in these stocks were on, say, September 10.
posted by Steven Baum 9/26/2001 03:54:26 PM | link

ANOTHER CANDIDATE FOR BLAME
The
Lone Gunmen pilot episode featured a plot in which a jet airplane was programmed to fly into the World Trade Center. I should probably email this information to Fox "News" or Rush Limbaugh so they can blame Chris Carter and evil, liberal Hollywood for supplying the terrorists with the idea. Of course if they did that, then I might have to bring up the fact that one of the "experts" they used during coverage of the bombings was Tom Clancy, i.e. the same man who wrote a "novel" with a plot featuring terrorists flying a bomb-loaded plane into the White House. A novel that appeared several years before the Lone Gunmen pilot, I should add. Now how many years had those terrorists supposedly been planning this attack?
posted by Steven Baum 9/26/2001 03:18:25 PM | link

CNN TRANSCRIPT
Here's a part of a
CNN transcript I'll reproduce here just in case they have a glitch on their end. Airplanes that crash into fields at 45 degree angles don't scatter debris over several miles. An airplane that exploded in the air - either from within or without - could leave scattered pockets of debris over several miles. If that flight did indeed blow up or was shot down, perhaps those in charge of reality think that heroes are more important to have than truth at this point in time. I'll leave the debate as to whether that's a good thing or not to the philosophers.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, we want to take our viewers live to Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Our Brian Cabell is standing by. This of course is the site where United Airlines flight 93 crashed on its way from Newark to San Francisco, crashed on Tuesday, and I understand, in this investigation, there's some breaking news.

Brian, what can you tell us?

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, in the last hour or so, the FBI and the state police here have confirmed that have they cordoned off a second area about six to eight miles away from the crater here where plane went down. This is apparently another debris site, which raises a number of questions. Why would debris from the plane -- and they identified it specifically as being from this plane -- why would debris be located 6 miles away. Could it have blown that far away. It seems highly unlikely. Almost all the debris found at this site is within 100 yards, 200 yards, so it raises some question. We don't want to overspeculate of course. But there were some cell phone callers, one cell phone caller in particular, who said saw a bomb, or something that looked like a bomb with one of the hijackers. Also, the man who took over the plane apparently announced at one point, he had -- there was a bomb on board the plane.

Again, we don't want to speculate, we don't want to jump to conclusions. But what we do know is that there's a site about half mile behind me, where the plane went down, where most of the debris is, and then about six miles away up by a lake, there is another area that's been cordoned off, and state police and the FBI have said definitely there is debris from the plane located there. We have a crew on the way right now. We should have pictures of that a little bit later on.

In the meantime, the search here goes on, 80 searchers going foot by foot, combing the area looking for evidence. They have not yet found the black box -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Which was first question, so I'll move on to my next one, Brian.

WE don't want to speculate about this large debris field. But it seems to me from covering a number of plane crashes on the scene, that if nothing else, this is not typical for a plane crash to be spread across an area this large.

CABELL: It's certainly doesn't make sense, because most of the debris has been found in a very compact area, within 100 yards, 200 yards, maybe a little bit beyond that. Then all of a sudden they're telling us six miles away, they have another concentration of debris, very small pieces. Most peoples here no bigger than the size of briefcase. The debris six miles away may be smaller. We have talked to a number of individuals here. They say they have talked to people who saw this plane during the final moments. They haven't confirmed whether they saw -- whether they talked to anybody who saw this plane actually land, or crash rather, and as to whether it broke up on the way, we don't know that. The FBI being very tight-lipped about that.

But again, at It leads to that possibility. It certainly leads to a number of questions.


posted by Steven Baum 9/26/2001 03:05:16 PM | link

MSNBC CENSORS FOR GOP
In what won't be the first instance of such a thing happening,
BuzzFlash reports how the GOP first banned cameras from showing dissent, and then MSNBC removed that fact from an article. It's bad enough the Ashcroft is trying to keep the people from hearing from any of his opponents, but it's worse when a supposed media watchdog like MSNBC becomes a media lapdog.

I'm reproducing t he whole thing for obvious reasons.

Funny how information occasionally disappears from a news report, such as the following excerpt that vanished from an MSNBC Internet story on how Ashcroft and Bush were trying to sell their hotly-debated "anti-terrorist" legislation. The bill is so controversial in terms of some provisions that curtail Constitutional rights that even America's own stone age Congressman, U.S. Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, is opposed to elements of the bill.

So when John Ashcroft testified before the House Judiciary Committee there was widespread coverage by the media, including television. However, when opponents to the bill testified after Ashcroft, MSNBC initially reported that the Republican staff of the Judiciary Committee asked television cameras to leave the room. No doubt, this was a PR strategy aimed at getting the Attorney's General's testimony on television that evening, while ensuring that there wouldn't be footage of testimony from opponents. Because C-Span was also asked to leave, it prevented the testimony of opponents from being aired in real time.

That's certainly a newsworthy story in and of itself, but by Tuesday afternoon, not long after BuzzFlash had posted the item, the following passage was removed from the URL (the same one posted below):

http://www.msnbc.com/news/632335.asp

COVERAGE OF HEARING RESTRICTED

After Ashcroft finished speaking, committee Democrats called civil liberties and free-speech advocates to testify, including representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, which have echoed some of Conyers' concerns.

But while Ashcroft's testimony was open to television cameras, the committee's Republican staff ordered camera crews to leave, including those of C-SPAN, the public interest network available on cable television systems nationwide, NBC News' Mike Viqueira reported.

Print reporters and members of the general public were allowed to remain, meaning the speakers' comments could be reported, but none of them would be available for Americans to see or hear for themselves.

House rules state, "Whenever a hearing or meeting conducted by a committee or subcommittee is open to the public, those proceedings shall be open to coverage by audio and visual means," Viqueira reported."

Fortunately, Google has a copy of the original story. I notice that MSNBC has even changed the story for the given number.
posted by Steven Baum 9/26/2001 02:37:39 PM | link

"REBELS" BECOME "TERRORISTS"
The
Chechnyan "rebels" have become persona non grata, sacrificed on the altar of convenience as the U.S. needs Russia more as an ally this week than as a bogeyman to increase defense spending. Ever since Boris Yeltsin sent the troops in to Chechnya in 1994 in what was then described as an "invasion", the text (and at least the subtext) of the vast majority of articles about the situation in the U.S. popular press has been that bad Russia is bullying Chechnya, whose "rebels" are responding in kind. That they've been labeled "rebels" rather than "terrorists" - despite their blowing up Russian buildings, hijacking airliners and ferries, and committing various other acts that would get a more ideologically incorrect group instantly branded as terrorists - is the most telling point from a propaganda analysis viewpoint. The foreign press, occasionally less sycophantic towards the official line, has asked and answered some hard questions about the Chechnyan "rebels". For instance, a BBC item about "How the rebels keep fighting":
It's been estimated that radical Islamic groups, some of which have declared a jihad or holy war against Russia, may have brought the Chechen rebels tens of millions of dollars.

London-based Sheikh Omar Bakri-Mohammed says his supporters in Britain are not alone in having sent money and hundreds of volunteers to Chechnya.

The recruits join the military wing of the International Islamic Front, headed by the notorious Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, and are trained in Pakistan - where the leading Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev, himself underwent training about 10 years ago.

Is any of this sounding familiar? Stratfor explains why Russia is now more useful as "good" than as "bad", and vice-versa with Chechnya:
U.S. statements regarding Chechnya have become at best muted since Sept. 11. It is highly probable that Washington will continue this response and perhaps even recommend that allies such as Turkey stop backing the Chechens. If Moscow can convince Washington of the bin Laden connection, American intelligence on Chechnya would also quickly begin flowing Moscow's way.
Lest we drift into manicheanism here, let it be said in no uncertain terms that there is plenty of evidence for Russian atrocities committed in Chechnya as well. While Chechnya wants their own country (you know, like the Palestinians), the Russians want to keep Chechnya, mainly because of the oil deposits there (you just knew oil would be coming into this, didn't you?).

So the U.S. is ignoring (rather than having to start calling the Chechnyans "terrorists" instead of the friendlier "rebels") Chechnya and playing happy with Moscow. Why?

The United States needs a location from which to launch air strikes and support special forces. For reasons of operational security, Uzbekistan is quickly sizing up to be the most feasible option.

Uzbekistan has the necessary infrastructure such as air bases in place, is very close to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and has no Russian military presence in its territory. There are reports from the BBC and the Russian press that American forces are already building up in eastern Uzbekistan.

So why would Russia want to play happy with the U.S., especially seeing how Uzbekistan is the most stable and anti-Russian of the five central Asian republics in the region? Once again, according to Stratfor:
Moscow retains the upper hand, and America's brief association with Uzbekistan will actually speed Russia's regional resurgence.

The key is proximity. Any U.S. forces in Uzbekistan will be dependent on air supply lines more than 2,000 miles long, so for geographic and practical reasons, the United States cannot field more than an assortment of special forces teams there. Russia, meanwhile, has forces permanently stationed in Tajikistan next door and on Aug. 24 announced its full political, military and financial support for the Northern Alliance. If the United States truly wants to take out the Taliban, it will need ground forces, and that requires close Russian collaboration.

The game plan would look something like this: Russia will dramatically increase its support to the Northern Alliance, including probably a few dozen airdrops of heavy equipment and artillery support from Russian forces in Tajikistan.

Meanwhile the United States will use its special forces to disrupt Taliban supply lines and intelligence assets, as American airpower grants the Northern Alliance continual air superiority. With both America and Russia working to disrupt Taliban intelligence, while funneling their own intelligence to the Northern Alliance, the balance of forces within the country should shift decisively.

If the pro-Russian Northern Alliance displaces the Taliban, the United States will have completed its mission and will have no reason to maintain a costly presence in Uzbekistan, one of the most isolated countries on the planet. When the Americans vacate, they will leave Uzbekistan surrounded by states dependent on Russia for their security. So encircled, the brittle Uzbek regime will not last, and Russia stands to win the region.

Once again we harken back to the "Great Game", with Russia trying to regain the dominance it (and the Soviet Union) once had over central Asia.

The trendy topic of "money laundering" also comes into it. Members of the economic elite who tremendously profited from the fall of the Soviet Union - often called "oligarchs" - are responsible for a goodly portion of the money laundering going on in the region. And there is evidence that some of their money goes towards funding the Chechnyan "rebels" as well as to other "rebel/terrorist" groups. The oligarchs are also Putin's biggest and most powerful critics. So the U.S. will get cooperation on stopping the money laundering, and Putin will receive help in rendering his biggest critics powerless.

Them's what I call win-win synergies all around.
posted by Steven Baum 9/26/2001 01:31:33 PM | link

THE FIRST CASUISTRY
Shrub's once again overruled Colin Powell, this time on the matter of releasing the "evidence" against Osama bin Laden. From
Smirking Chimp:
Bush went out of his way to roll back reports that the White House was prepared to detail its case against bin Laden. Some world leaders have urged the administration to provide more information.

"We will not make the war more difficult to win by publicly disclosing classified information," the president said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, standing at Bush's side, sent an entirely different signal a day earlier when he said the administration "in the near future" will be able to release "a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence."

Would this be the same sort of "real and credible" evidence that official White House Spokesliar Ari Fleischer told us about on the 12th concerning Shrub hiking up his dress and running away instead of returning immediately to D.C.? You know, the "real and credible" evidence that Air Force One - on which they kept the President, by the way - was a target. The "real and credible" evidence that they later said was just a "misunderstanding"?
posted by Steven Baum 9/26/2001 11:01:41 AM | link

JEB DECLARES MARTIAL LAW
On September 7, four days before the bombings of the WTC and the Pentagon, Jeb Bush signed
Executive Order No. 01-261 into effect in Florida. This executive order allowed the Adjutant General of State of Florida to place the Florida National Guard, a unit of the U.S. Army, in control of all Florida law enforcement and the Florida Emergency Management Agency.

On September 11, 2001, Jeb Bush signed Executive Order No. 01-262 that declared martial law in Florida. He signed it immediately after the second WTC tower fell, and it puts the previous executive order, signed four days before, into effect, i.e. the National Guard is in charge of law enforcement in the state of Florida. That is, Jeb put Florida under martial law for a "State of Emergency" before either New York or Washington, D.C. - the locations that were actually attacked - did so. By the way, the state constitution of Florida was changed in 1998 (under Jeb Bush) to allow this to take place. The second Executive Order reads in part:

"I hereby declare that a state of emergency exists in the State of Florida... The authority to suspend the effect of any statute or rule governing the conduct of state business, and the further authority to suspend the effect of any order or rule of any governmental entity... The authority to seize and utilize any and all real or personal property as needed to meet this emergency... The authority to order the evacuation of any or all persons from any location in the State of Florida, and the authority to regulate the movement of any or all persons to or from any location in the State; The authority to regulate the return of the evacuees to their home communities... I hereby order the Adjutant General to activate the Florida National Guard for the duration of this emergency."
On an ancillary note, the President's trip to Florida was publicly announced on the same day as the first executive order was signed, i.e. the one allowing the National Guard to take over law enforcement during a time of emergency.

EO 01-261 voided and replaced EO 01-17, which also authorized the National Guard to be called up. Apparently there must always be such orders in Florida. EO 01-261 is pretty much identical to EO 01-17, which it replaced, except for Section 3. Section 3 of EO 01-17 reads:

The Adjutant General shall not place members of the Florida National Guard into active service for longer than necessary to accomplish the purposes declared herein.
while Section 3 of EO 01-261 reads:
The Florida National Guard may order selected members on to state active duty for service to the State of Florida pursuant to Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, to assist FDLE in performing port security training and inspections. Based on the potential massive damage to life and property that may result from an act of terrorism at a Florida port, the necessity to protect life and property from such acts of terrorism, and inhibiting the smuggling of illegal drugs into the State of Florida, the use of the Florida National Guard to support FDLE in accomplishing port security training and inspections is "extraordinary support to law enforcement" as used in Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes.
That is, the National Guard executive order updated just four days before the attacks was revised specifically to allow the National Guard to "prevent massive damage to life and property that may result from an act of terrorism."

Just one question: What the hell did the Shrub boys know and when the hell did they know it?
posted by Steven Baum 9/26/2001 10:13:46 AM | link

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

ANWR FALLACY
One of the first supposed facts brought up by those who support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife (ANWR) is that doing so will supposedly create 750,000 jobs in the U.S. This number was obtained in a study performed a decade ago by WEFA, an economic consulting firm, for the American Petroleum Institute (API). Dean Baker deconstructs this pipe dream estimate in
Hot Air Over the Arctic?. He lists three erroneous assumptions used to derive the estimate of 750,000 jobs:
  • According to the most recent estimates from Energy Information Agency (EIA), WEFA's high production scenario overstates the size of potential oil production in the Refuge relative to world oil supplies by a factor of three. Adjusting the projections to keep them in line with the EIA estimates would reduce projected job creation by two-thirds.
  • The WEFA study assumes that the offsetting reduction in oil production by other oil suppliers, as a result of falling oil prices, will be far less than is generally estimated by oil industry analysts, including WEFA itself. If other oil producers cut back production in response to lower prices in a manner that is consistent with conventional estimates, then the WEFA projection for job creation would be reduced by another 40 percent.
  • The WEFA study assumes that the economy will be far more affected by an oil price decline attributable to oil produced in the Refuge, than it is to oil price declines caused by other factors. Substituting WEFA's own estimate of the general responsiveness of job creation to oil price declines, instead of the estimate that is specific to the oil produced in the Arctic Refuge, lowers the projection of job creation by approximately 75 percent.
In other words, to obtain their inflated estimate WEFA overestimated the potential oil production from ANWR, ignored their own previous estimates as to the offsetting reduction in oil production by other suppliers, and ignored their own previous estimate of the responsiveness of job creation to oil price declines. That is, they basically just made up estimates for all three quantities. When those adjustments are made to the fantasy figure of 750,00 jobs, it is reduced to a reality figure of 50,000 jobs or, as Baker puts it, the number of jobs the economy generated in an average week between 1997 and 2000.

Baker notes a couple of other problems with the WEFA study:

  • It is also important to recognize that the new jobs projected in this model are not held by people who had been desperately seeking work. As with most long-term economic models, there is no involuntary unemployment in the WEFA model. The job growth resulting from oil production in the refuge is due to the fact that it is projected to raise the real wage very slightly (less than 0.1 percent). This means that people who opted not to work at the current real wage (e.g. $10.00 an hour), decide to work at the slightly higher real wage they will be able to earn as a result of the oil from the Refuge (e.g. $10.01 an hour).
  • Finally, as noted in the WEFA study, any gain in jobs would be temporary. The peak production is projected to last less than 10 years. After 20 years, production is projected to be very insignificant. After that point, the nation will be able to draw no further economic benefits from oil production in the Refuge. However, it will have permanently lost a reserve that could be tapped in the event of an emergency. Of course, any environmental damage caused by drilling in the Arctic Refuge may last long after the oil is depleted.
Of course this is all probably moot now since an ANWR drilling provision is being tacked on to the anti-terrorism act (MATA) being rushed through Congress.
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 05:04:57 PM | link

EFF ON MATA
The
EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation is providing the full proposed text of MATA (Mobilization Against Terrorism Act), the legislation Attorney General John Ashcroft says the U.S. needs to combat terrorism. They've also provided their examination of the proposed Constitution-buster.
EFF believes this broad legislation would radically tip the United States system of checks and balances, giving the government unprecedented authority to surveil American citizens with little judicial or other oversight.

One particularly egregious section of the DOJ's analysis of its proposed legislation says that "United States prosecutors may use against American citizens information collected by a foreign government even if the collection would have violated the Fourth Amendment."

"Operating from abroad, foreign governments will do the dirty work of spying on the communications of Americans worldwide. US protections against unreasonable search and seizure won't matter," commented EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien.

Additional provisions of the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), originally called the Mobilization Against Terrorism Act (MATA), include measures which:

  • make it possible to obtain e-mail message header information and Internet user web browsing patterns without a wiretap order;
  • eviscerate controls on roving wiretaps;
  • permit law enforcement to disclose information obtained through wiretaps to any employee of the Executive branch;
  • reduce restrictions on domestic investigations under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ( FISA);
  • permit grand juries to provide information to the US intelligence community;
  • permit the President to designate any "foreign-directed individual, group, or entity," including any United States citizen or organization, as a target for FISA surveillance;
  • prevent people from even talking about terrorist acts; and
  • establish a DNA database for every person convicted of any felony or certain sex offenses, almost all of which are entirely unrelated to terrorism.
Patrick Poole's Inside America's Secret Court details the origin and history of FISA up to 1998, while Philip Colangelo's The Secret FISA Court tells how the powers of the FISA Act were expanded during the Clinton administration after the Oklahoma City bombing incident in 1994. Ironically enough, what was originally intended to provide a control on domestic spook operations after the abuses of the 60s and 70s became a curtain behind which the spooks could conceal their domestic operations. And now those in power want to curtail, for the second time in three years, the limitations put upon the spooks behind the curtain. As Frank Burns once said on MASH, "How can we remain a free people if we don't blindly follow our government?"

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Be very wary of those who spent all the Clinton years railing against the evils of "big gummint" and now want you to give them virtually unlimited power and trust them to do the right thing.
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 04:14:57 PM | link

FCC STEALTH PROCEEDINGS
The
Center for Digital Democracy tells of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launching a proceeding on Sept. 13 that would ..
... eliminate or dramatically weaken two longstanding safeguards designed to ensure greater diversity of media ownership. They include the rule that limits some of the power of the largest cable companies, and a safeguard that prevents one company from controlling both a newspaper and a television station in the same market.
Despite the ample verbiage expended by Saint Adam Smith in the bible of capitalism on the dangers and problems thereof, corporations prefer monopolization to competition. That this might have something to do with the difficulties Smith outlined being visited mostly upon the buyers rather than the sellers has been hypothesized.

The CDD explains the whys and wherefores of the FCC ownership rules:

The ownership rules on the FCC chopping block have been developed over the last fifty years. They have been an important safeguard ensuring the public's basic First Amendment rights. The rationale for these policies is that they help provide for a diverse media marketplace of ideas, essential for a democracy. They have not been perfect. But the rules have helped constrain the power of the corporate media giants. Companies could not assemble, as they wish to do now, simultaneous control over a town's cable system, several of its TV stations, many radio stations, and its newspaper. No one or two cable companies could dictate America's programming choices, as they wish to do now. And large TV networks such as ABC (Disney) and CBS, could not dictate to every local station, telling them whether the station could air a political debate or not.
Many limitations on corporations have been eliminated the old fashioned way, i.e. by large contributions to the appropriate players in the government. These contributions are occasionally referred to as "bribes" in the real world. But even massive financial largesse has prevented corporations from getting everything they want (i.e. everything), so they've turned to the courts with a most entertaining argument. They claim that corporate First Amendment rights are infringed when a corporation is not allowed to own either both a cable system and TV station in the same town, or more than 35% of TV stations across the country.

That corporate entities can claim to have the same rights as individuals can be traced back to the 1886 Supreme Court decision Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad. The so-called "doctrine of corporate personhood" was stated in the preface of the decision. More to the point, what was to become the cornerstone of corporate law was introduced into the decision without argument. That decision also created an interesting legal contradiction:

The corporation is owned by its shareholders and is therefore their property. If it is also a legal person, then it is a person owned by others and thus exists in a condition of slavery -- a status explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. So is a corporation a person illegally held in servitude by its shareholders? Or is it a person who enjoys the rights of personhood that take precedence over the presumed ownership rights of its shareholders?
There's also the matter that corporations, if convicted of crimes, cannot be imprisoned, although people can. That is, corporations have the same rights but not the same responsibilities or culpabilities as individuals.

Be that as it may, that 1886 Supreme Court aside makes it possible for corporations to claim in court today that they're being deprived of their freedom of speech if they're constrained in any way from owning as many and as many different forms of media outlets as they want to own. To be blunt, the First Amendment has been interpreted such that a corporation's right to buy things is equivalent to an individual's right to say things. One could add that the former is superior to the latter, since individuals can and have (the Sedition Act of 1918, for instance) had their freedoms removed via imprisonment for exceeding the bounds of their First Amendment rights, while corporations can and have been at most fined for any of the individual rights for which they've exceeded their bounds. All hail the supreme corporate entity!
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 02:47:36 PM | link

McCHESNEY ON THE MEDIA
Robert McChesney pithily sums up the performance of the media, i.e. The Media, over the last couple of weeks.
The news coverage since Sept. 11 has been charged with a tidal wave of ideologically laced emotion better suited to a World Wrestling Federation Smackdown than to a nation facing a grave long-term problem, where the types of public policies pursued in the coming months and years could produce results ranging from highly productive to spectacularly disastrous. Absurdly, after arguably the greatest lapse in performance in military and CIA history, despite colossal budgets and minimal public oversight, the impetus is to expand the budgets and relax the little oversight even further.

This should be no surprise. The range of "expert" analysis has been limited mostly to the military and intelligence communities and their supporters, with their clear self-interest in the expansion of military and police approaches rarely acknowledged and almost never critically examined. Little has been done to address the astonishing ignorance of Americans regarding the U.S. role in the world, the extensive use of terrorism by the United States, and the history and politics of the Middle East, Palestine and the Islamic world.

Coincidentally enough, I watched the WWF theatrics on the Thursday immediately following the bombings. They opened up by bragging about how they were the first "sporting event" to continue as planned after the bombings, i.e. "no goddamned terrorists are going to make us change our ways," and then interspersed comments by all of their thespians before and after the commercial breaks. I recall thinking that the knee-jerk histrionics in all those comments more than qualified them all for positions on Fox "News".

McChesney then gives a brief and instructive history and definition of "professional journalism":

Professional journalism emerged around 100 years ago, propelled by the need of monopoly newspaper owners to offer a credible "nonpartisan" journalism so that their business enterprises would not be undermined. Professional journalism is outstanding for its emphasis on factual accuracy and fairness, but deeply flawed by conventions that allow it to avoid the inevitable controversies inherent to journalism.

To avoid the taint of partisanship, professionalism makes official or credentialed sources the basis for news stories. This tends to give the news an establishment bias. When a journalist reports what elites are saying, or debating, she is professional. When she steps outside this range of official debate, she is no longer being professional. Likewise, professional journalism tends to avoid contextualization like the plague, and what contextualization it does provide tends to conform to elite premises.

I believe Mr. Chomsky's summed this up in an even pithier manner as "manufacturing consent."
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 01:49:22 PM | link

WHAT THE DIRECTOR MEANT TO SAY ...
It seemed truly incredible how quickly all 19 hijackers were identified after the bombings on September 11. By jing, this ain't Clinton's FBI! These boys know what they're doing. While it's undoubtedly true that the present FBI is much more capable than the FBI of two years ago, it's almost completely due to the fact that a goodly percentage of them aren't currently investigating Clinton's penis. And the reason the quick identifications seemed incredible was that they were indeed not credible. As the
Independent puts it:
Then, last Thursday, Robert Mueller, the FBI director, admitted it had all been going too well. After previously saying he had "a fairly high level of confidence" his staff knew the names of all the hijackers, he now said that was not the case. "We have several hijackers whose identities were those of the names on the manifests. We have several others that are still in question. The investigation is ongoing and I am not certain as to several of the others."
...
Officials refuse to say how many of the hijackers employed false identities. At least six of the men named by the US as having taken part and died are alive and well and residing in Saudi Arabia - such as Abdulaziz Alomari, said by the FBI to be in the gang that flew the first plane into the World Trade Centre. Mr Alomari is an engineer in Saudi, having returned home from the US. In 1995, he reported that his apartment in Denver, Colorado, had been broken into and his passport stolen. According to the Saudi embassy, another five of its citizens had been horrified to discover they were supposed to be dead, having destroyed at least 6,000 lives. Mr Mueller's public disclosure echoed what those close to the investigation are saying in private: this will be a hellishly difficult case to crack.
It makes one wonder just how credible the evidence against Osama bin Laden is, seeing how it was trumpeted as "damning" almost as quickly as were the 19 "certain" identifications made by the FBI. One also wonders that when, or if, this "proof" is offered, how much of it will consist of phrases along the lines of "known associate of" and similar phrases, that would hold up in a U.S. court about as long as it would take for the defense attorney to cry "guilt by association!" A clue might be offered by the administration's floating a trial balloon yesterday about convening a "war crimes tribunal" where "special" laws would hold.
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 01:26:27 PM | link

CHENEY'S CLOSED MEETINGS
So why has de facto President Dick Cheney stonewalled all these months about providing to the GAO the roster and minutes of the meetings held in his office with his bosses in the oil industry? Sunshine laws basically demand that such meetings be available for scrutiny by the public, but Cheney is forcing the GAO to drag him into court about it. And the usual members of the GOP and their supplicant toadies in the media are nearly unified in their support of Cheney's stonewalling, although these shrieking heads were the same ones demanding all through the Clinton years that every last thing their hated shibboleth did - before, during and after his years in the White House - must at least be available for the perusal of Select Committees, and then of course leaked to the press by Dan Burton et al.

Bryan Jamieson speculates on the matter:

In the European (free) press, speculation is growing that in the course of the meeting, Cheney agreed that the administration should try to provoke some sort of crisis in the oil-rich middle east, something that would create a crisis and make it easier both to get oil-friendly legislation through (like the ANWR drilling) and give them an excuse to eliminate those pesky environmental regulations. It would explain Cheney's strange and blatantly illegal refusal to disclose the nature of the meetings. It would explain why the administration, which showed no sign of any interest in middle east politics during the campaign or in the first couple of months after taking office, suddenly and heavy-handedly started supporting Israel. It explains why they went out of their way to annoy the entire world of Islam.

I don't think Cheney had something like the World Trade Center in mind. If I did, I would be insisting that he stand next to the person who planned it, and share the same fate. But I think he was playing "Wag the Dog" on a scale never envisioned by the movie's creators. And if that's the case, his liability is criminal, and he belongs in jail, if nothing else then for malfeasance and gross criminal negligence.

Jamieson also points out the not unrelated fact that an ANWR drilling provision has been tacked onto the omnibus terrorism bill already containing various reductions in civil rights, a capital gains tax cut, and who knows what else before it passes during a rousing chorus of "God Bless America."
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 11:04:12 AM | link

MR. CLEMENS SPEAKS
A venerated U.S. icon anticipated the present hypocritical stance against "terrorism" over a hundred years ago.
"There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it."

Mark Twain


posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 10:38:42 AM |
link

GRAVY
It looks like the WTC and Pentagon bombings were just icing on the cake for those desiring a friendlier form of government in Afghanistan for various (OIL!) reasons. According to a report by
Jonathan Steele et al., military strikes against the Taliban (i.e. the oil-unfriendly government) were threatened two months ago.
Osama bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military strikes against them two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington, which were allegedly masterminded by the Saudi-born fundamentalist, a Guardian investigation has established.

The threats of war unless the Taliban surrendered Osama bin Laden were passed to the regime in Afghanistan by the Pakistani government, senior diplomatic sources revealed yesterday.
...
"The Americans indicated to us that in case the Taliban does not behave and in case Pakistan also doesn't help us to influence the Taliban, then the United States would be left with no option but to take an overt action against Afghanistan," said Niaz Naik, a former foreign minister of Pakistan, who was at the meeting.
...
According to Mr Naik, the Americans raised the issue of an attack on Afghanistan at one of the full sessions of the conference, convened by Francesc Vendrell, a Spanish diplomat who serves as the UN secretary general's special representative on Afghanistan. In the break afterwards, Mr Naik told the Guardian yesterday, he asked Mr Simons why the attack should be more successful than Bill Clinton's missile strikes on Afghanistan in 1998, which caused 20 deaths but missed Bin Laden.

"He said this time they were very sure. They had all the intelligence and would not miss him this time. It would be aerial action, maybe helicopter gunships, and not only overt, but from very close proximity to Afghanistan. The Russians were listening to the conversation but not participating."

Where's April Glaspie when you need a delicate hand in such discussions?
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 10:31:30 AM | link

LAST MONTH'S SHINY THING
And what's happened to the immediately previous "flavor of the month"? Our "Where Are They Now?" department has been working 24/7 to uncover the following item from
KXTV:
Rep. Gary Condit has been named to a House subcommittee on terrorism and security. His first move was to send a letter to law enforcement agencies to ask their thoughts on improving homeland security.

Condit, who represents Modesto and other communities in the Central Valley, is now a member of the House Permanent Select Committee's newly formed Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, according to William Russell, Condit's legislative correspondent.

Condit has been a member of the House Intelligence Committee, but there was talk the Democratic leadership would have him removed because of his involvement with a Modesto woman who disappeared from Washington in May. Condit is not a suspect in her disappearance, but he has come under fire for remaining largely silent on the matter.

That is, the non-suspect who was the subject of 24 hour a day coverage on Fox "News" and probably half that on CNN is now working tirelessly on the hot topic of restricting domestic freedoms. Maybe Fox can have a tearful reunion special about Condit in a few years.
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 10:18:11 AM | link

UNOCAL SPEAKS
The
Progressive Review points to some fascinating testimony before Congress in 1998 by a PR flack for Unocal, one of Shrub's chief corporate paymasters. He begins by salivating over the hydrocarbon resources available in the Caspian Basin area. One can imagine the necessity of a bib at this point.
The Caspian region contains tremendous untapped hydrocarbon reserves, much of them located in the Caspian Sea basin itself. Proven natural gas reserves within Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan equal more than 236 trillion cubic feet. The region's total oil reserves may reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil -- enough to service Europe's oil needs for 11 years. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels. In 1995, the region was producing only 870,000 barrels per day (44 million tons per year [Mt/y]).

By 2010, Western companies could increase production to about 4.5 million barrels a day (Mb/d) -- an increase of more than 500 percent in only 15 years. If this occurs, the region would represent about five percent of the world's total oil production, and almost 20 percent of oil produced among non-OPEC countries.

He then gets to a problem Big Oil needs solved before it can maximize profits and raise the salaries of Bush, Cheney, etc. The problem is an optimal pipeline export route for all that oil and gas.
One option is to go east across China. But this would mean constructing a pipeline of more than 3,000 kilometers to central China -- as well as a 2,000-kilometer connection to reach the main population centers along the coast. Even with these formidable challenges, China National Petroleum Corporation is considering building a pipeline east from Kazakhstan to Chinese markets.
...
A second option is to build a pipeline south from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean.

One obvious potential route south would be across Iran. However, this option is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route option is across Afghanistan, which has its own unique challenges.

The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades. The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by the Taliban, an Islamic movement that is not recognized as a government by most other nations. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company.

In spite of this, a route through Afghanistan appears to be the best option with the fewest technical obstacles. It is the shortest route to the sea and has relatively favorable terrain for a pipeline. The route through Afghanistan is the one that would bring Central Asian oil closest to Asian markets and thus would be the cheapest in terms of transporting the oil.

It would be tricky to install a puppet government in Iran, especially seeing how they all remember well the regime of the puppet Shah installed via a CIA-sponsored coup to overthrow national hero Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, largely because of his Oil Nationalization Bill. Iran is also more or less a unified country, as opposed to the loosely connected tribal confederation that Afghanistan has been for hundreds of years.

Thus, even if it were Iraq, Iran, Syria or some other country harboring those who bombed the WTC and the Pentagon, geopolitical realities (i.e. OIL) would make it necessary to overthrow the Taliban and install a puppet government in Afghanistan, as is indeed being planned and which will undoubtedly come to fruition in the next several weeks. Mossadegh was vilified in the western press before the CIA took him out, just as the Taliban are being currently vilified. The vilification - whether deserved or not - is a mandatory propaganda tactic used in such situations in order to justify all actions up to and including the overthrow of a country's government.

Even in the Middle East nobody besides Pakistan gives much of a rat's ass about Afghanistan, and the former would and will gladly give up the latter in order to get easier treatment concerning its terrorist activities in India and elsewhere. There's also the matter that some countries, particularly England and Russia, have good reason to want to exact revenge from Afghanistan, both having been successfully and thoroughly thrashed by that loose confederation of tribes in the past. Notice how Blair and England are tripping over themselves offering every possible means of support, and how Putin and Russia are offering one of their current client states as a staging area along with thousands of troops.

Revenge AND oil. What a combination! Goodbye Afghanistan.
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 09:38:22 AM | link

SONG OF THE MONTH
While pondering the recent statements of the latest scion of the Bush Oil Dynasty about how a small subset of terrorists are going to be vaporized to protect the family investments in both politics and more substantial commodities, a specific tune came to mind while I chuckled about how Shrub the Latest vows to wipe out the "religious fundamentalist terrorists" with "G*d on his side". Recent cancer survivor
John Prine has always been a favorite of mine, and his tune "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Any More" has been a particular favorite among his tunes. "Flag Decal" can be found on his eponymous debut album, and while it's frustratingly not included on the double CD retrospective Great Days, the latter is a fine place to start for Prine neophytes. And since Prine's such a great live act (I've seen him twice), John Prine Live could also serve as a Prine primer.
posted by Steven Baum 9/25/2001 09:26:02 AM | link

Monday, September 24, 2001

IT'S THE OIL, STUPID
An article written six months before the bombings that have U.S. forces ready to conquer and set up a puppet government in at least Afghanistan outlines another reason why the latest figurehead in the Bush Oil Dynasty is so eager to send so many troops into Central Asia. Richard Norton-Taylor
explains just why the huge, empty spaces of Central Asia are becoming so valuable.
A new and potentially explosive Great Game is being set up and few in Britain are aware of it. There are many players: far more than the two - Russia and Britain - who were engaged a century ago in imperial rivalry in central Asia and the north-west frontier.

And the object this time is not so much control of territory. It is the large reserves of oil and gas in the Caucasus, notably the Caspian basin. Pipelines are the counters in this new Great Game.

There are plans for pipe-lines through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Macedonia - and Albania. Traditional rivalries between east and west are complicated by other threats - from Chechen separatists, Kurds, Albanian guerrilla groups, the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and, throughout the region, Islamic groups whose activities are causing deep concern to Moscow, Tehran and Washington alike.
...
This is the region both west and east have their eyes on. It is rich in untapped oil and gas while US reserves are running down, China is desperate for more oil, and no one outside the Gulf wants to rely on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iraq - which have the biggest oil reserves.

Oil is the bait as the US, Russia, Turkey, Iran - and Nato - jockey for alliances, power and influence in this highly combustible but, for most people, little-known, region.

Another key territory in Great Game II is Azerbaijan:
Azerbaijan occupies a crucial square on the board. The U.S. State Department called the Baku-Ceyhan Main Export Pipeline (MEP) a "cornerstone" of its foreign policy for the region. The U.S. policy is aimed to wrest the Caucasus region from the Russian sphere of influence by any means, including pressure by its NATO allies, paying off docile local leaders, and aligning its media with others who oppose Russian alliances.

Azerbaijan's leaders are wined and dined on oil company expense accounts, while 600,000 Azeris still live in the most horrendous conditions, in makeshift housing outside of Baku and throughout western Azerbaijan. The snake oil companies act as agents of their countries' foreign policies and try to obtain commercial favors from Azeri leaders, who are ready to sell Azerbaijan's resources cheaply and for personal gains.

Meanwhile, the inroads that The West is making as a result of this purchased power into traditionally Russian dominated areas is not looked upon kindly, and will be met with fierce resistance by Moscow. The preliminary results of this confrontation are evident today in Chechnya and Dagestan, where the people are suffering for the shortsightedness and selfishness of their leaders.
...
The timing of recent efforts to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh(NKR) conflict by the US, Turkey and the OSCE highlight the self-serving policies being pursued by these countries in Azerbaijan. The West demands Azerbaijan's oil, and regards security along the path of the pipeline imperative. Thus, they wish to see the conflict in Azerbaijan solved. Yet, they stand idly by, while hundreds of Muslim Chechens die in Chechnya, which also lies directly on the path of an export pipeline for Azerbaijan's oil, because that route is not favored by The West.
...
The Chechen conflict has taken a heavy toll on Azerbaijan. The northern pipeline route passes through Chechnya, and peace in this region would allow flow of Azeri oil and revenues to help our refugees. However, The West does not want this pipeline to function in order to force Azerbaijan to agree to a more expensive Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, and they have incited Chechnya agitators like Shamil Basaev and international terrorists like Khattab, - who is tied with Osama Bin-Laden, ironically the number one enemy of the United States, - to demand secession from Russia. Russia, as we have already written, has responded fiercely and harshly, by bombing Chechnya and causing severe casualties.

Basically, the situation in Chechnya has been portrayed in the homogeneous and docile U.S. press as one in which the bad Russians - a much better candidate than China as a sinister and huge enemy with which to justify increased military spending - are slaughtering the brave rebels of Chechnya. The problem with this currently convenient flavor of manicheanism is that many of those called rebels or freedom fighters in Chechnya are, in the approved jargon of this week, terrorists. That is, they've been trained and equipped by Osama bin Laden and his cohorts in Afghanistan, and anyone associated with this week's "focus of evil in the modern world" is of course also pure evil. We're probably going to see something similarly absurd to the situation with the Kurds develop, where there will be "good" Chechnyans (like the "good" Kurds in Iraq) and "bad" Chechnyans (like the "bad" Kurds in Turkey).
posted by Steven Baum 9/24/2001 04:46:25 PM | link

MONEY LAUNDERING II
A day after I wrote
this about money laundering, I encountered this item about the topic by Lucy Komisar. Some extracts:
The global money-laundering system used by terrorists has also served the U.S. government and banks for years, creating wealth and occasionally supporting U.S. political interests abroad. Changing U.S. bank secrecy laws to pierce that laundering system is as essential to stopping terrorism as military force and diplomatic moves.

Terrorist networks all over the world depend on the international bank and corporate secrecy system to hide and move their money. This structure is allowed to exist by agreement of the world's banks and financial powers, including the United States and its allies. Internationally, many make money from the system, including the owners and managers of banks that hide customers' deposits from tax authorities.

But the system also enables terrorists to funnel money for their activities in dozens of countries and pay for houses, salaries, transport, weapons and explosives. Terrorists need to move millions quickly and without detection, and transferring millions of dollars using secret bank accounts and shell companies is easy.

In many countries, known as "offshore" or "tax haven" countries, companies and open accounts can be established by individuals without using real names or identification. Phony banks that are just letter drops send money to real banks. In the United States, the real banks routinely ask no questions when the phony banks open "correspondent accounts" to move money here for their customers.

For example, currently there is nothing in U.S. law to stop the Al-Shamal Islamic Bank in Khartoum, Sudan, from opening an account in a U.S. bank to wire money for use here or in another country.

In fact, that bank was set up by Osama bin Laden. Even if a stop is put on the bank, funds might easily move through a third party in Nauru or Liechtenstein or some other offshore haven to other U.S. banks, which are not required to ask about the owners of money. The foreign banks bundle cash from numerous customers and send the lump sum to their correspondent accounts in the United States. Then they move the money wherever their clients order.
...
The system is no surprise to the U.S. government because Washington and its allies have used it, too. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International [BCCI] was a British-Pakistani bank that used secret offshore accounts to effect a global money-laundering fraud that cost victims $8 billion. Before it was shut down in 1991, it was used to fund the Mujahadeen, then fighting the Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan. The money came from U.S. and Saudi intelligence.

Now many of the formerly U.S.-supported Mujahadeen are members of bin Laden's network. They know all about how to launder money through the international bank secrecy system.

The international money laundering system isn't going to be dismantled. It's been too convenient for the spooks (governmental organized crime) and non-governmental organized crime over the years. What will happen is that it will be squeezed hard for information about bin Laden's money laundering, and then allowed to go on its merry way. The details about BCCI can be found in the Senate report The BCCI Affair. Similar shenanigans via an Australian bank are detailed in the late Jonathan Kwitny's The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA.
posted by Steven Baum 9/24/2001 10:20:20 AM | link


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