Ethel the Blog
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.

The usual copyright stuff applies, but I probably won't get enraged until I find a clone site with absolutely no attribution (which, by the way, has happened twice with some of my other stuff). Finally, if anyone's offended by anything on this site then please do notify me immediately. I like to keep track of those times when I get something right.

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"When they say, 'Gee it's an information explosion!', no, it's not an explosion, it's a disgorgement of the bowels is what it is. Every idiotic thing that anybody could possibly write or say or think can get into the body politic now, where before things would have to have some merit to go through the publishing routine, now, ANYTHING." - Harlan Ellison JOLLY OLD PALS Other stuff of mild interest to some: unusual literature scientific software blog physical oceanography glossary computer-related tutorials and texts Saturday, October 20, 2001 SHRUB ATTEMPTS TO HIDE CENSUS RESULTS It's now fairly well known that the GOP fought successfully to stop the Census Bureau from using statistical techniques to adjust the results of the 2000 U.S. Census. The official reason was that the statistical techniques used were "untested" or "flawed," although it didn't hurt that those techniques would undoubtedly have increased the numbers of people in minority groups, who have traditionally been more difficult to count for various reasons. It's also well known that minority groups tend not to vote for GOP candidates. It seems that even that wasn't enough for the GOP, seeing how Shrub's appointee to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is attempting to keep the adjusted numbers the Census Bureau calculated for internal use secret. According to Betsy Hammond of The Oregonian (via Smirking Chimp): Responding to a lawsuit by two Oregon legislators, the U.S. Census Bureau explained in court for the first time Thursday why it thinks it can keep secret its statistically adjusted count of Americans. Federal law requires government to be conducted in the open except in special circumstances, and the federal judge in Portland said he had a hard time seeing how secrecy would be ruled permissible in this instance. But the lawyer for the Census Bureau said the numbers were too revealing to make public. The adjusted counts give away the bureau's inside thinking on the accuracy of its population counts, and they make it too obvious to politicians around the country which communities win and which lose under the bureau's decision not to adjust for its undercount of renters and minorities, attorney Gregory Katsas said. Making public the numbers could "skew or chill" upcoming Census Bureau decisions, he argued. ... Heaven forbid that the public should be aware of results their tax dollars paid for if they're going to "skew or chill" the future plans of the Shrub Regime. Expect to hear the "national security" mantra invoked if the judge rules against the Regime. posted by Steven Baum 10/20/2001 11:16:57 AM | link AUC FUNDED FROM MIAMI Now that the U.S. has finally added the non-"commie" killers in Colombia, the AUC, to its list of designated "terrorist" organizations (along with the IRA, also for the first time), it can start freezing its assets and going after the banks laundering money for them. Wanna guess where the trail leads for this South American paramilitary terrorist group, like it's led for so many other similar groups over the years? Narco News tells us: The search for foreign scapegoats in the "war on terrorism," when the money trail is followed, keeps turning back to the United States banks and financial institutions. Yesterday, the daily El Tiempo of Bogotá, Colombia, reported that 20 checks were found at a paramilitary headquarters, and were used to buy arms and uniforms by the right-wing narco-terror group of Carlos Castaño and Salvatore Mancuso. The financial support for the group's massacres of civilians came from... the United States, specifically, through a bank or banks in Miami. This underscores our point made in a Narco News editorial this week on White Collar Terrorists: We can point the finger abroad, but until United States banks and financial institutions are included in the search for guilty parties, future terrorist acts will continue, and inevitably include U.S. soil. Narco News is investigating which Miami bank or banks were used to fund the AUC, and will report any evidence that we find. I won't be holding my breath waiting for action against this particular terrorist organization and their Cuban exile community bankers. posted by Steven Baum 10/20/2001 10:48:19 AM | link Friday, October 19, 2001 THE OTHER HEADS Try Beyond the Frame: Alternative Views on the September 11 Atrocities for commentary by talking heads you ain't gonna see on CBS/NBC/ABC, CNN, FOX, etc. posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 01:26:30 PM | link RAWA OFF SHRUB'S CHRISTMAS CARD LIST Looks like RAWA is going to make it onto the next version of the "official terrorist organizations" list, or at least be ignored from now on by those who used to support them. Their latest statement: Again, due to the treason of fundamentalist hangmen, our people have been caught in the claws of the monster of a vast war and destruction. America, by forming an international coalition against Osama and his Taliban-collaborators and in retaliation for the 11th September terrorist attacks, has launched a vast aggression on our country. Despite the claim of the US that only military and terrorist bases of the Taliban and Al Qieda will be struck and that its actions would be accurately targeted and proportionate, we have witnessed for the past seven days leaves no doubt that this invasion will shed the blood of numerous women, men, children, young and old of our country. If until yesterday the US and its allies, without paying the least attention to the fate of democracy in Afghanistan, were supporting the policy of Jehadis-fostering, Osama-fostering and Taliban-fostering, today they are sharpening the dagger of the "Northern Alliance". And because of this policy they have plunged our people into a horrific concern and anxiety in fear of re-experiencing the dreadful happenings of the years of the Jehadis' "emirate". ... posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 12:19:44 PM | link TURN IN A FRIEND TODAY In a series of "security tips" that do for the Holy War on Terrorism what "turn in your parents" does for the Holy War on Drugs, police chief Thomas Sweeney tells us how we can make Corporate America a safer place. We should "watch for": Someone attempting to gain access to something they shouldn't have or somewhere they don't belong. [Luckily I've got my guide to what every person on the planet should have and where they belong.] Strange or frequent comings or goings. [I've always been suspicious of those neighbors who leave in the morning and return in the evening on a daily basis.] Someone carrying a weapon. [So I'll be calling 911 every time I suspect someone is carrying a weapon when I get back to Texas.] Someone who appears to be concealing something or attempting to put something over on somebody. [Ari Fleischer's gonna be put away for a good long time.] Clues on the job, e.g. film processing or computer-repair employees who noticed something out of the ordinary. [Like perhaps a Windows box not crashing every five minutes?] Suspicious mail or packages. [I'm sending all my junk mail to the local cops just to be safe.] Watch for people conducting themselves in a strange manner or making unusual requests. [Like "Please check your rights at the door until further notice"?] posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 12:08:08 PM | link THE COMING ARAB CRASH Said K. Aburish, the author of The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, writes of grim futures for four pro-western regimes should they continue their support for the current U.S. jihad in the region. Note the thriving nature of each of these democracies. For now, all might seem outwardly quiet in Saudi Arabia. But a closer look reveals serious problems. Since Fahd bin Abdel Aziz, fifth king of modern Saudi Arabia, succeeded to the throne in 1982, the economy has shrunk drastically. Even by historical standards corruption is completely out of control. With oil income down to $40bn, most of the country's people are suffering. In 1993, annual per capita income was $5,000, barely one third of what it was in the early 1980s. By some estimates, it has since fallen still further. And politically, all this has aided Islamic fundamentalism, which has grown at an alarming rate because it is the only popular movement which the government cannot outlaw. Widespread anti-western feeling means there is a danger of internal unrest and more violence against western interests. ... In Jordan, the situation is no better. Young and untried King Abdullah is in serious trouble. More than two thirds of his country's population is Palestinian and sympathise with any anti-American action because of America's support for Israel. King Abdullah's open support for action against Bin Laden and his militant supporters has done nothing but diminish his popularity. At present the opposition to Abdullah is unorganised and no groups are openly asking for his overthrow. But there is a strong and vocal Islamic fundamentalist opposition, which at one point controlled a quarter of the seats in the Jordanian parliament. As in Saudi Arabia, there are very few who favour supporting the west against fellow Muslims. Even those who do blame Abdullah for maintaining the peace treaty with Israel and attempting to please the west at the expense of local feeling. ... In Egypt, economic conditions are much worse than in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The damage to tourism brought about by the September 11 disaster is likely to be severe. Tourism is the country's major industry and top foreign currency earner. Moreover, lower oil tanker traffic through the Suez canal will make the situation worse. This comes at a time when the fever of opposition to President Mubarak is catching. Until recently, opposition to Mubarak's army-backed regime was confined to Islamic fundamentalism. This is no longer the case. The press reacted angrily to laws aimed at restricting its freedom. The bourgeoisie accused Mubarak of spending too much on foreign and regional affairs and not enough on Egypt's internal problems. Stories about corruption and nepotism abound. The growing impatience with Israel and the US has meant Mubarak's popularity is at an all time low. Egypt's economic decline - interrupted by the cancellation of billions of dollars of debt during the Gulf war in return for an anti-Saddam stand - has resurfaced as the country's major problem. Egypt owes more than $30bn, its population is increasing by more than a million a year and money sent back from workers in oil-producing countries issharply reduced as countries need fewer guest workers. And Egypt cannot expect a debt-cancellation bonus this time. ... Arafat, the west's newest friend, confronts the same political and economic problems as Fahd, Abdullah and Mubarak. His Islamic opposition is armed and willing to wage a guerrilla war against both him and Israel. He has failed to create a political entity acceptable to his people. Because the Oslo peace accord and the subsidiary agreements which followed it have failed to satisfy Palestinian aspirations, the people of the occupied territories are turning to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and smaller Islamic groups. Totally opposed to the west and disparaging of Arafat's subservient behaviour, these groups have made no secret of their tacit approval of Bin Laden's actions. With nothing to show after years of depending on the US to play honest broker, Arafat has never been this unpopular and his use of the secret police has already inflamed the Palestinians. Along with press censorship, it has eroded his credentials. He no longer speaks for the Palestinians and the Islamists are likely to add to his problems. posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 11:57:36 AM | link GUIDED BY VOICES A friend of mine tipped me off to this review of a Guided by Voices show, which makes me want to see them live before I get too damned old to appreciate such a vulgar spectacle. I've seen Guided By Voices before, I swear. But even then, I used to wonder why leagues of young fans would follow the band around to see every show, Deadhead-like (albeit in a much cooler fashion). After this show, I have to say that either I've changed or they have, because I have rarely, rarely, been so rocked. That's r-a-w-k-e-d. Folks find the wanton GBV drunkenness either delightful or disturbing; it's more like a scintillating combination of the two. What other band could so shamelessly place a beer tub on stage, with many, many bottles and plenty of ice, to be assisted by what seems like a dozen beer roadies whose sole purpose it is to keep the band plenty stocked with beer? Brian Eno said that he could never get into the rave music, because he wasn't doing the same drugs that the people who were listening to the music were doing. But here the drug is Budweiser. Bud at a GBV show is like acid at a Dead show, but it's much easier to obtain, and much easier to ride the same drunken wave as the band. So we all kind of start at the same level. GBV kicked off with "Ha Ha Man," from the forthcoming Suitcase, a four-CD collection of unreleased GBV songs. Frontman Robert Pollard sounded a little scratchy; I feared I'd be disappointed again. Perhaps the band sensed this, because they reached back into their vast Brit-pop-sounding archives, pulled out classic GBV cuts, and bludgeoned bludgeoned, bludgeoned. By the ninth song, "Watch Me Jumpstart," I was beginning to see the light. By song 30, "Teenage FBI," I was a full-on convert. At this point, Robert Pollard was the most godlike buffoon I'd ever seen. It was like an awful reality game show: Will he make it through the set? Through the song? How in the world can he keep standing up? Yet he kept pulling off the Roger Daltrey mic cord swing, hit the high notes, and struck hilarious power-rock poses. posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 11:28:43 AM | link ISRAEL UPSET ABOUT EGYPT NOW Ha'aretz reports that Israel is peeved about the U.S. selling better missiles to Egypt that it does to Israel. The build-up of Egyptian naval forces is a cause for concern, the commander-in-chief of the Israel Navy, Major General Yedidia Ya'ari, said yesterday. Only yesterday, Ha'aretz published a report about Israel's attempts to prevent a large U.S.-Egyptian arms deal, with the Americans planning to sell Egypt advanced Harpoon missiles, which are fired from a sea vessel and also have the capability of hitting land targets with great precision. The balance of naval power in the Middle East "has changed over the past 20 years, since the Yom Kippur War, and has changed primarily because of the strengthening of the Egyptian navy with American weapons," Ya'ari told a press conference to mark Navy Day. "We are worried about this." Commenting that "some of the deals could change the balance of power in the arena," the naval commander said: "This is why we are expressing our concern. What will the Americans do about this in the long run? We don't know." At the same time, Ya'ari noted that Israel's navy had vastly improved its operational level over the past few years. Despite the peace treaty with Egypt, the Israel Defense Forces views the Egyptian arms build-up, particularly in the navy, with apprehension. A few weeks ago, the Defense Ministry sent a memo to the U.S. State Department, warning that advanced arms sales to Egypt could put an end to Israel's cutting edge. The Harpoon missiles on offer to the Egyptians were recently developed at Boeing and are an improvement on the sea-to-sea Harpoons that the Israel Navy also has in its arsenal. Israeli military sources have described the new Harpoon as "a Tomahawk [the American cruise missile] for the poor," saying that the missile, with a range of some 175 kilometers, will vastly improve Egypt's striking capabilities. Newsflash to Israel: I don't think Boeing - the only sure winner in this deal - is going to let the State Department put the kibosh on it. posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 10:34:42 AM | link IRAQ GOT ANTHRAX FROM U.S. Ah, another unsurprising "chickens coming home to roost" item. THE intelligence community has focused on Iraq as a possible source of the anthrax used in the bio-terrorist attacks in America. If Iraq is the culprit, it is likely that Saddam Hussein would have used one of 21 strains of the anthrax bacterium which his scientists bought by mail order from America in the 1980s. In a further irony, most of the leading scientists in the Iraqi bio-warfare programme, including its project chief, Rihab Rashida Taha, were trained in Britain. If this seems confusing, recall that Saddam and Iraq were officially Doubleplusgood in the 80s as they waged a long and very dirty war on officially Doubleplusungood Iran, thus they were eligible for receiving Happyfuntime weapons from the west. This week Iraq is Doubleplusungood and Iran is Doubleplusgood, because ... oh, never mind, my brain hurts. posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 10:21:53 AM | link FBI + CIA = KEYSTONE KOPS From the L.A. Times we find the FBI and CIA having a bit of a tiff. The one thing everybody agrees on is that a CIA cable transmitted Aug. 27 over a classified government computer network warned that two "Bin Laden related individuals" had entered the United States and that two other suspected terrorists should be barred from entering. The CIA had already notified the White House and other senior policymakers in early August that the exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden was determined to launch a terrorist attack within the United States. But CIA and FBI officials now disagree over the significance of the later notice and, specifically, whether an apparent miscommunication affected the FBI's response. The FBI failed to find two men who later emerged as suspected skyjackers Sept. 11. Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, the two men identified on the CIA cable as already being on U.S. soil, helped seize an American Airlines jet after takeoff and crash it into the Pentagon, killing 189 people. The argument underlines the sometimes bitter communication problems between the two agencies at the front line of America's war on terrorism. The CIA insists the cable was coded "immediate" in capital letters at the top. The agency uses four alert levels--routine, priority, immediate and flash--but flash is reserved only for the most serious events, such as outbreak of war. Immediate, said an intelligence official, means "It's an emergency. It's rare you would get a cable anything higher. This is the upper end of the scale." The official, who read parts of the classified cable to The Times, said it warned that the four suspected terrorists, including Almihdhar and Alhazmi, had "confirmed links to Egyptian Islamic Jihad operatives." U.S. intelligence believes the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, one of the world's most ruthless terrorist groups, merged with Al Qaeda last June in Afghanistan. The cable also disclosed that Almihdhar met with "Bin Laden associates" in Malaysia in January 2000. That meeting, which the CIA later viewed on a videotape, has become a key link in the current investigation. The agency concluded that Almihdhar had met a man that it believed was a prime suspect in the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen in October 2000. ... posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 10:07:54 AM | link GOP KEEPS AMBASSADORS INFORMED ABOUT GOP A group of diplomats invited to the White House expected just about anything but a Politics 101 lecture from Karl Rove. I wonder if he spoke loudly and slowly so they could understand him. When invitations from the White House went out to ambassadors across Washington last week for a luncheon and briefing with President Bush's chief political advisor [i.e. puppeteer], the response was swift. Schedules were cleared for what everyone hoped would be an insider's view on post-Sept. 11 thinking within the Oval Office. Turnout was huge at Tuesday's buffet lunch. Such Middle Eastern specialties as couscous and stuffed vine leaves were served, which whetted everyone's appetite even more for unusual access at a time of a U.S. crisis in foreign lands. "We were expecting something really hot," said one ambassador, describing his anticipation of filing an insightful and analytical cable to his own capital. Diplomats rushed to their seats in an auditorium-size room at Blair House and waited intently for the program to begin. Then Rove proceeded to deliver a detailed lecture on the nature of party politics, how to win, the history of the Republican Party's opposition to slavery, the importance of the black vote, and so on. "It was so surreal, it was difficult to keep a straight face," one ambassador said at a reception that evening. "I was expecting something on military targets achieved, plans for ground troops in Afghanistan, anthrax, anything but what we heard." Female Latin American diplomats dressed for success rolled their eyes, some Europeans shrugged their shoulders and Arab ambassadors sat stunned in their seats, as if a flock of falcons had landed on their heads. posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 09:19:02 AM | link CLEANSING THE AIRWAVES One of the few liberal talk shows on the radio has been removed from the air, we learn from the Democratic Underground. After broadcasting for a year on a Santa Cruz AM station, left-of-center talk show host, Peter Werbe, had his program suddenly yanked from KOMY-AM without even notification to him or his network. The many listeners who called the KOMY management were told that the show had no sponsors and few listeners. The station never sought ads for the program, but the management said it aired Peter's program to balance its bevy of right-wing shows. However, even without any promotion, the show had a growing audience as evidenced by the high number of calls Peter's program received daily from the station's broadcast area. ... Finally, dogged by what was becoming a community issue in Santa Cruz, KOMY owner's mother, Kay Zwerling, the power behind the throne, similarly denounced the show and Peter during an on-air editorial, October 16, to explain why the station had dropped the program. She specifically mentioned its left-of-enter content, Peter's criticism of the Bush administration, and his questions about the attacks on Afghanistan. This undisguised attack on freedom of speech, and clear violation of the station's license, which obligates it to serve the community, not the owner's right-wing politics, must be fought! So now the "balance" is back to what it should be, just like on Fox "News". posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 09:00:38 AM | link EDWARD ABBEY GETS MAN BANNED FROM FLIGHT According to the City Paper, a Philadelphia man was kept off a recent flight because he was carrying a copy of Edward Abbey's Hayduke Lives!, the sequel to Abbey's notorious The Monkey Wrench Gang. The cover of the former contains an illustration of a man's hand holding several sticks of dynamite. I find this interesting of a couple of reasons. First, I've read both books and have always been a fan of Abbey's fiction and non-fiction writing, with Desert Solitaire a particular favorite in the latter category. Second, I'm flying home today with a small suitcase full of books, with about three of them highly critical of U.S. foreign and domestic policy, and one of them being the second edition of Jim Hatfield's Fortunate Son, which details the rise of the Shrub from 70s AWOL cokehead to president. It's been nice knowing y'all. Of course I do have a contingency plan. If it looks like my book bag is going to be searched, I'll just start yelling hateful things about Arabs and the Middle East in general. That way I"ll just be under "investigation" by the Injustice Dept. for hate crimes rather than detained permanently with no bail and no legal representation for being a "tourist." After having the book scrutinized by police and National Guardsmen for 45 minutes, he was told the book was "innocuous" and he could board the flight. A few minutes later a United employee told him he couldn't board the flight for three reasons. The first reason, she said, was that Godfrey was reading a book with an illustration of a bomb on the cover. Secondly, she said, he purchased his ticket on Sept. 11. (Godfrey bought the ticket on Priceline.com shortly after midnight, at least eight hours before the World Trade Center was attacked). And the final reason cited by the United employee was that Godfrey's Arizona driver's license had expired. The employee pointed to a date to substantiate this allegation. "No," Godfrey told her. "That's the day the license was issued." The woman then pointed to another date on the card, Feb. 17, 2000, contending it was the expiration date. Godfrey countered that the date identified him as "under 21" until then. "Too bad, it's too late," the flight attendant informed him. A defeated and disappointed Godfrey reclaimed his luggage and was escorted out of the airport. How long until we start hearing in airports those words near and dear to the hearts of totalitarians everywhere, "VERE ARE YOUR PAPERS!!!!!! posted by Steven Baum 10/19/2001 08:48:16 AM | link Thursday, October 18, 2001 GET YOUR WAR ON For some side-splitting fun, try the Get Your War On section over at My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 04:32:32 PM | link OPERATION NORTHWOODS The National Security Archive has released a PDF version of a 1962 U.S. government document that proposed various pretexts for invading Cuba. As it states at the site: The Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," including "sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated)," faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a "Remember the Maine" incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 04:25:57 PM | link THE GREAT ANTHRAX STOCK SWINDLE I'm so completely desensitized to this sort of thing by now that it doesn't surprise me at all to see the usual suspects gathered together in the following item. Well, let's begin with Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. It seems that back when Goerge H. W. Bush was setting up Osama Bin Laden as a Freedom fighter, the good Admiral and his buddies on the Joint Chiefs were selling American made weapons-grade Anthrax to Saddam Hussein in the hopes that he would use it on Iran (and then we wonder why the Iranian people don't much like Americans). Who knows who else got these American-made weapons of mass destruction either from Admiral Crowe or Saddam. But that was then and this is now. Admiral Crowe is retired. Admiral Crowe is quite wealthy, far beyond what one might expect on even an Admiral's salary. In fact, Admiral Crowe sits on the Board of Directors and owns 13% of BioPort Corporation. What is the BioPort Corporation, I hear you ask? Well, it's the only corporation in the United States with a license to make Anthrax Vaccine. Except that BioPOrt doesn't actually make the vaccine, BioPOrt simply bought the lab that does make the vaccine, Michigan Biologic Products Institute, from the State of Michigan in 1998, oddly enough at the same time John J. Maresca, Vice President of International Relations, UNOCAL Corporation, was telling congress that access to the oil reserves under the Caspian Sea required a new government in Afghanistan. Along with the actual Anthrax Vaccine, BioPort acquired Michigan Biologic Products Institute's sole and exclusive customer for the vaccine, the U.S. Department of defense. And here is the kicker. Since acquiring Michigan Biologic Products Institute, BioPort has not delivered a drop of the stuff! Only 4% of the vaccine contracted for has been delivered. FDA audits have uncovered suspicious record keeping and contamination problems, causing the FDA to ban delivery of the product. Despite this ban, the U.S. Government has continued to front BioPort millions of dollars to kep the operation going. And, given the "State of Emergancy", it is likely that FDA concerns for the product will soon be set aside and the vaccine delivered, not to the citizens whose taxes paid for it all, but to the military and to the government. So, good old Admiral Crowe and his fellow investors in BioPort are set to make a bundle off of the Anthrax scare. Especially when market demand pushes the price of the product high up above the contracted for $3.50 an ounce. And who are those fellow investors? Well, another part of BioPort is owned by the Carlyle Group. That's George H. W. Bush's current occupation. Yet another portion is rumored to be owned by the Bin Laden family, although this has not yet been confirmed! That's right. Just as the Bin Laden family made a fortune with the contract to rebuild the Khobar Towers supposedly blown up by Osama, the Bin Ladens will again make a fortune from their part ownership of the only company able to make an Anthrax Vaccine in the United States, because Osama might have some of that Anthrax that the United States sold to Saddam. In fact, the shortage created by the FDA bans will make all the players instant billionaires as market forces drive the price of the vaccine up to thousands of dollars per ounce. (The same amount of Anthrax treatment Cipro that sells for $20 in India now costs $690 in the US). For those keeping track, all the Carlyle Group home pages are still being redesigned. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 02:39:23 PM | link FOX SPINS A TALE Fox "News", the "we distort, you decide" folks, are putting their unmistakable spin on an item featured herein earlier today. That item dealt with the Senate staying open for business and the House closing and leaving town. Fox, not wanting its GOP masters in the House to get embarassed, spins the story like this: A source close to the House leadership said the decision to shut down had been made on both sides, expressing anger at the senators' reversal and their hints that Hastert had overreacted. It was the Senate that appeared to have dissent within its ranks, the source said. The "source", who is probably Roger Ailes or someone similar, is of course attempting to blame the Senate (i.e. the Democrats) for showing disunity rather than let the House (i.e. the GOP) be criticized for running away. That is, it was all an evil plot by those commie Democrats to embarass good Americans like Dick Armey and Dennis Hastert. An excerpt from an earlier part of the same Fox story belies this: But shortly after that, following a closed-door meeting of the entire Senate, Daschle and Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., emerged to say the Senate would remain open. They then downplayed the potency of the anthrax, and denied it was traveling through the vents. So Fox is attempting to get the reader to believe that a statement jointly made by Trent Lott - the Senate GOP leader not exactly known for his communist sympathies - and Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle about the Senate remaining in session was more politically motivated than was GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert's unilateral statement about shutting down Congress. Fox has apparently gotten so arrogant that they don't even bother to attempt to make their propaganda consistent within stories. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 02:11:59 PM | link SOLUTIONS? WE'VE GOT SOLUTIONS! Over at Ampol, William Rivers Pitt delivers new solutions for an old war. I've been meaning to write something similar but I'll gladly defer to Pitt on the matter. His solutions are: Immediately recognize a Palestinian State, and pull out all the stops to broker a peace deal. Beat Arafat and Sharon about the head and shoulders until they come to an agreement that will stop the unspeakable suffering of the Palestinian people while ensuring the safety and security of Israel. Make Jerusalem a UN Protectorate guarded by Swiss troops, or some equally uninvolved nation. This is no longer an eternally nagging problem. It is the lynchpin upon which peace or total destruction will turn. Take the billions of dollars we are currently spending to destroy rubble and mud in Afghanistan and turn it into food, medicine, radios, propaganda, clothing, seeds. If we can read Mullah Abdul bin Talal bin Alla bin Mustafa's watch as he rides his camel through the Khyber Pass with our satellites, we can feed and clothe these people, because we are clever. Who says a Marshall Plan has to come after a war? With a concentrated effort, all the Taliban warriors in Afghanistan won't be able to stop it. They will fall. Continue what had been shaping up to be an excellent diplomatic course. Cut off terrorist funding. Organize the coalition to marshal every iota of intelligence ability to tracking, arresting and convicting terrorists in every corner of the globe. Before we started bombing, we had massive cooperation. That may evaporate in a cloud of outrage soon, and the aforementioned safe terrorists will not have the combined might of the international community looking for them anymore. Stop bombing Afghanistan. Civilians have been killed already by errant munitions. We have already created more terrorists. Stop the bombing, and stop this genesis. We've got Special Forces in Afghanistan right now lazing 'targets', i.e. mud piles and rubble. Reconstitute their mission to search-and-destroy mode. Shoot these Al Qaeda fighters between the eyes from 1,000 yards out... you know we can do it. Okay, I'll add a suggestion: Stop the rattafratting Holy War on Drugs. Everyone agrees that drug money is the primary funding source for terrorists everywhere, and many realize that drugs are big money because they're illegal. They are also many other good reasons to treat as a health problem what is now treated as a legal problem, and in an endlessly spiraling upward draconian manner. There are other and better solutions than "gitting tuffer." He's also got some suggestion for the domestric front, although I doubt they'll seem as agreeable as the previous quartet to many. Restore Congressional oversight to its full Constitutional stature. Bush has sworn to limit the flow of data to Congress. This must not stand. Harry Truman investigated America's conduct of World War II while a Senator, and Congress investigated several facets of the Vietnam War. Both actions helped America in its actions. We can not lose this essential aspect of our government in the rush to battle. The Republican Party must immediately cease its attempts to pass partisan legislation under the guise of "military necessity". The war will not be helped by tax cuts, nor will it be helped by drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, nor will it be helped by a ceaseless barrage of denunciations aimed at President Clinton. If this does not cease, our much ballyhooed unity will fall to dust, and rightly so. Immediately begin Congressional investigations into the spectacular failures by the FBI, CIA, NSA and the security sections of the national airlines that allowed this travesty to take place with nary a word of warning. A complete analysis of our international policies over the last fifty years must be immediately undertaken. We must determine where our own actions have helped bring this old war to our shores. From our toppling of the Iranian government, to Palestine, to Lebanon, to the sanctions on Iraq, our policies have left many large and damaging footprints. Before we can get to how we will win, we must first undertake to fully understand why it all happened. Simply being amazed at the hatred of our enemies is not enough, and does scant justice to the American lives that have been lost. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 01:49:04 PM | link FERNAND BRAUDEL An item at dangerousmeta about Fernand Braudel prompts me to also mention this unfortunately well-kept secret of a great historian. Related links include: a review of Civilization and Capitalism, Braudel's monumental trilogy about the 15th through 18th centuries, by Danny Yee; some notes from The Structures of Everyday Life, the first volume of the abovementioned trilogy; a biography of Braudel, who died in 1985, in French; a list of the Braudel books still in print from the University of California Press; a review essay of the Civilization and Capitalism trilogy by Alan Heston as part of a project to review the significant works of economic history written in the 20th century; and a set of lecture notes giving the context of the school of history writing in which Braudel toiled. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 01:02:28 PM | link CORKING GOOD IDEER, THAT! Although Blair seems to have bad case of cranial-rectal inversion, not everyone on the other side of the pond has gone completely barmy. According to an Independent article: A Labour MP is launching a Private Member's Bill to legalise personal use of cannabis - arguing that beleaguered British farmers could grow it as a cash crop. Jon Owen Jones said the measure would "remove criminals from the equation" and could provide a "hardy cash crop" for British farmers, left on their knees by foot-and-mouth disease, BSE, tumbling dairy prices and concerns over GM crops. The Cardiff Central MP's Legalisation of Cannabis Bill is due to be debated in the House of Commons next week, but is highly unlikely to become law. However, it comes after a noticeable shift in public attitudes to the drug. MPs who have spoken out in favour of liberalising the drug laws include former Tory Cabinet minister Peter Lilley. And the first official pilot project where police turn a blind eye to possession of the drug began this summer in south London. Look for the Shrub Regime to rush attack helicopters over to Albion to nip this pernicious attempt to destroy the precious chillun in the bud. But before that happens you'll undoubtedly see Blair cancel that pilot project with extreme prejudice as a gift to his masters in the colonies. He'll excoriate the project as an "utter failure," offering as evidence the statement that the project is an "utter failure." posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 12:46:02 PM | link GOOD STATS One of the many fine dishes you'll find served up at the late Steve Kangas' Liberalism Resurgent site is The Reagan Years: A Statistical Overview of the 1980s. It these days when tax cuts are automatically forwarded as the best and only solution to everything from an economic downturn to "tourism" to the common cold, it provides all the ammo you'll need to shoot down even the most flatlining of supply-siders. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 12:34:20 PM | link NICE RHETORICAL FLOURISHES Although Warren Pease's rant doesn't add anything to what I already know about recent events, I like his style. Since September 11, two columnists - one in Grants Pass, Ore. and the other in Texas City, Tex. - have been fired by their publishers for writing pieces harshly critical of Bush's leadership. The natural question would be, "what leadership," but apparently the publishers see something where most people who aren't on Prozac see only a terrifying vacuum. Of course, if you've been to either of these places, you'll already know that public criticism of a conservative Republican in any context whatsoever would probably get you tarred, feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. Now there's a grand American tradition ripe for revival. Imagine, say, the reptilian Dick Cheney and the antediluvian Jesse Helms stark nekkid and stinking like a new roof on a muggy Alabama day, a rime of snowy down covering their chunky Republican thighs, pumping one of those railroad hand cars for all they're worth, a mob of seriously pissed off, torch-bearing progressives in hot pursuit. Cheney's pacemaker battery is sorely taxed, Jesse can't resist slowing down to scold a couple of chickies for baring their navels (while swallowing very rapidly indeed), the mob's catching up. Normally there'd be details at 11:00, but the newsbabe just got disciplined for failing to preface her comments with the proper measure of Bushean veneration. And then she got a hangnail and had to be whisked away by chopper to a 24-hour emergency salon. ... I'm looking forward to a nationally televised panel discussion that includes Gordon Liddy, Cal Thomas, Robert Novak, George Will, John McGloughlan, Debra Saunders, Ollie North, Fred Barnes, Matt Drudge, Mona Charon and the editorial staffs of the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the American Spectator. They're sitting around a table, all frumpy and anal-retentive and terminally pissed off the way conservatives naturally get when they wake up in the morning. And all these media stars are sniveling and bitching about how hard it is to get good, traditional conservative views represented in the American media mix. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 12:29:45 PM | link ASHCROFT DENIES EVERYTHING Attorney General John Ashcroft continues to prove that the upcoming passage of the "USA Bill" isn't necessary to eviscerate the Constitution. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Tuesday that there has been no wholesale abuse of those being detained in the five-week federal terrorism investigation, even as four more cases surfaced in which young men allegedly are being kept from their attorneys and confined in jails without proper food or protection. The new cases, in Florida and Pennsylvania, include a Pakistani man who has lost 20 pounds as he sits in jail with suspected murderers and other violent offenders, and a teenage Iraqi whose family said he came to America to escape one repressive regime and now fears he may have found another. Their attorney said she has found it next to impossible to learn much about their condition or legal situation--a frustration made worse, she said, because the four men are being held for minor immigration infractions. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials will not comment on specific cases, but Ashcroft denied that there has been any purposeful abuse of the 700 people detained since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And as to hate crimes not being committed by Ashcroft and his troops in the DOJ: Ashcroft also met with leaders of Arab, Muslim and Sikh communities in the United States, pledging to press hate crime prosecutions against anyone targeting Middle Easterners for violence. He said authorities have opened 170 hate-crime investigations into killings, shootings, death threats, arson and the destruction of mosques and other places of worship. "Such senseless acts violate federal law. They run counter to the very principles of equality and freedom upon which our nation is founded," Ashcroft said. "Such attacks are un-American and unlawful." Ashcroft didn't mention whether any of the suspects in the 170 hate crime investigations were being detained indefinitely with no legal representation. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 10:47:49 AM | link PRICELESS In an article entitled House angry over Senate meeting, we find: Many House members and aides are angry over the Senate's decision to meet Thursday while the House is recessed and the rest of the Capitol complex is scoured for more anthrax spores. By Wednesday night, the differences in how the two chambers were responding to the presence of the potentially deadly bacteria had turned into a major rift. In private, House lawmakers and aides said Senate leaders succumbed to pressure to stay from senators who did not wish to be seen as fleeing. Senate aides called it miscommunication and said House leaders acted prematurely in deciding to leave. This is truly priceless. The Senate didn't stay to provide a good example for the American people and follow Shrub's advice to go about their everyday business, but rather because they "did not wish to be seen as fleeing." Meanwhile, the House - the leadership of which is entirely composed of those who never served in the military, as opposed to Senate leader Tom Daschle - joined Brave Sir Robin in the "hike up your dresses and flee" brigade. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 10:32:49 AM | link SAUDIS RUNNING SCARED The Middle East Newsline tells us of the Saudis debating one of the biggest bones of contention in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is quietly debating whether to end the U.S. military presence in the kingdom. Western diplomatic sources said the Saudi royal family has not relayed any such intent to Washington. But the royal family has been examining the option of calling on U.S. forces to leave the kingdom to relieve the intense pressure by the Islamic opposition. Crown Prince Abdullah, the sources said, appears to favor such a call. The move is said to be opposed by Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan, a rival to the throne. Anyone wanna bet against Prince Sultan? There's no way that the Oil Regime is going to pull out of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis can call on the U.S. to leave or for the monsters to appear from the briney deep, but it ain't gonna happen. I seem to remember that the U.S. military even occupies the third floor of the Saudi defense ministry, although I'm not able to find any confirmation for this right now. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 10:20:04 AM | link EGREGIOUS HYPOCRISY OF THE DAY From the Washington Post: Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell Daniels issued a useful warning the other day against the efforts of interest groups and members of Congress to use the current crisis to advance agendas having nothing to do with the crisis. "Opportunistic spending sorties," he called them, "with a little imagination, any straight-faced advocate can recast his pet program somewhere under the inviting headings of war, recession or disaster recovery." An example of a non-opportunistic spending sorty according to Daniels would undoubtedly be the administration's position that increased funding for a missile defense system is needed now more than ever. For example, in a Washington Post article from Sept. 11: Minutes earlier, he [U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith] had been extolling the United States proposal to create what he called a "new" post-Cold War security framework that would "make both our countries more secure." After listening to President Bush's speech on a cell phone, Feith began a news conference with American reporters saying that although the proposed missile defense system would not necessarily protect against "all the types of threats that the U.S. is facing," it still "makes a good deal of sense" to concentrate on it. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer provides a full Leith quote that is a truly magnificent example of doubletalk: "I don't think that it's fair to say a system designed for a specific purpose is flawed because it doesn't do something it's not designed to do." An example of an opportunistic spending would of course be extending the unemployment benefits of those thrown out of work by the recession, even though Lawrence Lindsey, the Regime's top economic advisor, predicted yesterday that the terrorist attacks would push the U.S. economy into a recession. War is peace, love is hate, etc. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 09:49:24 AM | link SPAM OF THE DAY "Taboo Farmyard Sex" posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 09:40:16 AM | link THE EHIME MARU The "Ehime Maru", the Japanese fishery training vessel sunk several months ago by a U.S. sub grandstanding for Shrub's big campaign contributers, is currently undergoing a salvage operation to recover an expected five to seven bodies. And in one of those coincidences that no longer surprise even slightly, it turns out that Halliburton - the regime previously ruled by Cheney - has a $60 million contract for their involvement in the operation. As Shrub told us, there is indeed opportunity behind every tragedy. Further Shrub regime conflicts of interest are provided by the diligent folks at Legitimate Government. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 09:33:41 AM | link SOME PRAGMATIC ANTHRAX INFO According to a Reuters item: A leading bioterror expert said on Tuesday people who feel panicky about opening their mail amid the anthrax scare can use a hot steam iron and a moist layer of fabric to kill germs. Ken Alibek, a top former Soviet germ warfare scientist who is now a U.S.-based author and researcher trying to develop defenses against bioterror, told a surprised congressional briefing on nonproliferation that a hot, moist steam iron and moist fabric could kill anthrax spores. Pressed by surprised lawmakers who were not sure if they had heard him right, he repeated that several times. ``Iron your letters,'' he said, adding that a microwave oven was not as good as an iron and that including moisture was essential because spores could survive dry heat. Reminds me of the good old days before "the world changed," i.e. an old Lucy Show episode where she regularly steamed open Mr. Mooney's mail, leading him one day to start massaging an envelope in front of her. He answered her look of puzzlement with, "Well, it's already had a steam bath, so I'm giving it a massage." I guess you had to be there. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 09:18:00 AM | link AKERLOF, SPENCE AND STIGLITZ A friend of mine with more than a little background in the "dismal science" sent me this regarding yesterday's item about Joseph Stiglitz. I of course passed it by Der Fatherland Security Office to ensure that no ultra-secret messages to "tourists" were buried therein, and although there is a fairly nasty subtext concerning cattle prods, petroleum jelly and goats, there's nothing that could be construed as aid and comfort to the enemy, whoever the hell they might be this week. While moot, really, I thought I'd comment on this: "CEPR has a press release about recent Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. It's a quick way to spin up on what he did and why it's important." The Nobel site's discussion is a much better place to spin up on the work of this year's winners of the Nobel prize in economics. Reading their blurb really brought down my opinion of CEPR. You'd never know from reading it that 3 economists won the Nobel this year: Akerlof, Spence, and Stiglitz. This was another year that I saw the Nobel awarded to people's names and work I am at least passingly familiar. Akerlof's "Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" (Quarterly Jourhal of Economics, August 1970) is a modern classic, and I had mentioned asymmetric information and that paper to a friend a few weeks before the Nobel was awarded). I was happy to see the information economists win one. Unfortunately, the CEPR seems to want to attempt to associate Stiglitz's flap over the IMF with the work he was awarded a Nobel for. That isn't clear at all. Read Stiglitz's remarks: his problem was with the representation of worker interests regarding the IMF, and the idea that there's a clear connection with capital market liberalization and growth. In his criticism, Stiglitz refers to the work of another Nobel winner, Sen, and not once to his work in asymmetric information. I don't get why CEPR conflates these (mostly valid criticisms) with Stiglitz's work: it detracts from Stiglitz's work, which is actually pretty damn cool. Information economics was pioneered by Kenneth Arrow (i.e. another evil liberal who is generally much respected by economists) back in the 50s and 60s (it's a close over-generaliztion, but I think Arrow inspired much of work of these Laureates), and Akerlof's work is over 30 years old: these ideas are part of the received body of "standard" economics (i.e. posing economic doctrine x against "standard economics" has become a canard. While I cannot prove it, I estimate that the vast majority of economic papers I have read in the last 15 years propose some sort of market failure. The only people that believe in the perfection of markets are a handful of fanatics that don't publish research in serious journals. I'll go further, and bet that the work of these evil liberal outsider's 'gainst the ghost of standard economics were welcomed at the time they were published: i.e., it wasn't radical to propose market failure then and it is laughable that anyone would think that it was.) Stiglitz is right about the IMF, but I think it's too fucking bad CEPR obscured the other winners of the Nobel and spent half their blurb confounding his work as somehow outside standard economics, or that it had much to do with his IMF criticisms. Here is the Nobel site's summary of all three economists' work vis a vis "asymmetric information": Why are interest rates often excessively high on local lending markets in Third World countries? Why do people who want to buy a good used car turn to a dealer rather than a private seller? Why does a firm pay dividends even if they are taxed more heavily than capital gains? Why is it advantageous for insurance companies to offer clients a menu of contracts where higher deductibles can be exchanged for lower premiums? Why do rich landowners not bear the entire harvest risk in contracts with poor tenants? These questions exemplify familiar - but seemingly different - phenomena, each of which has posed a challenge to economic theory. This year's Laureates proposed a common explanation and extended the theory when they argumented the theory with the realistic assumption of asymmetric information: agents on one side of the market have much better information than those on the other side. Borrowers know more than the lender about their repayment prospects; the seller knows more than buyers about the quality of his car; the CEO and the board know more than the shareholders about the profitability of the firm; policyholders know more than the insurance company about their accident risk; and tenants know more than the landowner about their work effort and harvesting conditions. More specifically, Akerlof showed that informational asymmetries can give rise to adverse selection on markets. Due to imperfect information on the part of lenders or prospective car buyers, borrowers with weak repayment prospects or sellers of low-quality cars crowd out everyone else from the market. Spence demonstrated that under certain conditions, well-informed agents can improve their market outcome by signaling their private information to poorly informed agents. The management of a firm can thus incur the additional tax cost of dividends to signal high profitability. Stiglitz showed that an uninformed agent can sometimes capture the information of a better-informed agent through screening, for example by providing choices from a menu of contracts for a particular transaction. Insurance companies are thus able to divide their clients into risk classes by offering different policies, where lower premiums can be exchanged for a higher deductible. It also contains separate, lengthier summation sections for each economist that are well worth a gander. posted by Steven Baum 10/18/2001 08:56:42 AM | link Wednesday, October 17, 2001 ANTHRAX THREATS NOT NEW Barbara Santee, the executive director of Oklahoma NARAL, tells how anthrax and other thrreats aren't exactly a new thing to those providing legal abortions (via Progressive Review). Anthrax suddenly has become major news 24 hours a day. Why? The national media and the legislature suddenly face the same fear abortion providers have lived with for years. Providers have received "anthrax" letters and threats from "right-to-life" extremists for at least five years, but it was never front-page news because it was, after all, only "abortion clinics." From January 1998 to April 2001, there were 172 anthrax threats in the United States, one-third of them were made against abortion clinics. If any other professional specialty had received such a high number of threats, Americans would be up in arms, but not so for abortion providers. In the last week, 110 Planned Parenthood affiliates have received envelopes containing white powder and a letter stating it was anthrax. The media reports these threats under the general category of "terrorism," (which they have made synonymous with "Muslim terrorism") without making a vital distinction. Anti-abortion terrorism is not by Muslims, but rather by our own homegrown "Christian" terrorists. The violence at our clinics is the product of religious extremism, no different than the mindless extremism that brought down the Twin Towers in NYC. Perhaps when Americans must routinely wear bullet-proof vests to go to work, as abortion providers do now, they will begin to understand the true meaning of terror and the determination not to let the terrorists win! posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 03:31:23 PM | link BIG TROUBLE IN THE HOUSE OF SAUD Seymour Hersh paints a grim picture of the present state of the rulers of Saudi Arabia. The big question is who takes over when the shit hits the fan. Will it be the fundamentalists who recently declared a jihad on the House of Saud, or will the U.S. find some exiled, decrepit "king" to install after it takes over via its military forces already conveniently in place? Nation building can be so tiring. Since 1994 or earlier, the National Security Agency has been collecting electronic intercepts of conversations between members of the Saudi Arabian royal family, which is headed by King Fahd. The intercepts depict a regime increasingly corrupt, alienated from the country's religious rank and file, and so weakened and frightened that it has brokered its future by channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it. The intercepts have demonstrated to analysts that by 1996 Saudi money was supporting Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Central Asia, and throughout the Persian Gulf region. "Ninety-six is the key year," one American intelligence official told me. "Bin Laden hooked up to all the bad guys-it's like the Grand Alliance- and had a capability for conducting large-scale operations." The Saudi regime, he said, had "gone to the dark side." In interviews last week, current and former intelligence and military officials portrayed the growing instability of the Saudi regime-and the vulnerability of its oil reserves to terrorist attack-as the most immediate threat to American economic and political interests in the Middle East. The officials also said that the Bush Administration, like the Clinton Administration, is refusing to confront this reality, even in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 03:18:08 PM | link A PLOT TO OFF SHRUB IN JULY? James Hatfield's last column, dated July 3, 2001, contains much of what the previous entry had to say in addition to the following interesting tidbit. A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April. German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target-his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October. According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives. Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner? This is followed by more about Shrub's links to Bath and various Middle Eastern associates. Hatfield then speculated as to the reality of the supposed planned attack. From the what-it's-worth-department: I think Dubya's handlers have fed disinformation through the CIA and other backdoor channels to German and Italian intelligence agencies about a possible hit on Dubya by the fugitive terrorist to gain public sympathy and concern for a U.S. president who has taken a nose-dive in the opinion polls. Hatfield, who died on July 10, was the author of Fortunate Son, which is now in its second edition. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 01:31:12 PM | link MORE SHRUB "LINKS" An Intelligence Newsletter article from March 2, 2000 (reprinted at CRG) offers more Shrub "links" than a sausage factory. If you replaced "Bush" with "Clinton" herein, Dan Burton would be shrieking for at least 10 special investigations. Texas governor George W. Bush's campaign to become the Republican candidate in this November's presidential ballot could shortly run into turbulence because of new information about his past. Indeed, among the figures Bush dealt with indirectly when he ran oil companies was Saudi banker Khaled Bin Mahfouz who, Intelligence Newsletter has learned, is currently under house arrest in a hospital in Taef at the behest of the American authorities. The latter are looking into contributions Mahfouz is said to have made to welfare associations close to terrorist Ussama Bin Laden. Considered as the "king's treasurer," Mahfouz was recently forced to sharply reduce his stake in the National Commercial Bank, one of the biggest in the kingdom. Many in Arab financial circles see this as a harbinger of his disgrace. Mahfouz's name was linked to the scandal involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) , in which he held a 20% interest between 1986-1990. The BCCI was accused in senator John- Kerry's report of money-laundering and of financing terrorist groups and covert spy operations before it was wound up on July 5, 1991, with a $ 12 billion loss to its customers. Mahfouz was also linked to a case involving fake passports in Ireland in 1997 that forced Irish foreign minister Ray Burke to resign. In 1987 Mahfouz's representative in the U.S., Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, acquired an 11.5% stake in a company in which the Bush was a shareholder, director and adviser, Harken Energy. Bush played a central role in Harken which had his previous oil business, Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, in 1986. Spectrum 7, in which Bush was boss and held 13.8%, had previously bought up the first firm Bush founded, Arbusto Energy Inc. in 1984. An American banker named Jacksen Stephens who was to also be deeply involved in the BCCI affair moved in 1987 to invest $ 25 million in Harken. The transaction took place in Geneva with the money was paid through a joint venture set up between the Union des Banques Suisses and the Geneva branch of the BCCI; the financial accord was signed by both Stephens and Bakksh. Other links between Bush and Mahfouz can be found through investments in the Carlyle Group, an American investment firm managed by a board on which former president George Bush himself sat. The younger Bush personally held shares in one of the components of the Carlyle group, the Caterair company, between 1990-94. And Carlyle today ranks as a leading contributor to Bush's electoral campaign. On Carlyle's advisory board figures the name of Sami Baarma, director of the Pakistani financial establishment Prime Commercial Bank that is based in Lahore and owned by Mafouz. A second figure with an ambiguous part in Bush's financial past is Texas businessman James Bath. Considered as very close to the CIA, he appeared for the first time at Bush's side in 1978 when the latter made his first, unsuccessful run for the governorship. (He wouldn't try again until 1994, when he won). Bath helped to finance his campaign at the time and later bought into two of Bush's companies, Arbusto 79 Ltd and Arbusto 80 Ltd, affiliates of the Arbusto Energy oil exploration company founded by "W" in 1977. Under a mandate signed in 1976, Bath represented the financial interests of the Saudi Arabian sheikh Salem Bin Laden in the United States. Father of Ussama Bin Laden, Salem died in 1988. Thanks to his connections with Saudi business circles Bath obtained a $ 1.4 million loan from Mahfouz in 1990. These ties reflect many of the strategic issues that prevailed in the 1970s and 80s. The highly influential Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia helped to bankroll Islamic movements fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, with the blessings and participation of Washington (Ussama Bin Laden was given special training in covert operations in that context). But policy at the time also consisted of de-stabilizing the Moslem republics on the southern rim of the USSR by fomenting unrest on their borders. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 01:21:42 PM | link BLAIR PINCHES FROM MOORCOCK Michael Moorcock tells us in his Spectator diary how he and Blair are "linked". I've done my share of dirty jobs, but never thought I'd be Tony Blair's speech-writer. It was Kipling or me. In my Warlord of the Air, Cpt. Bastable, a decent, idealistic British officer, NW Frontier, 1903, plunges into a future whose benign Pax Britannica is subtly maintained by armed paternalism and limited civil rights. Bastable offers "enlightened" reasons for taking up the White Man's Burden, and I'll swear PM Blurr pinched that bit for his Brighton speech. Have I at last accurately predicted the future? I think so. This means that by Christmas the editor of this paper will declare the Henley Commune; Zeppelin stocks will be hot; Imperial Chinese flying iron-clads will liberate Balham; the Stuart flag will fly over free Southwark; France will apply to rejoin the United Kingdom; and England will win the World Cup. That's right, dear reader. The end of civilisation as we know it. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 01:05:21 PM | link EVOLUTION = TERRORISM Leave it to those wacky folks at the Institute for Creation Research (via NCSE) to find the most obvious parallel of all to the Sept. 11 attacks. Both events have much in common. The public was unaware of the deliberate preparation that was schemed over the past few years to lead to these events. And while the public now understands from President Bush that "We're at War" with religious fanatics around the world, they don't have a clue that America is being attacked from within through its public schools by a militant religious movement called Darwinists. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 01:01:31 PM | link 47 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ZNet offers The War in Afghanistan: 47 Questions and Answers by Michael Albert and Stephen R. Shalom. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 12:54:57 PM | link JOSEPH STIGLITZ CEPR has a press release about recent Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. It's a quick way to spin up on what he did and why it's important. The Center for Economic and Policy Research congratulates Joe Stiglitz on being awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his research on the effect of asymmetric information on market outcomes. Professor Stiglitz's path-breaking research on this topic showed how markets may not operate efficiently when the standard assumption-that all actors have full information-is violated. One implication of Professor Stiglitz's work is that the institutional structure of capital markets may have a significant impact on the course of development and economic growth. For example, the long-term relationships between banks and firms that have historically existed in nations such as Germany, Japan, France and South Korea may allocate capital more efficiently than the market-oriented system in the United States. Since asymmetric information may distort capital markets, Stiglitz has argued that interventions in capital markets, such as taxes on currency or stock trades, could actually increase their efficiency. Stiglitz's work also provides an explanation for unemployment that is missing in standard economic models. Since employers don't know exactly how productive an individual worker will be, they have to devise strategies that will encourage workers to maximize their effort. Such strategies can include paying workers at above the market-clearing wage-thereby generating unemployment. This leads to an explanation for involuntary unemployment that is absent from the traditional economic concept of a market, which assumes that both workers and employers have full information. Stiglitz' more realistic view of how markets function brought him into conflict with economists at the International Monetary Fund, whose "market fundamentalist" views he opposed. As Chief Economist of the World Bank, he broke with protocol by publicly criticizing the IMF for imposing what he called a "beggar thyself" policy on countries such as Indonesia during the Asian economic crisis of 1997-98. "Beggar thyself" referred to the IMF's policy of reducing a country's trade deficit by putting it through a recession (thereby reducing total demand, including imports), often brought about by extremely high interest rates. Professor Stiglitz criticized these policies as they were implemented in Asia, Russia, and Brazil. Stiglitz also criticized the IMF and U.S. Treasury for reckless pursuit of the liberalization of international financial flows, which led to the Asian financial crisis. He noted that the Fund embarked on this project without having even a single economic study showing that financial liberalization would lead to higher growth. He also pointed out that the Asian countries most impacted (Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines) had very high rates of savings and therefore did not need the foreign borrowing, arguing that their opening up was done more for the sake of American mutual funds seeking investment outlets. He also pointed out the "fundamental misunderstanding" of Western economists in Russia and the transition economies, and their role in bringing about the worst economic decline in world history, in the absence of war or natural disaster-nearly half of national income was lost in about 5 years. According the Financial Times (Nov. 25, 1999 p. 13) and other reports, these criticisms led to Professor Stiglitz being forced out of the World Bank, at the insistence of then US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 12:51:47 PM | link BUY MILITARY-RELATED STOCKS TODAY In addition to wanting to sell weapons to China, Shrub and his cohorts in the GOP are also being prompted by their corporate paymasters to sell weapons to Indonesia, which has been under a ban similar to China's in regard to military aid. With political tension building in Indonesia over the United States military attacks on Afghanistan, US business groups are hoping to increase support for the government of Megawati Sukarnoputri by convincing Congress to lift the ban on military training for Jakarta. The push to normalize military relations with Indonesia is coming from two influential business groups in Washington, the US-ASEAN Business Council, which represents over 400 US corporations doing business in Southeast Asia, and the US Indonesia Society, a private group whose membership includes top business and government officials from both countries. It dovetails with a new Bush administration initiative to widen the coalition supporting US military action in the Middle East by waiving restrictions on military aid and weapons exports to any country deemed by President George W Bush to be aiding in the fight against terrorism. But it could trigger a battle in Congress. US lawmakers have been remarkably united in their response to the September 11 attacks but are beginning to show signs of partisanship over how to respond economically and politically to the new war situation, specifically on a bailout for the airline industry and administration proposals on law enforcement. Many Democrats are opposed to restoring International Military Education and Training (IMET) for Indonesia until some of Megawati's military backers are brought to justice for the 1999 violence in East Timor. They also want assurances that her government can control what many believe to be military overreactions in the rebellious provinces of Aceh and Irian Jaya. Expect to hear how the Democrats opposing this are obstructing the Holy War on Terrorism. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 11:46:37 AM | link MALPRACTICE PAYOUT BOGEYMAN SHOT DOWN An item at the Center for Justice and Democracy tells a different story than those who would limit medical malpractice suits because of their supposed huge drain on the health care industry. In an astonishing refutation of insurance company claims that medical malpractice verdicts are "exploding" and forcing dramatic rates increases, a new analysis shows that insurance companies are paying victims of medical negligence on average only $42,607.03. This is only slightly more than the average payout was a decade earlier -- $39,093.31. Moreover, medical malpractice costs, as a percentage of national health care expenditures, are at an all time low, 0.55 percent. The analysis, conducted for the Center for Justice & Democracy (CJ&D) by actuary J. Robert Hunter, Director of Insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, examined year 2000 insurance data, the most recent available from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and A.M. Best and Co. Hunter, former Texas Insurance Commissioner and Federal Insurance Administrator, also cites Best's Review, which notes that medical malpractice is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, killing more people than breast cancer, AIDS and traffic deaths. He concludes, "Medical malpractice insurance is amazing value, considering that it covers all medical injuries for about one-half of one percent of health system costs." According to CJ&D Executive Director Joanne Doroshow, "Some recent reports are warning of an impending nationwide medical malpractice insurance crisis. Insurance companies are blaming judges and juries for the decision to make insurance unaffordable for doctors. This is a bogus public relations scam intended to pressure lawmakers to unfairly limit the rights of injured Americans to take negligent doctors to court. As Best's Review points out, several factors having nothing to do with lawsuits are to blame for possible rates increases nationwide, including earlier underpricing by insurance companies, rapidly changing consumer markets and the nation's conversion to managed care." posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 10:36:23 AM | link SHRUB WHISPERS SWEETLY TO CHINA China - which the usual suspects were trying to whip up as the next great threat to truth, justice and the American way just six months ago (after they downed a U.S. spy plane) - is going to be able to buy "military-related" equipment from the U.S. (i.e. Shrub's bosses in the defense equipment sector) in the near future. After Central Asia is made safe for the oil industry, this "military-related" equipment will undoubtedly be used in the next episode of the "China threatens our way of life" show. The Bush administration, seeking to promote exchanges of anti-terrorist intelligence with China, is considering a waiver on sanctions that bar the sale of military-related equipment to Chinese security forces, government sources said yesterday. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 10:18:11 AM | link HOUSE GETS DOWN TO REAL BUSINESS Even while engaged in the hustle and bustle of eviscerating the Constitution, the House still finds time for the really important things in this time of national crisis. The House on Tuesday gave its blessing to "God Bless America," urging public schools to display the expression as a show of support for the nation. The nonbinding House resolution, passed 404-0, responds to several cases around the country where people have objected to displaying the words at schools, saying that religion and patriotism should not be intermixed. The measure's sponsor, freshman Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., recalled standing on the steps of the evacuated Capitol building on the evening of Sept. 11, joining other lawmakers in singing "God Bless America." "To threaten a public school for showing the same type of patriotism that we all showed on the Capitol steps is the opposite of what this country is all about," he said. How better to fight religious fanaticism than by indoctrinating all the precious lil' chilluns to chant, "My god's better than your god"? Pennsylvania, the former haunt of "Tourism" Czar Ridge, is going the feds one better. An AP item tells us: Pennsylvania school students would have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem each day, and classrooms would have to display the American flag under a measure passed by the state representatives Tuesday. The bill cleared the state House 200-1, with only Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, voting against it. The legislation heads to the Senate for review. There's nothing like a rousing chorus of "Hail Oceania" to get the patriotic blood pumping. I'm old enough to remember having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer each morning in elementary school. See how effective that was? posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 09:56:43 AM | link FREEPERS GET WHIPLASH There's a very entertaining thread over at the freeper site. It's entitled "Loser Larry Klayman wants to investigate Bush Sr." and is a reaction to recent press release at Judicial Watch concerning the "links" between the Bush Dynasty and the Carlyle Group. The entertaining part is that the briefest of glances at the JW site would show even the densest of freepers that JW is about as ideologically compatible with them as is possible. Klayman and his cadre spent all 8 years of the Clinton administration filing lawsuit after lawsuit, and their site shows they haven't stopped. The best comment is in the thread itself: Two years ago, Larry Klayman was supported and adored on these threads. Same guy, same group, same methods, same fund-raising. Why is he a loon and evil now? Those kwazy, kwazy freepers. posted by Steven Baum 10/17/2001 09:42:19 AM | link Tuesday, October 16, 2001 ACLU ON "PATRIOT" LEGISLATION The ACLU lists the most troubling provisions in both the Senate and the modified House anti-terrorism legislation. Permits Information Sharing: Allows information obtained during criminal investigations to be distributed to the CIA, NSA, INS, Secret Service and military, without judicial review, and with no limits as to how these agencies can use the information once they have it. Authorizes "Sneak and Peek Searches": Authorizes expanded use of covert searches for any criminal investigation, thus allowing the government to enter your home, office or other private place and conduct a search, take photographs, and download your computer files without notifying you until later. Allows Forum Shopping: Law enforcement can apply for warrants in any court in any jurisdiction where it is conducting an investigation for a search anywhere in the country. This would make it very difficult for individuals subjected to searches to challenge the warrant. Creates New Crime of Domestic Terrorism: Creates an entirely new type of crime, which is unnecessary for the prosecution of the "War on Terrorism." By expanding the definition of terrorism in such a way, the bill could potentially allow the government to levy heavy penalties for relatively minor offenses, including political protests. Allows the CIA to Spy on Americans: Gives the Director of Central Intelligence the power to manage the gathering of intelligence in America and mandate the disclosure of information obtained by the FBI about terrorism in general - even if it is about law-abiding American citizens - to the CIA. Imposes Indefinite Detention: Permits authorities to indefinitely detain non-citizens, without meaningful judicial review. Reduces Privacy in Student Records: Allows law enforcement to access, use and disseminate highly personal information about American and foreign students. Expands Wiretap Authority: Minimizes judicial supervision of law enforcement wiretap authority in several ways, including: permitting law enforcement to obtain the equivalent of "blank" warrants in the physical world; authorizing intelligence wiretaps that need not specify the phone to be tapped or require that only the target's conversations be eavesdropped upon; and allowing the FBI to use its "intelligence" authority to circumvent the judicial review of the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 04:07:46 PM | link AD SLAM Commercial Alert (via Progressive Review) is sponsoring a National Ad Slam Contest. The Ad Slam is a nationwide contest to throw advertisers out of our schools during the 2001-2002 school year. Commercial Alert will award a $5000 prize to the school that makes the best and most creative effort to remove advertising and commercialism from school premises. Other prizes will be given for creativity, media coverage, and teamwork. If you participate with thousands of other activists across the country, we will all win. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 03:55:10 PM | link WHITE COLLAR TERRORISTS Al Giordano speaks bluntly about those who help fund terrorism and who will not be bombed, assassinated, starved, etc. The kingpins of global organized crime do not wear sombreros nor turbans. They wear suits and ties. They attend political fundraisers. They hire big lobbying firms. They pressure and push lawmakers for loopholes that have, so far, allowed a system of "private banking," "correspondent banks," and "offshore shell banks" to launder the money of corrupt regimes and criminal empires across the world. Citigroup is the largest financial institution in the world. It has been caught time and time again in narco-money laundering trails in our América and across the globe. Citigroup, according to the Washington Post, is now lobbying to weaken anti-terrorism money-laundering legislation in Washington. Narco News has extensively documented Citigroup's history of impunity and corruption when it comes to laundering drug money for corrupt regimes in Mexico and Peru, and Argentina, among other nations. We have also reported on the hypocrisy of Citigroup executive chairman Robert Rubin, who prosecuted Banamex in the Operation Casablanca case when he was U.S. Treasury Secretary, and then orchestrated the former National Bank of Mexico's purchase by Citigroup. Rubin, as alleged in a pending federal lawsuit by a former U.S. Customs Agent against his former department, presided over a Treasury regime that punished, harassed and silenced honest whistleblowers against corruption in his agencies. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 01:02:20 PM | link PBS CLOSED TO INDEPENDENTS While this shouldn't come as a surprise, the details are worth repeating. In 1987, Congress was confronted with testimony from members of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF) that independent producers faced an increasingly "closed system" at PBS. In response, Congress authorized establishment of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) to promote "greater innovation and diversity" in programming, especially concerning "minorities" and "the lives and concerns of American workers." How's it doing today? While hundreds of ITVS-sponsored films have been made since, PBS has seen fit to air only a handful. When pressed, former PBS Program Director Kathy Quattrone quipped that ITVS was just one of many competing suppliers for PBS airtime. In 1997, then ITVS Director Jim Yee lamented, "The PBS schedule hasn't changed in the last several years. There is very little room for original programming." In the years since, Yee and his successor have pursued subscription cable channel outlets, like Showtime, with more success than they had at PBS. ... Worse, as author/filmmaker B.J. Bullert reports, even if they are accomplished filmmakers, PBS gatekeepers do not consider public interest advocates to be "journalists." In her words, they often "label" their work "propaganda," and assume that their interests bias their reporting. "Deadly Deception" is an exposé of radiation poisoning of workers and residents by General Electric nuclear weapons production that won the 1991 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. The film was produced by INFACT, a public interest group leading a GE boycott. PBS turned it down. KQED San Francisco Program Director, Ron Santora defended the decision with the statement: PBS "stays away from documentaries commissioned by groups of that nature. We use more independent producers without an axe to grind." Yet PBS has had no qualms about airing several documentaries underwritten by foundations promoting a conservative political agenda. Frontline and POV are the only regularly scheduled PBS series that host serious documentaries. Only a handful of producers routinely are called upon to produce those shows. Former CBS producer Robert Richter won several Emmys, three duPonts and a Peabody, but he has never made it to "Frontline." "It's a very closed circle," he says, "I've tried to penetrate a few times, but it's not easy." His film, "The Money Lenders" about the impact of the World Bank and the IMF on developing countries has been timely for years. However, PBS turned it down in 1993 with the comment: "Even though the documentary may seem objective to some, there is a perception of bias in favor of poor people who claim to be adversely affected." And we all know how those ne'er-do-wells lie, don't we? Where's Ari Fleischer when you need the truth? posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 11:58:52 AM | link ENRON AND INDIA Here's a reason why we may see India portrayed as the villain vis a vis Pakistan in the near future. As CNN told it on Sept. 6, it's not nice to fuck with corporate America. The US ambassador to India has warned that the long-running dispute between Enron and Maharashtra state is deterring investment in India. This article provides a quick tour of the situation and the players involved, with the latter including the Bush Dynasty. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 11:23:28 AM | link DEBKA INTERVIEWED The Hill interviews the folks at Debka. In response to "why should we believe you?", they reply: There is no compulsion to believe us - but if you are really curious about what is going on today, pick one or two items on our site and check them out over a period of time. AT the end of that process, you will either confirm our stories for yourselves - examples the rift in the Saudi royal house, the growing military tension on the Chinese-Afghan border, or as happens quite often lately, the big guys follow in our wake-sometimes with a different slant. As to whether they're just a branch of the Mossad's disinformation service: Counter-question: Why are we always asked if we serve the Mossad? We serve no -one. We are an extremely independent organizatin and believe in giving the facts as hard as they come to the reader/viewer, treating him or her as though we are addressing the real decision makers. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 11:11:51 AM | link BUILDING THE PERFECT ECONOMY People for a Perfect Economy claim to "propose and demonstrate a mathematically perfected economy." I've not had time to evaulate their claim but I did enjoy their first couple of paragraphs, being as big a fan of usury as they are. One of the most remarkable deceptions in all history is the passing off of usury as economy. The very idea of a few individuals providing nothing whatever to the commerce system, and profiting at the ever greater cost of all truly productive commerce, is the very greatest possible violation of representative government. But that this pretended economy impedes prosperity at all; impedes prosperity to tremendous degrees; provides no bona fide service whatever; and is so abusive it can collapse commerce altogether because it irreversibly multiplies debt as the very means to ever greater profit - it is unthinkable an intelligent world would tolerate it. It is amazing the present, world-wide network of usury has not been deftly destroyed by the most united public dedication, because the very fact usury irreversibly multiplies debt in proportion to commerce verges the world now to the brink of insoluble debt. Debt is perpetually and irreversibly multiplied by the mere fact to maintain a vital circulation, we must borrow back all payments against principal and interest as a new debt, increased so much as periodic interest. By this process, the debt of the world is multiplied irreversibly, at an ever escalating rate. Without solution, because debt is irreversibly multiplied in proportion to the commerce which can be sustained by a circulation, the day will come that debt renders all commerce insolvent. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 10:56:51 AM | link STEGANOGRAPHIC IMAGE FOUND The folks at Michigan's CITI have found their "first steganographic image in the wild" using Stegdetect, their steganographic detection framework package. They also have a package called OutGuess for hiding messages in images. This was a pretty easy one, though, since they were told that the original contained a hidden message and guessed a fairly obvious key. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 10:51:52 AM | link ARCHIVE FIXED Someone asked why my archive page only went back a month, so I fixed it so it goes back to the sordid beginning. As usual, many thanks go to those wonderful folks at Blogger who work hard so I can be lazy. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 10:38:02 AM | link ANOTHER NEW GOVERNMENT AGENCY Barry Grey contrasts the speech Shrub actually gave on Oct. 11 with the one breathlessly described by the fiercely independent mainstream media as just short of the best in recorded history. He focuses on the review of the speech by the New York Times, which makes one wonder if the "tourists" haven't successfully spiked the NY water supply with LSD. The Times' editors know that Bush's press conference bore no resemblance to their adulatory review. Why, then, did they publish such a shameless tract? The media is determined that there will be no repetition of the Vietnam-era "credibility gap" because there will be no challenge from their quarter to the claims of the government. This open transformation of the press into a propaganda arm of the state is a symptom of the far-reaching degeneration of democratic institutions in America. Articles and commentaries such as that of the New York Times, and they are legion, reflect the contempt of the American ruling elite for the public. The media is not engaged simply in influencing public opinion. American politics has reached the stage where public opinion itself is entirely synthetic. Lies and half-truths have become the ingredients of a perfected system of manipulation that is only remotely connected to facts and has virtually no reference to the concerns and moods of the broad mass of the population. Public opinion is nothing more than the manner in which the corporate oligarchy and its government agents package their own outlook. The entire media operation has become an exercise not only in mass deception, but also in self-delusion. It is a closed circle that reflects the extreme alienation of the political system from the general population. Or as that other commie Orwell said: Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 10:21:01 AM | link THIS IS GETTING TOO EASY Being tired of shooting particularly slow fish in remarkably small barrels, I'll just repeat this item. Okay, I did check to be sure that this wasn't an Onion item. In the midst of its own war on terrorism, the Bush administration rebuked Israel on Monday for killing the suspected Palestinian plotter of a Tel Aviv disco bombing and set out a series of moves it said Israel must make. Rejecting any parallel to the U.S. campaign to wipe out the al-Qaida network in Afghanistan by force, the State Department said it remained opposed to Israel's targeting terrorists for assassination. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 10:05:46 AM | link SHRUB TO FORMER HOSTAGES: "SHUT UP!" Shrub and his handlers are attempting to muzzle the former American hostages of Iran, i.e. the folks who spent 444 days as guests of current coalition good buddy Iran two decades ago. With Iran participating in the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism, the government tried unsuccessfully Monday to block anti-Iran testimony from former American hostages held for 444 days after the U.S. embassy in Tehran was seized two decades ago. The move by the State Department prompted one of the ex-hostages, Barry Rosen, to accuse the government of playing "a surrogate role for Iran" in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 09:55:37 AM | link ANOTHER STRIKE IN THE PROPAGANDA WAR ABC tells of yet another step in the propaganda war being waged domestically. The U.S. military is paying for the exclusive rights to commercial satellite imagery of Afghanistan even though its own satellites are thought to take far better pictures. This could serve two purposes: to provide an extra eye on Afghanistan, and to prevent anyone else from peeking at the war zone. Obligatory Orwellian reference: This is being done as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 09:47:05 AM | link HOLY SHIT! SANITY! According to an article in the Jerusalem Post: Foreign Minister Shimon Peres called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state during an official visit to Prague this morning. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 09:42:07 AM | link THE FUN BEGINS We read of problems in The Coalition. Relations between the US and two of its core allies in the war against terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, approached crisis point yesterday after the Saudi interior minister, Prince Naif, attacked the assault on Afghanistan while Pakistan pressed Washington to ensure that its bombing campaign would be short-lived. In the latest and most public of a series of disagreements that have evidently taken the US by surprise in the five weeks since the September 11 attacks, Prince Naif told the official Saudi Press Agency that the kingdom wanted the US to flush out the terrorists without bombing. "This is killing innocent people. The situation does not please us at all." Officially, the state department in Washington remains "very satisfied" with the Saudi approach to the crisis, but this masks increasing alarm not merely about the governmental response but about potential insurrection that could endanger the Saudi regime. For the record, the Saudi clergy just recently called for what can basically be called an insurrection against the House of Saud and their acolytes. We also read of the Indians breaking a 10-month cease fire with Pakistan (largely because of a recent suicide bombing that killed 30 in Kashmir), and of the supreme leader of Iran saying the U.S. air strikes are "dragging the world into a war." A spokesman for the very conservative American Enterprise Institute provides some perspective: David Wurmser, director of Middle East studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said yesterday: "The US's entire foreign policy structure in the region has been anchored in the strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia. If everything we're hearing is true, then we're facing a total meltdown. "The whole war as currently conceived would have to be reconsidered, because Pakistan won't hold if Saudi support starts collapsing. "You can't really separate Bin Laden from the Saudi establishment," Mr Wurmser said. "There are conflicting forces there, and part of the establishment has been working with the Bin Laden faction to embarrass the other half." You can only play everybody against each other for so long, and 50 years may be just about the limit in the Middle East. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 09:26:12 AM | link ARMY OF ALLAH, ER, GOD From U.S. Newswire: Clinics around the country today reported receiving letters claiming to contain anthrax, according to the National Abortion Federation. "We have received more than thirty calls so far from member clinics in twelve states, and are receiving more calls by the minute," said Vicki Saporta, executive director of the National Abortion Federation (NAF). "We advised our clinics last week to be on alert for this type of attack, based on what was happening in Florida and New York. At this point, we do not know if the letters are linked to those attacks. We do know that some of the letters reference the Army of God, a group of domestic terrorists that has claimed responsibility for the murder of abortion providers." The National Abortion Federation notified its members through fax and e-mail last week that there was an increased risk of an anthrax attack. An alert also went out to members today with information about the letters that have been received so far. The letters claim to contain anthrax, and are filled with a white, powdery substance. Some of the letters are postmarked from Atlanta, and have a return address "U.S. Secret Service." Other letters are postmarked from Cleveland or Columbus, Ohio, with a "U.S. Marshals" return address. All clinics are being advised not to open any similar or suspicious letters. As a mental exercise, go on over to the Army of God site and read it, replacing the phrase "babykilling abortionist" with "western infidel". Then imagine what would happen to you if you sent similar threatening envelopes to, say, Liberty University or McDonald's or basically anyone other than Planned Parenthood. Of course I'm sure that "links" to Osama bin Laden will soon be found, exonerating these good, patriotic Americans of this incident and letting them get back to their usual wholesome activities like bombing the clinics and shooting the doctors. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 09:04:22 AM | link HOW TO BECOME A MODERATE First, use the current Crisis of the Century of the Week to call for $60-75 billion in tax cuts for your wealthy constituents above and beyond what you could give them before "the world changed." Make sure that most of it goes to corporate American, since they got "shortchanged" in the previous taxcut, i.e. political exigencies required that they had to wait a while before being fully thanked for their campaign largesse. Then, get the GOP's militant arm, i.e. Armey et al. in the House, to add $30 billion to this so $70 of $100 billion is going to corporate America alone. Then, get your Treasury Secretary to play Mr. Conciliatory about the whole matter. The Bush administration signaled today that it would not support the full package of tax cuts that Republicans will bring to the House floor this week as their plan for giving a boost to the weakened economy. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill said the tax cuts in the bill - which would total nearly $100 billion for the current fiscal year and $159 billion over 10 years - were more than the administration was seeking. This reminds me of Reagan's MX debacle. He encouraged "vigorous debate" on the method of employment for the MX missile system, whose implementation was assumed a fait accompli. Now we have "vigorous debate" on how full to stuff corporate stockings for an early Christmas that's also a fait accompli. This is a perfect example of what Chomsky and others have pointed out about how framing the acceptable bounds of a supposed debate guarantees a victory. posted by Steven Baum 10/16/2001 08:48:35 AM | link Monday, October 15, 2001 WTC LIST Gary Stock's Unblinking contains a List of Business Offices, Tenants, and Companies in the World Trade Center (WTC). posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 04:11:24 PM | link BROADBAND DYING! Robert Cringely is, as usual, not mincing words. This week he tells us why broadband is dead, and is reasonably convincing about it. But wait, there's more! Not only is the broadband carriage business in trouble -- so is the broadband content business. There isn't a single company providing high-bandwidth content to mass consumers that is making any money on it. By this, I am not saying that Akamai is going broke, but that Akamai's customers aren't making back their investments. When you watch a broadband video clip on abcnews.com or cnn.com, both companies are losing money to bring you that content. And the accountants have spoken: There is no way they'll ever make that money back. So companies that used to put a lot of money into high bandwidth content are putting in less and less money, so there is less and less content available. If you thought it was bad before, it will get worse. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 03:37:41 PM | link SAVING US FROM DARWIN II Having provided excerpts from the first part a few weeks back, I'll now provide some from the second part of Frederick Crews' Saving Us From Darwin at the NYRB. It's a two-part essay review of the latest batch of creationist screeds and the latest replies from the evil-utionists. It's a crackling good read, as we say hereabouts. One doesn't have to read much creationist literature, for example, before realizing that anti-Darwinian fervor has as much to do with moral anxiety as with articles of revealed truth. Creationists are sure that the social order will dissolve unless our children are taught that the human race was planted here by God with instructions for proper conduct. Crime, licentiousness, blasphemy, unchecked greed, narcotic stupefaction, abortion, the weakening of family bonds-all are blamed on Darwin, whose supposed message is that we are animals to whom everything is permitted. This is the "fatal glass of beer" approach to explaining decadence. Take one biology course that leaves Darwin unchallenged, it seems, and you're on your way to nihilism, Eminem, and drive-by shootings. Crude though it is, such an outlook is not altogether dissimilar to that of prominent American neoconservatives who see their nation as consisting of two cultures, one of which is still guided by religious precepts while the other has abandoned itself to the indulgences of "the Sixties." Whatever the descriptive merits of that scheme, it exhibits the same foreshortened and moralized idea of causality that we see among the creationists. If the social fabric appears to be fraying, it's less because objective conditions have changed than because the very principles of authority and order have been gradually undermined by atheistical thinkers from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud through Herbert Marcuse, Norman Mailer, and Timothy Leary. And Darwin, despite his personal commitment to duty, sometimes makes his way onto the enemies list as well. The most articulate proponent of the "two cultures" theory is the distinguished historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, who also happens to be the author of a learned study of Darwin and his milieu, published in 1959.[2] Like her husband, Irving Kristol, who has declared "the very concept of evolution questionable," Himmelfarb showed no patience with natural selection in her book. She aimed to prove that Darwin's "failures of logic and crudities of imagination emphasized the inherent faults of his theory.... The theory itself was defective, and no amount of tampering with it could have helped." Himmelfarb's Darwin remains an indispensable contribution to Victorian intellectual history, but its animus against Darwin and Darwinism makes the book read like a portent of the neoconservatives' realization that, by liberal default, they must be the party of the creator God. ... The case of Commentary looks more significant, however, because the magazine is published by the American Jewish Committee and is much concerned with defending Jewish beliefs and affinities. In lending their imprimatur to intelligent design, the editors can hardly have been unaware that they were joining forces with Christian zealots like Johnson, who has declared the Incarnation of Christ to be as certain as the proposition "that apples fall down rather than up," or like William Dembski, whose ultimate thesis is that "all disciplines find their completion in Christ and cannot be properly understood apart from Christ." But Commentary's willingness to submerge religious differences for the sake of an imagined solidarity is nothing new. Rallying around both "family values" and the modern state that occupies the biblical Holy Land, the magazine's guiding figures had previously acknowledged that they share some principles with the evangelical right.[5] That realignment reached a memorable climax when, in 1995, Norman Podhoretz extended a friendly hand to Pat Robertson despite the latter's authorship of The New World Order, a Protocols-style tract against "the Jews." Commentary prides itself on favoring pragmatic realism over wishful thinking; and where science and technology are concerned, you can expect its articles to claim the support of authenticated research. But there is one exception: evolutionary biology has been consigned to the Johnsonian limbo of "materialistic philosophy." Such, among those who see themselves as guardians of decency and order, is the power of resistance to the disturbing prospect of a world unsupervised by a transcendent moral sovereign. The result is that Commentary, in the company of other magazines that treat natural selection as an illusion, tacitly encourages creationists to advance toward their primary goal: adulterating the public school curriculum so that children and adolescents will be denied access to an empirically plausible understanding of human origins. ... This case differs only marginally from the intelligent design argument that Miller decisively refuted in the opening chapters of his book. The distinction is simply that Miller's Darwinian God wouldn't have known in advance that you and I, who have finally pleased him by tumbling to his evolutionary scheme, would emerge from a line of apes. "Theologically," Miller explains, "the care that God takes not to intervene pointlessly in the world is an essential part of His plan for us"-or rather, of his plan for some intelligent species that luckily turned out to be us. Now that we're here, though, we humans can regard ourselves as "both the products of evolution and the apple of God's eye." "In each age," Miller writes, God "finds a way to bring His message directly to us." But which divine message, among Earth's thousands, does he mean? Although he notes in passing that the Almighty neglected to get his redemptive word out to the Mayas and the Toltecs among others, he dismisses that anomaly with an indifferent shrug. By effectively reducing religion to the Western monotheisms and then glossing over their differences, he blots from view the world's pantheist gurus, animist shamans, and idol worshipers while making the quarrelsome ayatollahs, cardinals, presbyters, and rabbis look as if they are hearing the same clear voice from above. Miller doesn't explain how he has been able to delve so unerringly into the Architect's cravings, schemes, and limitations. Nor does he answer the question that he himself crushingly deployed against the ID team: "Why did this magician, in order to produce the contemporary world, find it necessary to create and destroy creatures, habitats, and ecosystems millions of times over?" The God who entrusted his will entirely to mutation and selection can hardly be the one who, as Miller alleges, presented the ancient Hebrews with an ethical guidebook, "knowing exactly what they would understand"; who transformed himself into a man so as to settle accounts in his ledger of human sin; who "has a plan for each of us"; and who has endowed us with "immortal souls." As the fruit of a keen scientific mind, Finding Darwin's God appears to offer the strongest corroboration yet of William Provine's infamous rule: if you want to marry Christian doctrine with modern evolutionary biology, "you have to check your brains at the church-house door." posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 02:43:44 PM | link THIS AIN'T NO PARTY... Al Martin tells us of the unprecedented nature of Der Fatherland Security Office and Ubergruppenfuhrer Ridge's powers. I for one am fast losing my ability to see the humor in this situation. It's official. Tom Ridge has been sworn in as the director of the Office of Homeland Security, as of October 8, 2001. In his acceptance speech, he said, "Although some sacrifices will have to be made, the essential freedoms of the American people will be protected." And this is a very sinister message. What he's saying is that there obviously will be "sacrifices" in the civil rights of the people. And then he's saying the "essential" civil rights of the people will be maintained. But who determines what the word "essential" means? Who determines what "rights" are essential? Certainly the people are not going to determine that. And Ridge didn't say who it was who would be doing the determining. Then Bush spoke for a few more minutes and said that who would be doing the determining would be the "Supreme National Security Council." It will exist above the Homeland Security Directorate, and will be chaired by George Bush, various cabinet members and "certain others who have had long-term political allegiances to my father." What they're saying is that since this is a super-agency, which is immune from congressional oversight or judicial review, there has to be some regulatory body above it. That will make this Council extra-legal, extra-constitutional, extra-judicial, and extra-legislative. And it's even extra-executive. Bush then is essentially assuming supreme power as Chairman of the Supreme National Security Council. It's becoming clear how extraordinary the authority that this new agency, the Office of Homeland Security, along with its little brother, the Office of Cyberspace Security, really has. It means that this agency's authority effectively guts the Whistleblower Act of 1986 and the subsequent Whistleblower Protection Act of 1991. Government whistleblowers are no longer afforded the same measure of protection that they were before. Whistleblowers could actually go into court and request federal protection from US Marshals. They can't do that anymore. Also the creation of this agency with its vast new powers effectively guts the Freedom of Information Act. Since this agency is operating under essentially National Security law, as amended 1949-1950, and not regular Title Code 18 law, it can classify all of its operations and documents. It would be immune from any public request for information. Virtually all its budget is classified. It does not have to submit any public accounting for the money it spends - not even to the General Accounting Office. This is part of the power it will have as a super extra-legal extra-constitutional body. The only submission to GAO that is required will be total receipts and total expenditures -- what all agencies have to give the GAO even under classified spending, but they don't have to break that spending down at all. Furthermore (they are preparing the public for this), Bush knows there will be many Supreme Court challenges when we are past this "first blush of patriotism." When the American people have taken off their rose-colored glasses and only have their normal blinders on, there will be many proceedings in the Supreme Court over the authority being given this agency. That's why Bush is saying that this ruling council, this Supreme National Security Council, has decided that its only judicial accountability will be with the National Security Court in Washington DC, a court which the administration controls. What does this do? It not only suspends habeas corpus, but it does so on a virtually unlimited basis. Even during the Civil War, when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, there were still some rules. For example, you could not hold somebody for more than 90 days without charge. With this new agency, not only do they act ex post facto vis-a-vis habeas corpus, but there aren't any limits being imposed. They could literally detain people for years - for as long as they wanted. There is no limitation. When people talk about the suspension of habeas corpus, they talk about when Lincoln did it during the Civil War, or when Franklin Roosevelt did it on a limited basis during the Second World War. Ridge has already said that they have the authority to hold people indefinitely. In wartime suspension of habeas corpus, there are still rules. This is not a simple suspension of habeas corpus, but it is in effect an elimination of it. The power is granted to the Office of Homeland Security by default because it is immune from judicial review. Likewise, there is a complete suspension of Fourth Amendment privilege of unwarranted search and seizure. For the first time ever, a US agency is given the power to seize assets without judicial proceeding or review. In other words, the people whose assets are seized have no recourse. They are being given no recourses under the law. This agency doesn't have to claim anything. Since they are immune from judicial review, they don't even have to come up with a reason. All they have to say is that, "pursuant to the security of the State, we believe these assets may be used by those who would represent a threat to the security of the State or the domestic tranquility of the people." Technically the assets of any person or news agency which would attempt to disseminate the truth to the people could be seized --- since under the National Security Act, the truth about government operations can be withheld from the people if the dissemination of said truths is deemed to be injurious to the security of the State or the domestic tranquility of the people. In other words, if you don't tell the truth to the people, their tranquility will be assured. Detainees or targets of the new State Security bureau (Office of Homeland Security) will no longer have the right of Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. In other words, they can be compelled to talk by "any means necessary," i.e., torture, interrogation, etc. Section 409C of the National Security Act, pursuant to the political and state security acts thereunto, states that a person whom the government believes is involved in an act contrary to the security of the State can be compelled by whatever measures necessary to reveal information. Furthermore this State Security agency will be given the old FBI power under the 1942 Seditious Publication Act. This power, formally given to the FBI in the past, was done away with in 1972, when J. Edgar Hoover died -- because he so abused this power. The power of this Act will be given to this new State Security. It will give this agency the ability to label publications as "seditious" and to prevent their publication and transmission thereunto by both print and electronic means. Previously there was the United States Title Code Statutes 792/793, otherwise known as the "Sedition Acts of 1798," which came right after the Logan Amendments of 1794. Since the times of George Washington, "sedition acts" have not been used. And now we are talking about the revival of the Seditious Publication Acts of 1942, which I find particularly sinister, because it gives our new super State Security agency the power to label publications seditious to prevent their transmission and to prevent their printing. That means they can be prevented from being mailed or being disseminated electronically or otherwise, a power which will undoubtedly be used by the new Office of Cyber Space Security. In fact, even the truth regarding government activities or operation can be deemed seditious and its dissemination to the public prevented. So are we all feeling safe yet? It's happening here. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 02:10:34 PM | link DR. RUMSGLOVE PEEVED According to a New Yorker press release, Secretary of Offense Donald Rumsfeld was less than pleased after the first day of bombing Osama bin Laden or the Taliban or Afghanistan or whatever. Seymour M. Hersh, in "King's Ransom," in the October 22, 2001, issue of The New Yorker, reports that the U.S. military failed to kill Taliban leader Mullah Omar when he was in its sights during the first night of the war, according to intelligence-community members with whom Hersh spoke, who said they "were crestfallen" about the incident. An unmanned Predator reconnaissance aircraft operating in the Kabul area identified a convoy carrying Mullah Omar as he fled the capital. The Predator is armed with two anti-tank missiles, but under the rules of engagement in effect Sunday night the C.I.A. could not order such a strike. Although the precise sequence of events could not be fully learned, Hersh reports, General Tommy R. Franks, the commander in charge at the United States Central Command in Florida reported that "my JAG"-Judge Advocate General, a legal officer- "doesn't like this, so we're not going to fire." It was decided to target a few cars in front of the building to perhaps scare Mullah Omar out of the building to take a look. Omar did leave the building, but not immediately. Soon after he left, Hersh reports, the building was targeted and destroyed by F-18s, too late to kill Omar. Reaction in Washington to the failure to strike immediately was fierce, Hersh reports. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was "kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors," one military official said. "But in the end I don't know if it'll mean any changes." posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 01:41:52 PM | link IF YOU CAN DO IT, SO CAN WE The Associated Press writes of the Indian army shelling Pakistan. India's army shelled Pakistani military posts across the disputed cease-fire line in Kashmir on Monday after a 10-month border calm, destroying nearly a dozen Pakistani posts, a senior army official said. ``We have fired heavily on Pakistani positions,'' Brig. P.C. Das, an army spokesman based in Nagrota near Jammu-Kashmir's winter capital of Jammu, told The Associated Press. Das said the shelling occurred in the frontier areas of Akhnoor and Mendar, and that 11 posts were hit. The shelling comes a day before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives in New Delhi from Pakistan in a visit to ease tensions between the two nuclear rivals over the disputed province of Kashmir. There was no apparent provocation for Monday's attack. But Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had last week hinted at tough action to fight the Islamic insurgency that has sapped Kashmir since 1989, claiming at least 30,000 lives. Apart from artillery, Indian soldiers fired rockets, mortars, flame throwers, grenade launchers and machine guns during the operation, Das said. ``We have started punitive action,'' said Das, the brigadier-general staff of the Indian army's 16th corps. ``This is part of the proactive approach adopted by Indian Army.'' I for one would love to be a fly on the wall when Powell attempts to tell the Indians that their punitive actions against "terrorists and those who harbor them" whose activities have caused 30,000 dead since 1989 (including a suicide bombing three weeks ago that killed 30) are wrong. Maybe he can persuade the Indians that they brought it on themselves. I'm sure they'd understand. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 12:54:45 PM | link BY ANY OTHER NAME Print Think supplies an edifying FDR quotation. "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power." Franklin D. Roosevelt Also supplied is a commentary thereon by Richard Grossman: Roosevelt wrote that in his message to Congress creating the TNEC, the Temporary National Economic Committee, in 1937, which was then to spend the next three years, under the leadership of Senator O'Mahoney of Wyoming, looking into the concentration of wealth and power in the U.S. There's now forty-odd volumes in the Library of Congress and other libraries of that testimony, finding that there was enormous concentration. World War II interrupted the political agenda that they had, the things they were going to try to do with this evidence, so the issue has been forgotten and most people have never heard of the committee. The language that the President used in creating this committee is very clear. When the decision-making and the information that must be public for a democracy to function is privatized and the law has been turned topsy-turvy to support that these decisions and information are private, and when these so-called corporate entities have the rights of persons, have free speech and constitutional protections, then they are doing the real governing and we are becoming consumers or objects. It has a name, which was more current then than now, which was fascism. It's a hard concept, a troubling concept for people to deal with. We are constantly being bombarded with information telling us that we have the greatest democracy in the world and more freedoms than anybody and more wealth and goods than everybody. I think there's a growing disconnect in people's minds around the country. People realize that the real decisions that shape what they can do and increasing what you can grow or buy are being made in a private way by our creations, these corporations. We don't have standing to intervene. A good example is in a New York Times editorial recently applauding a court decision granting to people, to human beings, we the people, due process rights dealing with HMO corporations on medical care issues. Think about that. The corporation already has due process rights because the courts have already made clear that they think the corporation is a person, a legal person. But on company property workers don't have First Amendment rights. They don't have due process rights. And on issues that are concerned with these insurance companies, these medical companies, it's not just generally assumed that all human beings have due process rights. It's nuts. Corporations are acting like a government, but they're not constitutionalized. So we have no standing. It's a disconnect that is extremely troubling to me and a tremendous source of our woes today. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 12:29:11 PM | link OH BOY, ANOTHER CZAR First there was the Caesar, then the Czar, then the Drug Czar, then the Terrorism Czar, and now we have the Porn Czar in Utah. Any guesses for what comes next? posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 12:08:09 PM | link PRESS RELEASE OF THE DAY Halliburton - the megaconglomerate Cheney "left" to become VP - had a most entertaining press release dated September 10: Halliburton unit picked to participate in program to reduce threat of weapons of mass destruction posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 10:37:26 AM | link BLAST FROM THE PAST The Chicago Sun-Times offers a report that can't help but engender feelings of warm nostalgia. Idi Amin, the brutal Ugandan dictator who led his country into financial ruin and international isolation, is planning to come home 22 years after he fled for his life. Kivumbi Amule, Amin's younger brother, said Amin had told him of his plans during a telephone conversation from Saudi Arabia, his home in exile. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 10:31:54 AM | link GOTTA MAKE A LIVING From the Frontier Post, an English language paper from Pakistan, we find that the capitalist spirit hasn't died in Afghanistan. The US planes dropped food packets in the Northern Alliance-controlled areas in the Thakar province where the opposition militia are getting ready for an assault on Taliban positions.The Northern Alliance forces carried away these packets on to their trucks according to Novosti. The food containers were also dropped on the southern outskirts of Haji Buhauddin where refugee camps were located. Each of the cardboard containers contained two packets of vegetable and bean soup with tomato sauce, a packet of peanut oil, a packet of strawberry jam, a packet of fruit paste, a packet of fruit vitamin powder, biscuits and corn flakes, as well as small packets with salt, sugar and black pepper. Early in the morning, these packets appeared in the local market. The local market is already oversupplied with the humanitarian aid which had led to the drop in prices of these packets. The Washington Post adds: Dozens of Afghans strain their eyes to see if the truck driving down a nearby hill will bring what has become a much sought-after item - bright yellow bags of U.S. food aid. But once again they are out of luck, having also missed out on Saturday's nightly air drop of jam, peanut butter and beans into fields outside the town of Khoja Bahawuddin in northern Afghanistan. "We couldn't get any of the food because the soldiers took it and they have guns," said Delaver. The soldiers who took the food were of the Northern Alliance (i.e. the Founding Father-like freedom fighters), by the way, seeing how the article goes to say how Delaver is in the 10% of the country controlled by the opposition. Does anyone have a map of where the refugees are located? posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 10:08:17 AM | link BOTTLE ORGAN My kind of bottle organ, complete with WAV and MP3 files demonstrating its capabilities. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 09:58:54 AM | link CONDI'S BOYS A ChevronTexaco press release from Aug. 3 proudly announces a huge corporate victory: MOSCOW, Aug. 3, 2001 -- At a meeting today in Moscow, Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) shareholders approved its Transportation Agreement, including the Quality Bank, which is crucial for CPC to commence operation. Commenting on the decision, Chevron Vice Chairman Richard H. Matzke said: "This is a great day for the CPC project, Russia, Kazakhstan and all CPC shareholders." The approval of the Transportation Agreement represents the detailed enactment of the original 1996 CPC Shareholders Agreement. All elements are now in place to commence shipping of oil from the CPC terminal near Novorossiysk in the next few weeks. Another of their pages details the rich, oily goodness of their holdings in the Caspian Sea region. So what's this got to do with Condoleezza "Condi" Rice? According to her official bio: She is a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. Condi holds at least $250,000 in ChevronTexaco stock, according to her financial disclosure form. She also had a ChevronTexaco tanker named after her, although it's been temporarily renamed for "security" reasons. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 09:13:46 AM | link UPDATE FROM IRON MOUNTAIN According to MSNBC: Terrorists scored a direct hit on the American economy, sending it spiraling into recession. The nation's defense contractors are a rare bright spot, with the stocks of many soaring by nearly 30 percent in the past month. Analysts are predicting that the defense budget will increase 66 percent to $500 billion by 2005. But the military build-up won't follow the old formula of cranking up production of tanks and battleships. In the war against terrorists, it's software engineers who are the architects of the Arsenal of Democracy. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 09:06:55 AM | link HAGIOGRAPHY OF THE DAY Just as one's enemies must be demonized during the Crisis of the Century of the Week, one's leaders - no matter what their faults - must be canonized. And if there's nothing there, there's always the "personal growth" angle. Time magazine perfected the "art" of the nauseatingly fawning profile years ago, and they haven't lost their touch. It shows. The President is growing before our eyes--not morphing into some completely new kind of leader but evolving in fits and starts and in real time, which is what makes the spectacle so compelling. The changing President is the perfect mirror of a changing country. He's trying to become the leader that America needs right now, just as America is trying to become the nation it needs to be. Though his hair seems grayer since Sept. 11, his face a touch more careworn, Bush has told a number of friends and advisers that he has never known such clarity of purpose, such certainty that he is the right person for the moment. He is buoyed by his faith that God has chosen him to lead the country during this perilous time. As if to prove his mettle, he has been boasting--to a group of Islamic clerics, among others--that he has shaved his three-mile run to a speedy 21:30. I can't read even a sentence of that without laughing, although I think that calling Antonin Scalia God shows poor taste and judgment. But the Shrub's obviously doing everything he can in this time of crisis. I'll bet if he gets that time down under 20:00 all the Islamic clerics and their minions will convert to Christianity. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 08:53:43 AM | link EDITORIAL OF THE DAY I read in Kuro5hin (via Follow Me Here) of the "Utter Failure of Weblogs as Journalism." They're also not terribly good at brain surgery, plate tectonics, macrame and chicken sexing. But it gets better. The original item contains the following paragraph: Webloggers pride themselves on their individual views and value their right to express them publicly, and well they should. But I fear the majority of webloggers don't possess even a basic grasp of journalistic ethics. And it's this lack of understanding that could damage the budding reputation of weblogs as journalism. You can't simply change or add your own headline and expect the context to remain valid (this is why the media often employs headline editors). You can't always add a few lines of personal commentary. Once you've added your voice, it's simply not news anymore -- it's opinion. It's editorial. In the first place, all supposed news is editorial. One chooses which story to cover, which words and phrases to use to write a story, which people to interview to write a story, etc. based on one's preconceptions and values. The only way to avoid this would perhaps to use a computer to write news items via some algorithm, although you've still got the programmer's biases to contend with. And everyone is biased. I'm biased for dogs, against brussels sprouts, for ultimate frisbee, against Martian invasions, etc. "Bias" and "opinion" are neutral words. The trick with news isn't finding a source that's unbiased and unopinionated, but figuring out the obvious and not-so-obvious biases and opinions of any source (including this one, but that should be pretty bloody obvious by now). One might even argue that the more obviously biased a source is, the easier it is to assimilate whatever information might be there. As to journalist ethics, I've about halfway through Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein's Washington Babylon, and it ain't pretty. If you just consider the ethical category "conflict of interest," the vast, vast majority of talking heads you see on the news give the word "whore" a bad name. Just the unholy trinity of Cokie, Sam and George on "This Week" provide enough material for a semester's worth of bad examples in an ethics course., and that's supposedly one of the "liberal" news outlets. When you get to the more obviously conservative outlets like Fox, not only ethics but reality is transcended. The best advice for ferreting out whatever reality is contained behind any mainstream news outlet is probably the old classic line "follow the money." Commercial and ostensibly non-commercial media outlets are both beholden to their funding sources. The former exist solely to sell soap and the latter have just about caught up in that regard. I, on the other hand, exist to drink beer, scratch my dog, and have a chuckle or two. posted by Steven Baum 10/15/2001 08:20:21 AM | link Sunday, October 14, 2001 STRAWMAN'S REVENGE The Strawman's Revenge offers a refreshing deconstruction of one of the favorite tactics of corporations in their battle for world hegemony. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 02:10:36 PM | link HILL & KNOWLTON CAQ's 1993 article about Hill & Knowlton and their spook connections is must reading for understanding perhaps the biggest and best connected propaganda firm in the world. Hill & Knowlton were the originators of the egregious lie about Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators during the Gulf War, and they're still more than capable of repeating that sort of thing. The first paragraph lists a few of their clients. In Turkey, "in July 1991, the same month President George Bush made an official visit there, the body of human rights worker Vedat Aydin was found along a road. His skull was fractured, his legs were broken, and his body was riddled by more than a dozen bullet wounds. He had been taken from his home by several armed men who identified themselves as police officers. No one was charged with his murder." De- spite hundreds of such "credible reports" acknowledged by the State Department, documenting use of "high-pressure cold water hoses, electric shocks, beating of the genitalia, and hanging by the arms," Turkey reaps the benefits of U.S. friendship and Most Favored Nation status. "Last year Turkey received more than $800 million in U.S. aid, and spent more than $3.8 million on Washington lobbyists to keep that money flowing." Turkey paid for U.S. tolerance of torture with its cooperative role in NATO, and its support for Operation Desert Storm; it bought its relatively benign public image with cold cash. Turkey's favorite Washington public relations and lobbying firm is Hill and Knowlton (H&K), to which it paid $1,200,000 from November 1990 to May 1992. Other chronic human rights abusers, such as China, Peru, Israel, Egypt, and Indonesia, also retained Hill and Knowlton to the tune of $14 million in 1991-92. Hill and Knowlton has also represented the infamously repressive Duvalier regime in Haiti. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 02:05:09 PM | link BORDERS George Lakoff discusses another reason why many Arabs don't like the west. What could threaten the western control of the oil in the Middle East more than the formation of a unified Arab bloc? Divide and conquer. The internal issue is the division between rich and poor in the Arab world. Poor Arabs see rich Arabs as rich by accident, by where the British happened to draw the lines that created the contemporary nations of the Middle East. To see Arabs metaphorically as one big family is to suggest that oil wealth should belong to all Arabs. To many Arabs, the national boundaries drawn by colonial powers are illegitimate, violating the conception of Arabs as a single "brotherhood" and impoverishing millions. To those impoverished millions, the positive side of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was that it challenged national borders and brought to the fore the divisions between rich and poor that result from those lines in the sand. If there is to be peace in the region, these divisions must be addressed, say, by having rich Arab countries make extensive investments in development that will help poor Arabs. As long as the huge gulf between rich and poor exists in the Arab world, a large number of poor Arabs will continue to see one of the superstate solutions, either Arab nationalism or Islamic fundamentalism, as being in their self-interest, and the region will continue to be unstable. The external issue is the weakness. The current national boundaries keep Arab nations squabbling among themselves and therefore weak relative to Western nations. To unity advocates, what we call "stability" means continued weakness. Weakness is a major theme in the Arab world, and is often conceptualized in sexual terms, even more than in the West. American officials, in speaking of the "rape" of Kuwait, were conceptualizing a weak, defenseless country as female and a strong militarily powerful country as male. Similarly, it is common for Arabs to conceptualize the colonization and subsequent domination of the Arab world by the West, especially the US, as emasculation. An Arab proverb that was reported to be popular in Iraq before the US invasion was "It is better to be a cock for a day than a chicken for a year." The message is clear: It is better to be male, that is, strong and dominant for a short period of time than to be female, that is, weak and defenseless for a long time. Much of the support for Saddam Hussein among Arabs is due to the fact that he is seen as standing up to the US, even if only for a while, and that there is a dignity in this. Since upholding dignity was an essential part of what defined Saddam's "rational self-interest", it should be no surprise that he was willing to go to war to "be a cock for a day." Just surviving a war with the US makes him a hero in much of the Moslem world. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 01:58:48 PM | link THE NEXT WAR Christopher Bollyn's War on Terror Profitable contains a seemingly throwaway line that bodes ill for the future of the Middle East. There's another fluid besides oil that's already a bone of contention and is going to get much more so. Maiman's Merhav Group is also involved in a $100 million project that would reduce the flow of water to Iraq by diverting water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to southeastern Turkey. That project would be the Ataturk Dam, which is certainly going to please Turkey and their allies. Others may not be quite as joyous. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 01:48:21 PM | link HALLIBURTON'S TERRORIST "LINKS" Halliburton, the corporation Cheney used to run before he moved up, has what have been euphemistically called "links" to more than a few official and non-official "terrorist states", according to Jon Flanders: Halliburton's dealings in six countries -Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Nigeria-show that the company's willingness to do business where human rights are not respected is a pattern that goes beyond its involvement in Burma: Azerbaijan. Dick Cheney lobbied to remove Congressional sanctions against aid to Azerbaijan, sanctions imposed because of concerns about ethnic cleansing. Cheney said the sanctions were the result only of groundless campaigning by the Armenian-American lobby. In 1997, Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root bid on a major Caspian project from the Azerbaijan International Operating Company. Indonesia. Halliburton had extensive investments and contracts in Suharto's Indonesia. One of its contracts was canceled by the post-Suharto government during a purging of corruptly awarded contracts. Indonesia Corruption Watch named Kellogg Brown & Root (Halliburton's engineering division) among 59 companies using collusive, corruptive and nepotistic practices in deals involving former President Suharto's family. Iran. Dick Cheney has lobbied against the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Even with the Act in place, Halliburton has continued to operate in Iran. It settled with the Department of Commerce in 1997, before Cheney became CEO, over allegations relating to Iran for $15,000, without admitting any wrongdoing. Iraq. Dick Cheney cites multilateral sanctions against Iraq as an example of sanctions he supports. Yet since the war, Halliburton-related companies helped to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry. In July 2000, the International Herald Tribune reported, "Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump Co., joint ventures that Halliburton has sold within the past year, have done work in Iraq on contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq's oil industry, under the United Nations' Oil for Food Program." A Halliburton spokesman acknowledged to the Tribune that the Dresser subsidiaries did sell oil pumping equipment to Iraq via European agents. Libya. Before Cheney's arrival, Halliburton was deeply involved in Libya, earning $44.7 million there in 1993. After sanctions on Libya were imposed, earnings dropped to $12.4 million in 1994. Halliburton continued doing business in Libya throughout Cheney's tenure. One Member of Congress accused the company "of undermining American foreign policy to the full extent allowed by law." Nigeria. Local villagers have accused Halliburton of complicity in the shooting of a protester by Nigeria's Mobile Police Unit, playing a similar role to Shell and Chevron in the mobilization of this 'kill and go" unit to protect company property. Dick Cheney has been a strong advocate for preventing or eliminating federal laws that place limits on Halliburton's ability to do business in these countries." posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 01:31:42 PM | link OIL RESERVE FAKERY? In an thread at IndyMedia about an article on future water and energy supplies, there's an interesting discussion on the validity of the Caspian Sea region hydrocarbon estimates by the DOE EIA. One of the participants avers: Unfortunately, Michael Klare accepts without question the USA Department of State estimates of the "vast" Caspian oil resources at 200-300 Gb. Recent estimates by some of the world's most experienced petroleum geologists have put Caspain reserves at 20-30 Gb. This volume is significant, but hardly "vast." Klare and other political/economic analysts should question USA estimates of Caspian reserves because it appears that they were "invented" by economists - not geologists or engineers - working for the USA DOE/EIA. It appears that the primary objective of these economists was to "find" oil reserves in the world sufficient to make their projected supply curve fit their projected demand curve for the next several decades, failing which the energy underpinnings of the entire global economy would collapse, and the stock market with them. So the DOE/EIA economists "found" vast oil reserves in the Caspian region, off the coast of Greenland, and in other unlikely places to keep their projectd supply curve climbing in tandem with their projected demand curve. This is not to say that the Caspian reserves aren't important, just that it's not their SIZE, but their MERE EXISTENCE that's important in a world where the annual supply of oil will soon be diminishing at a rate of 3-5% per year until it's all gone. This seemed a bit far-fetched until another participant pointed to an official DOE EIA publication called Annual Energy Outlook 1998 with Projections to 2020 wherein, on page 221, it says that: "These adjustments to the USGS and MMS estimates are based on non-technical considerations that support domestic supply growth to the levels necessary to meet projected demand levels." This is exactly what the first participant said. Another participant has done a bit of research of U.S.-China relations prior to Sept. 11. This provides yet more of the background needed to even begin to understand the political machinations going on mostly in the background, i.e. out of reach of those depending on the mainstream media to keep them informed of anything other than Gary Condit and the latest blonde bimbo singing sensation. The United States has lacked a coherent policy for the Caucasus and Central Asia since the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991. "During the Clinton administration the United States had an Osama bin Laden policy but no Afghanistan policy and increasingly lost sight of a wider Central Asian policy as Afghanistan-related security concerns increased". This is highly significant because the Caspian Sea region holds huge untapped oil and natural gas reserves. There are significant US commercial interests in the area who have lobbied the US government for a more active role to quell unrest in the region. Afghanistan is strategic in this arena. 14/15 June 2001 - "Russia's President Vladimir Putin, President Jiang Zemin of China and the leaders of four former Soviet Central Asian states signed a declaration of 15 June creating the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO)." The SCO, created by the inclusion of Uzbekistan to the Shanghai Five of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was accompanied by a change of focus. The aims of SCO is to "foster world multi-polarisation" said Chinese president Jiang Zemin. Kyrgyzstan President Askar Akayev said it would nurture the "establishment of a fair and reasonable international order." The leaders lauded the new group as a step towards a world with more than one power center. They said they hoped the group would counterbalance American dominance in world affairs. Other statements include SCOs opposition to US missile-defense plans and plans to stamp out the dissident threat posed by Islamic Fundamentalism and cooperate in exploiting the oil, natural gas and minerals, which Central Asia has in abundance. "The cradle of terrorism, separatism and extremism is the instability in Afghanistan," President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakstan warned in a speech during the signing ceremony. Pakistan also applied to join SCO but was rejected. Multi-Polarization is being promoted by China as the solution to US ecomonic dominance of the world. A statement from Li Peng, NPC Chairman, calls for the people of the world to promote the process of multi-polarity for world peace and ride the tide of globalization for common development in order to establish a just and fair new international political and economic order. Chinese President Jiang Zemin said the world is a colourful one. "With about 200 countries and six billion peoples in this world, with a wide variety of historic traditions, economic levels, political systems, ethnic features, religions, cultures and education, it can hardly be imagined that a single norm or value can govern all". Early August 2001 - Meetings of US-China Security Review Commission studies the developing situation. Presentations include "Contrasting Visions: United States, China and World Order" by Dr Bates Gill Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and Director of Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies and The Brookings Institution. This analysis deserves to be read in full and is too long and complex to excerpt here. 11 Sep 2001 - The appalling terrorist attack on WTC and Pentagon. Also in the same week - working party to finalise China's entry into the World Trade Organisation. On China's WTO Entry - John Gittings, Guardian 17-Sep-01 explains how "China expects to take the final step towards the World Trade Organisation entry in Geneva today when a working party formally approves an 800 page package of entry terms." Final approval of China's membership (after 13+ years of negotiations) is by "WTO ministers at a meeting scheduled for November in Qatar, although there are doubts about the timetable following the attacks on the US. China still hopes to become a full member by the end of the year". This all sounds like an expansion of the New Great Game. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 12:56:09 PM | link CHENEY SPEAKING TO CATO INSTITUTE Dick Cheney gave quite an entertaining speech to the Cato Institute in June 1998. The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is. So, what happens with respect to U.S. commercial policy, how we conduct ourselves as a nation, the kinds of rules and regulations that American firms are expected to abide by and operate under, and how all of that affects our ability to compete overseas is of considerable interest to those of us at Haliburton and Dresser. Obviously, such matters are not only important to our employees, but to our shareholders, and our customers as well. Kissinger put it much more succinctly vis a vis overthrowing the democratically elected government of Chile, "Vell, to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs." Right now there are sanctions on Azerbaijan. We're not allowed to spend any U.S. government dollars in that country. That's not a response to what we perceive to be sound foreign policy in that part of the world. It's more specifically a reflection of a desire by Congress to respond to the concerns voiced by the Armenian-American community, which is bigger than the Azerbaijani-American community. As a result we currently have a prohibition against U.S. government money being spent in Azerbaijan....The problem in part stems from the view by my former colleagues on Capitol Hill that sanctions are the low-cost option. It is the cheap, easy thing to do. You don't have to appropriate any taxpayer's money. You don't send any young Americans into combat. That's right, Dick. We shouldn't do those "cheap, easy" things. We should send those young Americans into the sort of combat you avoided via 5 deferments during the Vietnam era. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for Dick Cheney's bottom line. An example that comes immediately to mind has to do with efforts to develop the resources of the former Soviet Union in the Caspian Sea area. It is a region rich in oil and gas. Unfortunately, Iran is sitting right in the middle of the area and the United States has declared unilateral economic sanctions against that country. As a result, American firms are prohibited from dealing with Iran and find themselves cut out of the action, both in terms of opportunities that develop with respect to Iran itself, and also with respect to our ability to gain access to Caspian resources. Iran is not punished by this decision. There are numerous oil and gas development companies from other countries that are now aggressively pursuing opportunities to develop those resources. That development will proceed, but it will happen without American participation. The most striking result of the government's use of unilateral sanctions in the region is that only American companies are prohibited from operating there. It's not that Iran has been in the top five of the State Department's "terrorist sponsoring states" for the last decade that bothers Dick, but that other companies are stealing profits from Halliburton due to those evil liberals refusing to do business with terrorists. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 12:22:33 PM | link CHUCKLE OF THE DAY In an item in the Jordan Times about the U.S. attempting to strong-arm Qatar's Al Jazeerah satellite TV channel into broadcasting only U.S.-approved items: Despite US accusations that Al Jazeerah peddles "inflammatory rhetoric," Bush has also not ruled out an appearance on the Arabic station - the only 24-hour news channel allowed to operate in the Taleban-controlled areas of Afghanistan. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 12:07:07 PM | link QUOTE OF THE DAY Senator Frank Murkowski (R-ANWR) on Democratic majority leader Tom Daschle calling for a Senate vote rather than a straight majority vote (i.e. the former can be filibustered, thus requiring 60 votes to pass) on the ANWR drilling legislation: "If he wants to put a 60-vote requirement on an issue as important to national security as energy, each senator is going to have to recognize his obligations to our national security as opposed to environmental extremists." The oil in ANWR would yield about a six month supply of the petrochemicals so vital to national security, by the way, after which the ostensibly vital "reserve" would be a "memory." posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 12:01:14 PM | link AIOC'S "DEAL OF THE CENTURY" The DOE's Energy Information Administration maintains a page on the Caspian Sea region. It tells us, among other interesting things, that major projects are currently under development in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, with one of them being: In what was described as "the deal of the century," in September 1994 the Azerbaijan International Oil Consortium (AIOC) signed an $8-billion, 30-year contract to develop three Caspian Sea fields--Azeri, Chirag, and the deepwater portions of Gunashli--with proven reserves estimated at 3-5 billion barrels. Almost all of Azerbaijan's production increases since 1997 have come from AIOC, which produced about 100,000 bbl/d in 2000 from ACG. In the first three months of 2001, AIOC produced 118,880 bbl/d of oil from the ACG deposits. The first phase of full-field development, which will increase production to 400,000 bbl/d, has been delayed pending a decision on export options, but oil production at ACG is expected to reach 800,000 bbl/d by the end of the decade. The AIOC describes itself thusly (on a page obviously constructed before "late 2000"): Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), an 11-member consortium, is developing the Azeri, Chirag and deep-water Gunashli offshore fields on behalf of SOCAR. Oil production began in November 1997 and First Oil crossed the northern border to Novorossiysk, Russia, in February 1998 and was lifted into tankers in March 1998. A second pipeline from Baku to Supsa, Georgia, is still under refurbishment. Work on the Main Export Pipeline is expected to commence late 2000. The AIOC consortium includes: BP (UK), Unocal (US), SOCAR (Azerbaijan), LUKOIL (Russia), ExxonMobil (US), Statoil (Norway), TPAO (Turkey), Pennzoil (US), ITOCHU (Japan) and Delta Hess (Saudi Arabia). Now we get to the connection with President Cheney, the "former" CEO of Halliburton (in a press release dated 5/15/01): Halliburton International Inc. and KASPMORNEFTELOT (KMNF), the marine division of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), have entered into a 12-year contract for a marine base and associated services to support Halliburton Subsea offshore construction activity in the Caspian region. Halliburton Subsea is a business unit of Halliburton Company's Energy Services Group. The base, with a 6,000-square metre lay down area, is located at KMNF?s Southern Basin adjacent to Caspian Shipyard. It will be primarily utilised to support Halliburton Subsea?s catamaran crane vessel Qurban Abbasov (previously known as the Titan 4) during the restoration and upgrade of the vessel and during the forthcoming offshore construction, pipelay and subsea activities. The site will also be developed to provide warehouse, office and training facilities that will include advanced diver and life support technician training, utilising the company?s 16-man modular saturation system. The Qurban Abbasov is operated by Halliburton Subsea in an alliance agreement with SOCAR for a period of 12 years. It will provide an advanced, stable, dynamically positioned construction platform for saturation and remote vehicle diving; flexible and bundle pipeline installation with trenching; emergency pipeline repair, subsurface well intervention with wire line; and coiled tubing. It also will be used in flotel configuration for hook-up and commissioning work. "The acquisition of the marine base is a further indication of our commitment to the Caspian region and to the success of the partnership arrangements with SOCAR," says Edgar Ortiz, President and Chief Executive Officer, Halliburton's Energy Services Group. Other interesting petro-political pages at the DOE EIA are: Caspian Sea Region: Oil Export Options Caspian Sea Region: Natural Gas Export Options Caspian Sea Region: Legal Issues Caspian Sea Region: Regional Conflicts background pages on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Russia 6 tables and 2 figures summarizing the hydrocarbon reserves and current and prospective pipeline routes Check 'em out before they're removed for "national security" reasons. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 11:29:34 AM | link THE BROTHERHOOD In Orwell's 1984 there is an organization called the Brotherhood that exists to oppose the Party, i.e. Big Brother, the totalitarian state. Most think Orwell meant the Party as an analog to communist totalitarian states, i.e. the Soviet Union, although others thought it was a broader analogy to all oppressive states. Be that as it may, it is most interesting to again read the list of things members of the Brotherhood had to be prepared to do to oppose the Party, i.e. the oppressors: give one's life, commit murder, commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people, betray ones country to foreign powers, cheat, forge, and blackmail, corrupt the minds of children, distribute habit-forming drugs, encourage prostitution, disseminate venereal diseases, and do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party. The chapter on the Ministry of Peace (War) also contains some prescient and pertinent paragraphs: The consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival. War not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of the masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. War hysteria increases in intensity as one rises in the social scale. Those whose attitude towards the war is most nearly rational are the subject peoples of the disputed territories. To these people the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a matter of complete indifference to them. They are aware that a change of over lordship means similarly that they will be doing the same work as before for new masters who treat them in the same manner as the old ones. The slightly more favoured workers whom we call "the proles" are only intermittently conscious of the war. When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening. It is in the ranks of the Party, and above all of the Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasm is found. World-conquest is believed in most firmly by those who know it is impossible. This peculiar linking together opposites - knowledge with ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism - is one of the chief distinguishing marks of Oceanic society. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. It is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones; but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world. It is to be achieved either by gradually acquiring more and more territory and so building up an overwhelming preponderance of power, or by the discovery of some new and unanswerable weapon. How ... Orwellian. Further trips to New Oceania can be obtained via Orwell Today. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 10:37:27 AM | link AMERICAN LEFT IGNORED TALIBAN? The Bellona Times and Synthetic Zero have been having a nice discussion about recent events originally prompted by a piece by the latter. It's well worth reading, and I have only one substantive gripe. It concerns the following paragraph from the original post: Someone I know who has spent a lot of time in Afghanistan pointed out that for all of the concern the American left is now showing for the suffering of the people of Afghanistan, until we went to war with them they were totally oblivious to the horrible plight of people there. Meanwhile, however, he said that European leftists were aware of the problems there, and were sincerely engaged and concerned. To him, the American left is immature and hypocritical. A quick (i.e. first 40 hits) Google search for the words "taliban" and "oppressive" yields the following pre-Sept. 11 articles by the ostensibly "totally oblivious" American left about the treatment of women and men by the Taliban. Note that most of them predate even the nasty little bit of art criticism in which the Taliban engaged earlier this year. By the way, the vast majority of the remainder of those first 40 hits postdate Sept. 11 or are from non-U.S. sources. Women in the Middle East (9/00) Taliban Abuses Ignored for Oil, Drug War (7/19/98) Don't Let Our Government Bargain Away Women's Rights (1999) Women and the Taliban (3/11/01) Feminist Majority Joins European Parliament's Call to End Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan (Spring 1998) "Insulting" Stories (12/1/00) The Taliban and Islamic Teaching (4/01) Company Sacrifices Women for Oil, Say Groups (6/1/98) San Francisco Condemning the Taliban (1/25/99) I hope I've made it clear hereabouts that my main gripe with the current situation in Afghanistan as regards the oppression of women there is that switching control over the women from the Taliban to the Northern Alliance isn't going to improve their lot, as even RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) has made abundantly clear. Jumping from one politically expedient group of misogynistic fundamentalists (i.e. the Taliban in the early 90s) to another politically expedient group of misogynistic fundamentalists (i.e. the Northern Alliance today) isn't going to help the women in Afghanistan. Realizing who it will help is a necessary step towards understanding the realities behind the current situation, though. posted by Steven Baum 10/14/2001 10:00:03 AM | link

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