thoughts on politics and culture


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Forgive my cynicism about your doubts

As I recall, the infamous 16 words in Bush's 2003 SOTUA, providing the most substantial basis of justification for invading Iraq, were based on planted forged documents supposedly written on letterhead from the Niger embassy in Rome. Forge the evidence, plant it, discover it, reveal it, and then use it as rationale for what you were planning to do all along. True patriots don't ask questions.

Now we have a British institution whose email system was recently hacked, supposedly thereby revealing political bias in the scientific community against critics or criticism of climate change research. So, that suddenly means Al Gore was Cassandra and Inhofe was a friggin' oracle? http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/energy/2009/11/30/hacked-e-mails-give-inhofe-fuel-for-climate-change-debate.html

Please indulge a personal anecdote. In 2002, I did a week-long training exercise with a certain high-testosterone Army unit at Fort Hood. My group was providing IO (Information Operations) support, primarily serving as coordination for the efforts of other groups which previously tended to conflict with one another (in other words, this was before IO went offensive). One member of our group was a young energetic Capt. Smith from Arizona, who was serving as our Intel liaison officer. Capt. Smith was running back and forth between the secure Intel space and the other part of the training facility where the rest of us were. He had brought a laptop with him, but had the mistake of taking it into the secured Intel space, which meant he couldn't take it back out. I was able to lend him one of the extra laptops we had, and he used that to communicate via email.

Since I was bored, and since we had extra laptops, and since I had my little "security" toolbox handy, I "searched" the user accounts database for an account that had been created but never used. Knowing the default password for new accounts, I was able to "acquire" and use this "extra" account for some "extracurricular activity". It just so happened that the account I thus obtained had been created for an Intel officer. When I accessed the email Inbox for this account, I found a bunch of messages from our Capt. Smith. He had been emailing the Intel group trying to get the information he needed, but they had never answered him. Since I was bored, and since I had gone to the trouble of accessing an account that noone else had thought to use, I decided to start replying to Capt. Smith's messages. For two days, I had this guy running back and forth between the secured Intel space and the non-secured area where the laptop was. He was sitting right next to me sending messages to this account that I would turn around and answer.

After a while, I just started totally jerking his chain in the messages and eventually told him the truth. By then he was so fried he didn't care anymore.

An email system in England gets hacked, so that means that everything we know about climate change has to be thrown out? Just like when the British Government learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, so we had to invade Iraq. Well, if the British Government says it, it must be right...


posted by Voltaire's Child at 12/08/2009 08:30:00 PM

 

Max Keiser: “Goldman Sachs Are Scum”

Via Matt Taibbi:

"They are literally stealing a hundred million dollars a day. Goldman Sachs is stealing every day on the floor of the exchange. They should be in the Hague, they should be taken on financial terrorism charges. They should all be thrown in jail."

If you haven't read Taibbi's recent article in Rolling Stone, I highly recommend it: "The Great American Bubble Machine: From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again."



posted by Dingo at 7/17/2009 11:50:00 AM

 

Cheney Says Torture Works

... never mind that torture is a war crime.

The AP headline from Tuesday reads, "Cheney: US gained information from interrogations."

Cheney said Monday that what hasn't been revealed publicly is what the U.S. gained as a result of these actions.

"I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country," Cheney said.

Cheney said he has formally asked the CIA to declassify the memos.

However, a senior intelligence official said Tuesday the CIA has received no such requests from the former vice president. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose it publicly.

Why would Cheney try to justify war crimes by claiming that committing them created desirable "consequences?" If I understand his reasoning, he doesn't care whether waterboarding or other means constitute torture because the ends justify the means. It's as simple as that. (Oh, and why would Cheney claim that he requested declassification of the memos if he did not? Because Dick Cheney is a pathological liar.)

It doesn't take a legal scholar to explain the dangers of heading down this slippery slope. Still, Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley did so smartly back in December on Countdown with Keith Olbermann:



Whether Dick Cheney thinks torture works or not is irrelevant. Torture is a war crime. The law is not in question. The question is whether we will continue to stand silently and watch men break our laws without question, without prosecution.



posted by Dingo at 4/24/2009 10:38:00 AM

 

Life Imitates Art

In some circles Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Shi'ite TV reporter who threw his shoe at former President George Bush is a barbarian. In other circles, he is a hero. But no matter your opinion of al-Zaidi, it is hard to argue his indelible impact on modern culture. Writes Bappa Majumdar for Reuters, "India's politicians contesting in the general election, fearful of shoes hurled at them by disgruntled voters, have asked for more security and are erecting metal nets at rallies." [Emphasis added.]

The idea of showing your disapproval (or in some cases approval) by hurling objects is by no means a novel idea. Made in 1980, the following video stands as evidence that al-Zaidi has simply redefined an age-old tradition:




posted by James Stroud at 4/20/2009 11:12:00 PM

 

F*ck Cornyn!

I realize I haven't contributed to this site in a LONG time, but this item compelled me to say something.

If the president releases the Bush torture memos, Republicans are promising to “go nuclear” and filibuster his legal appointments. Scott Horton reports on a serious threat to Obama’s transparency.

Since I am now a resident of the great state of Texas, the respectable senator from Texas is MY representative in the Senate. Ya know what I say!? Fuck John Cornyn! Call their mother fucking bluff! If the Republicans want to have their entire agenda based on protecting a failed - whatever you want to call the last 8 years - then LET THEM! They want to shoot their wad for W's sake - LET THEM! In fact - MAKE THEM put their money where their mouths are! Call their bluff and make them go on the record (Officially) as supporting the continued suppresion and denial of Bush ero defiance of international and human law.

Don't back down. Do not compromise. Do not strive for bipartisan cooperation. Do not adjust policy to avoid the filibuster. Let them go on the record as officially condoning and supporting the suppression and denial of a failed adminstration's defiance of international law. In the end, what do they have to lose?!



posted by Voltaire's Child at 4/06/2009 07:25:00 PM

 

"AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions"

Joe Conason writes in Salon.com ("AIG is chump change") that, "it's time to reform offshore banking, and see what untaxed wealth big business is hiding in overseas tax shelters."

According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly all of America's top 100 corporations maintain subsidiaries in countries identified as tax havens. As the GAO notes, there could be reasons other than avoiding the IRS to set up branches in places such as Singapore, Luxembourg and Switzerland, where taxes are light or nonexistent and keeping clients' illicit secrets is considered a matter of national pride.

But what reason other than evasion could there be for Goldman Sachs Group to set up three subsidiaries in Bermuda, five in Mauritius, and 15 in the Cayman Islands? Why did Countrywide Financial need two subsidiaries in Guernsey? Why did Wachovia need 18 subsidiaries in Bermuda, three in the British Virgin Islands, and 16 in the Caymans? Why did Lehman Brothers need 31 subsidiaries in the Caymans? What do Bank of America's 59 subsidiaries in the Caymans actually do? Why does Citigroup need 427 separate subsidiaries in tax havens, including 12 in the Channel Islands, 21 in Jersey, 91 in Luxembourg, 19 in Bermuda and 90 in the Caymans? What exactly is going on at Morgan Stanley's 19 subs in Jersey, 29 subs in Luxembourg, 14 subs in the Marshall Islands, and its amazing 158 subs in the Caymans? And speaking of AIG, why does it have 18 subs in tax-haven countries? (Don't expect to find out from Fox News Channel or the New York Post, because News Corp. has its own constellation of strange subsidiaries, including 33 in the Caymans alone.)

When the cost of these shenanigans was last estimated two years ago, the U.S. government's annual loss in revenue due to tax avoidance by major corporations and super-rich individuals was pegged at about $100 billion -- considerably more than a rounding error, even today. But of course that is only a rough assessment, as is the estimate of $12 trillion in untaxed assets hidden around the world. Nobody will know for certain until the books are opened and transparency is established.

posted by jieister at 3/23/2009 06:59:00 PM

 

"Are We Home Alone?"

Thomas Friedman writes in today's New York Times ("Are We Home Alone?"):

I ran into an Indian businessman friend last week and he said something to me that really struck a chord: “This is the first time I’ve ever visited the United States when I feel like you’re acting like an immature democracy.”

You know what he meant: We’re in a once-a-century financial crisis, and yet we’ve actually descended into politics worse than usual. There don’t seem to be any adults at the top — nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle. Instead, Congress is slapping together punitive tax laws overnight like some Banana Republic, our president is getting in trouble cracking jokes on Jay Leno comparing his bowling skills to a Special Olympian, and the opposition party is behaving as if its only priority is to deflate President Obama’s popularity.

I saw Eric Cantor, a Republican House leader, on CNBC the other day, and the entire interview consisted of him trying to exploit the A.I.G. situation for partisan gain without one constructive thought. I just kept staring at him and thinking: “Do you not have kids? Do you not have a pension that you’re worried about? Do you live in some gated community where all the banks will be O.K., even if our biggest banks go under? Do you think your party automatically wins if the country loses? What are you thinking?”

posted by jieister at 3/22/2009 06:55:00 PM

 

Obama Takes the Offensive

In today's New York Times ("On the Edge") Nobel Economist Paul Krugman criticizes Republicans for stalling and prods President Obama to move forward on the stimulus package, before it's too late.

Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

I'm hopeful that President Obama is now taking the offensive, based on comments he made earlier this week:

"Now, in the past few days, I‘ve heard criticisms that this plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us to this crisis in the first place—the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems. I reject those theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."

There are other indications that Obama is losing his patience with the Republicans.

In an off-the-cuff moment during his speech to House Democrats at a retreat in Virginia, the president ribbed Republicans, including former rival John McCain, who call the recovery package a "spending bill."

"So then you get the argument, 'well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.' What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point," Obama said to laughter.

Obama, who cultivated the image of a post-partisan leader, has been hitting campaign themes in recent days, accusing Republicans in media interviews, an op-ed in The Washington Post and public speeches of reverting to the failed policies of tax cuts. He referenced his own political capital Thursday night and Friday.

"They did not choose more of the same in November," Obama said Friday. "They sent us here to make change."

He dismissed what he called "phony arguments and petty politics" Thursday.

"You can nit and you can pick and, you know, that's the game we all play here. We know how to play that game. What I'm saying is now we can't afford to play that game. We've got to pull together," Obama said.

On Monday, President Obama, in his first formal press conference as president in prime-time, will make his case directly to the American people. Let's hope that they're listening.



posted by Dingo at 2/06/2009 08:56:00 AM

 

"Is President Obama losing the stimulus battle?"

I thought that I could relax for just a bit, maybe catch my breath after Obama was elected...but it's not possible. Republican politicians are beyond self-reflection and logic.

Joan Walsh writes in Salon ("The new Great Communicator ... isn't"):

Obama is the Democrats' Great Communicator, our Ronald Reagan. It's fitting that his highest priority will be reversing the tax and spending priorities Reagan enshrined as a new American compact almost 30 years ago, and reviving the notion of government as an engine of capitalist growth -- not merely the safety net provider, but the catalyst for organizing our public resources around what makes the economy strong. We've been arguing at the margins during these last two years of pain: Government should regulate more, or less. Tax rates should be higher, or lower. But there's a dangerous civic illiteracy in our country about what the larger role of government in a modern economy is, or should be, and I don't think Obama will ultimately prevail if he doesn't start to take it on.

Obama is the most remarkable Democratic communicator of my lifetime, I think, and even he's not rising to the task, yet. He needs to lay out his priorities, clearly; he needs to simplify his pitch, yet he also needs to add some depth to his and our understanding of how we got here. This economic crisis is not just about bad mortgages and/or the housing bubble bursting, and it won't be solved by reinflating that bubble, the Republicans' latest dumb idea.

I'm not sure how President Obama makes this point, roughly hourly, for the next four (and I hope eight) years. But this point has to be made, as often as possible, by anyone with an audience. We've had a deliberate shift of resources from middle- and working-class Americans and the poor, to the very rich, supported by our tax codes, twisted political values and the "winner-take-all" ethic that's prevailed at the highest levels of business and government for the last 30 years. Now, unbelievably, Republicans are saying we need even more tax cuts. (What part of tax-cutter George W. Bush's economic catastrophe, and his 22 percent approval rating, do they not understand?) They also back measures to reinflate the housing bubble that let Americans ignore their stagnating wages, as long as they worked more hours as a family and could also use their homes as an ATM. Their plans to reinflate the housing bubble seem as delusional, frankly, as their backing tax cuts, and even more irresponsible. Tax cuts won't work, but reinflating the housing bubble might work -- to encourage more consumption and less savings, and roll this problem a few more years down the road.

Democrats know the Republicans are wrong. Little children know they're wrong. Cats and dogs know they're wrong. But somehow this week, unbelievably, Obama and the Democrats seem to be losing the spin war. There are the worrying poll numbers. And there is the Washington Post report that Senate Democrats don't have the votes to pass a stimulus bill yet, at least not with the 60 votes that would rule out a filibuster. In this economic crisis, with 2.6 million jobs lost last year and thousands more lost in every news cycle, what does it take to create the urgency and responsibility to get this done?

posted by jieister at 2/04/2009 06:54:00 PM

 

"Add Up the Damage"

Bob Herbert writes in yesterday's New York Times ("Add Up the Damage"):

When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.

The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

Exploiting the public’s understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: “We cannot wait,” he said, “for the final proof — the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

posted by jieister at 12/30/2008 12:10:00 PM