[click image, short mp3]We were screaming for *'s head on a pike for this stuff. We screamed impeach! Impeach! Impeach!
Well?
Is that not correct?
What am I missing?
07 August 2009
b.h.o. bush
[click image, short mp3]We were screaming for *'s head on a pike for this stuff. We screamed impeach! Impeach! Impeach!
Well?
Is that not correct?
What am I missing?
tell me about it
[click image]Call me paranoid, but that's the first thing I think of with all of that crap. I won't even do the store cards so they can figure out how to make me offers I can't refuse. Whenever "they" decide they want your ass, all they need to pinpoint you quickly is extant and it only takes the ability to get that information.
They wouldn't prosecute the phone companies for breaking the law and handing it over.
Do you think I'm just being colorful about us being just a heartbeat away from frank fascism?
Denial will not help.
no, really
[click image]While some of the Brown Shirts may be more easily motivated by racial mistrust, this ain't about race at all. This is about protecting the interests of plutocrats. This is becoming so close to identical to the rise of Mussolini in Italy, and the rise of Hitler in Germany, it's not even funny. Calling these people racists is like lighting a match in a hurricane.
Not good enough.
Not good enough, you assholes!
entirely too true
[click image]Liberals are ADDICTED to accusing opposition of racism, sexism, homophobia, whatever nasty label they can think to pin on it... but racism is far and away their favorite means of condemnation. It outright never makes anything better, but it outright always makes them feel better about themselves... which always allows the maintenance of the delusion they are really putting themselves out there to solve the world's problems, but never puts anything out there that actually addresses the world's problems. It's this stupid. It's this stupid for real.
don't laugh
[click image]
It will be the same here when they make the switch to overt fascism.
[Twelve hours later: You know, I've been irked about my own terminology here all day. It's already overt... I mean, here it is in black and white. Way overt already. They just call it other things and your mind is avid to deflect the truth with them this way. You were conditioned to resist such thoughts... even if everything around you spells it out in all its multifarious incarnations. The human mind outpaces the most talented contortionists in all history, leaves them stiffs in its dust. If I just devoted this blog completely to pointing out the best examples of mental contortions that slide by me on my monitor every day, you'd have to go away. It would be too much to contemplate. It is already overt fascism. Maybe if you can pretend to be just finding out and demanding satisfaction, maybe that can undo the decades of assuring yourself it's always been this way, that nothing is really different, we always pull through, nothing to see here, move along....]
06 August 2009
just leave it to the sociopaths....
[click image]About half of U.S. mortgages seen underwater by 2011No, really.
Wed, Aug 5, 2009, 5:12pm, EDT
By Al Yoon
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The percentage of U.S. homeowners who owe more than their house is worth will nearly double to 48 percent in 2011 from 26 percent at the end of March, portending another blow to the housing market, Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday.
Home price declines will have their biggest impact on prime "conforming" loans that meet underwriting and size guidelines of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bank said in a report. Prime conforming loans make up two-thirds of mortgages, and are typically less risky because of stringent requirements.
"We project the next phase of the housing decline will have a far greater impact on prime borrowers," Deutsche analysts Karen Weaver and Ying Shen said in the report.
Of prime conforming loans, 41 percent will be "underwater" by the first quarter of 2011, up from 16 percent at the end of the first quarter 2009, it said. Forty-six percent of prime jumbo loans will be larger than their properties' value, up from 29 percent, it said.
"The impact of this is significant given that these markets have the largest share of the total mortgage market outstanding," the analysts said. Prime jumbo loans make up 13 percent of the total market.
Deutsche's dire assessment comes amid a bolt of evidence in recent months that point to stabilization in the U.S. housing market after three years of price drops. This week, the National Association of Realtors said pending home sales rose for a fifth straight month in June. A widely watched index released in July showed home prices in May rose for the first time since 2006.
Covering 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, Deutsche Bank in June forecast home prices would fall 14 percent through the first quarter of 2011, for a total drop of 41.7 percent.
The drop in home prices is fueling a vicious cycle of foreclosures as it eliminates homeowner equity and gives borrowers an incentive to walk away from their mortgages. The more severe the negative equity, the more likely are defaults, since many borrowers believe prices will not recover enough.
Homeowners with the riskiest mortgages taken out during the housing boom have seen the greatest erosion in equity, in part because they were "affordability products" originated at the housing peak, Deutsche said. They include subprime loans, of which 69 percent will be underwater in 2011, up from 50 percent in March, Deutsche said,
Of option adjustable-rate mortgages -- which cut payments by allowing principal balances to rise -- 89 percent will be underwater in 2011, up from 77 percent, the report said.
Regions suffering the worst negative equity are areas in California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and West Virginia. Las Vegas and parts of Florida and California will see 90 percent or more of their loans underwater by 2011, it added.
"For many, the home has morphed from piggy bank to albatross," the analysts said.
No, really....
this is already a bona fide obummer
[click image]We should be watching like hawks. If they won't take him down, the game is so totally on.
Don't miss Greenwald's take....
when heroes go senile
[click image]They get on PBS and sing about "democracy" [euphemism for FASCISM] coming to the USA... just weeks before their scheduled breach of the boycott on Israel. If I'd had any clue someone like Leonard Cohen could go all sappy dotty, covetous of the limelight, and want to abdicate his role in social justice and decency, I wonder who I'd have grown up to be....
I outright idolized him when I was a freshman in high school. I couldn't wait to get to the library for study hall and plug in the headset jack in the wall to listen to his music, swoon over the lyrics.
Miserable old shit.
my bumble bee is back!
[click image]And I'm home... until Tuesday evening, when I go back down to Lakeport....
Everything's blooming, even my orchids, and lots of strawberries... so I'm letting this abortion of a trip slip back into the fog of Zen Lessons Learned... yes... yes, I am.
05 August 2009
love over gold
[click image]I'm packing up and going home. Will sleep on Old Uncle Dave's couch tonight and be home by this time tomorrow night.
Have to try again when the cosmos aligns for it better.
Treachery and treason: there's always an excuse for it, but when I find the reason, I still can't get used to it.
it was the last part on earth not working correctly
[click image]So I've got Goldie back, unfixed, but still able to limp around until maybe, and only distantly maybe, they can get me some used carbs from a wrecking yard and have them rebuilt by the only guys who do it, who also may not even be in business anymore.
I'm not kidding about needing that wealthy socialist gentleman! This is not good. But at least I can get out from underfoot here for the moment and make my way back, or part way back, or....
Possibly the buddhas of the ten directions will intervene as they deem appropriate. They showed great mercy at the lab after that frickin' traffic jam yesterday. That was definitely the not-subject/not-blind koan gig rewarding me for not going postal, not picking the thread of selfhood with which to strangle all sentient beings. I'm not doing a good enough job, but not 100% backslid into the glue pit either....
This car thing is terrifying. You can't even contemplate how devastating the no wheels thing is in my situation.
I think, though, that I'm going to have nothing but time to contemplate it....
I don't know why I don't give a damn about the news today, but maybe I will have a burst of enthusiasm for it later, or I may be trying to get back home, or get somewhere.... So if it goes completely quiet here, I'm traveling and will get back to you as soon as I am able.
they're coming to take me away, ha ha!
[click image]AP sources: Russian subs patrolling off East Coast
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer – Tue Aug 4, 8:47 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Two nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines have been patrolling in international waters off the East Coast for several days, in activity reminiscent of the Cold War, defense officials said Tuesday.
U.S. Northern Command would not comment on the Russian submarines' movement. But in a prepared statement, Northern Command spokesman Michael Kucharek acknowledged the patrols and said the U.S. has been monitoring the two submarines.
Two senior U.S. officials, however, said the submarines had been patrolling several hundred miles off the coast and so far had done nothing to provoke U.S. military concerns. The officials provided details on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence reports.
While the incident raises eyebrows, it did not trigger the more intense reaction by the U.S. military that Russia prompted when two of its bombers buzzed an American aircraft carrier in the western Pacific in February 2008. U.S. fighter planes intercepted the two Russian fighters, including one that flew directly over the USS Nimitz twice at an altitude of about 2,000 feet.
The event did not escalate beyond that, but it signaled a more aggressive military agenda by Moscow.
The latest incident, which was first reported by The New York Times, comes amid increased Russian military activity in the region, and as the Obama administration works to thaw tense relations with Moscow over plans for a missile defense system in Central Europe.
Just last week a senior Pentagon official said the administration is looking at options for the plan, which would install 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic. Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow told Congress members that the Obama administration is looking at various configurations as part of its review of missile defense plans.
Russia, meanwhile, conducted naval exercises with Venezuela last year in the Caribbean and sent one of its warships through the Panama Canal for the first time since World War II. The exercises with Venezuela were the first deployment of Russian ships to the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War.
Officials said they became aware of the most recent submarine activity off the East Coast early on through intelligence sources and were not notified by Moscow in advance of the patrols. They said the submarines have not crossed into U.S. waters, which extend 12 miles out into the ocean.
The statement issued by Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command said, "We have been monitoring them during transit and recognize the right of all nations to exercise freedom of navigation in international waters according to international law."
04 August 2009
moonlit berkeley hills floating in a sea of irk cat blogging
[click image]I think I just inadvertently saved a deer from a big puddy tat. Very quietly out on the back deck in my socks to smoke a cigarette, and there were some very deer-skulking-in-the-bushes sounds, accompanied by a rather feral sniffing sound. So I started talking to them. The deer bolted, but the cat did not. I can't be 100% sure it even was a cat because I could not see it, but that's why I'm nearly 100% sure. The cat's coat won't reflect the moonlight, nor, if it's wise, will its eyes give away the glint of the lights still on in the neighborhood. Anyway. It kept up with the sniffing and completely relaxed skulking and then there was the sound of crunching bones. So. It already had dinner there and accounts for why the other deer didn't get chased when it bolted.
This is both soothing and distressing because it feels like home, but there are a lot of people around here with too much money and psychotic about their pets' welfare. PETA members, all, to be sure. So dat puddy tat gonna be mounted on somebody's wall if he eats Fifi or Muffy. Take that to the bank.
And, excuse me, this is the cat's property, no matter how much you've sunk into architects and feng-shui, but I had to go up and try to count house cats anyway, make sure everybody was inside. One is missing, but I think, I hope, he's in curled up on Trishy in the tv room having her before bed nap....
I've been having to do a heck of a lot of running around the past couple days in her car, since Goldie's in the shop, but now that she's back from Missouri, I won't have wheels till they can make Goldie do what she's been doing steadily for weeks now. You know the drill. But this isn't usually an impediment at the Honda Gods' place because they know to trust my word and go off that... always pans out. But, but, but the owner isn't there and the manager isn't there and it's a new mechanic, which is plenty weird because nobody leaves that job unless it's in a pine box... so... well... it's disorienting! It's almost as though they have stepped off their godhead and decided to go mainstream, ordinary, and it's scaring me.
I take this stuff hard. I took it hard yesterday after getting back over the hill [Mt. Tamalpais] from the doctor. I always go to the Bon Air shopping center when I'm here to see the nice people at the natural supplements store. They are wonderful! They know everything about all the vitamins, etc, and they only sell the stuff that is absolutely what it says on the labels -- vital to me now that I very seriously must keep my vitamin D levels up -- and I suddenly realized that it was almost five in the afternoon and I'd eaten exactly ONE banana all day. This fully accounted for my strange discomfort and that nagging, gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach.
So I decided to do something about it.
I walked over to Molly Stone's, one monster-ass snitzy grocery store with a dazzling array of gourmet ready-to-eat-practically-any-old-thing-your-heart-might-dream-up-to-desire. I merely snatched up some fancy Italian kind of sandwich and a pint of milk and headed for the checker....
Big puddy tat skulking and sniffing right out the window just now....
There was a woman in front of me who was plugged-in to her iPod... just going about her transaction as though the checker were an android or a vending machine and her fellow shoppers nonexistent. Another example of the dazzling heedlessness all around... but, of course, I could feel the checker's heavily suppressed anger, feel her battling the insult from blooming on her face, so I decided to go daffy in the checkout line, distract everyone, distract the checker from her hurt. It worked like a charm. The walking sculpture of heedlessness just completed her transaction with nobody and walked off in her chic gym clothes while all the stress and crappy atmosphere was being dispatched from the express check out.
I went out, grabbed me a little sidewalk table and bolted down my chic sandwich with my good old completely ordinary milk. Amazing. That gnawing thing cleared right up. Then I headed back toward Peet's so I could do something about the neurons batting willy-nilly against the inside of my skull, realign my synapses with some seeeeheeerious caffeine. I realized as I went that I was having another one of those days where everyone is looking at me again. I saw them all arranged at various spots, lounging with coffees or chic food or laptops at various coördinates, plotted just so to maintain a loose illusion of being somewhere public, but alone, aloof, almost part of the ambiance instead of the sentience.
I have a devastating effect on that stuff.
So. Hell. I entertained the snot out of all those empty-headed extras in the movie of my life and sashayed across the parking lot with my coffee toward an ATM machine that would spit out some of my no cash, help me support all this coming and going and staying and waiting.
It was little better today. Had to get back over to Mill Valley to have blood drawn to test all the levels of all the sundry things that need to stay optimized, a fasting blood test, and got stuck in the traffic jam of the apocalypse, yet another jackknifed big rig on the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge. My left leg has had to be strapped back onto me from clutching my way through the ordeal, but the buddhas smiled on me and let there be no one ahead of me at the lab. A nice easy, painless, few minutes with my insides trading places and back out into the world I went.
Chaos. Crowded streets and freeways, full of pinhead drivers and waves of irk flowing and flying and bouncing from every surface as far as the eye can see. Clerks who are as impermeably I-don't-give-even-a-micron-of-a-fuck as the woman with the iPod at Molly Stone's. Others harried and trying to be helpful, but really only being harried. Italianate men fetching up a pizza of divinity, and pausing to make calculations in a nifty little triangular space out of the hubbub. Pharmacists shrugging over a statin drug someone needed not being delivered today, not even breathing in the direction of making an arrangement for the poor patient who needed it to get it from a nearby competitor. How hard is that? How hard is that? How damn hard would something that simple be?
erik prince implicated in murder
[click image]You'll understand my preference for an image of Jeremy Scahill over one of Erik Prince. I know you will.
Wonder if anyone's making book on Prince ever being tried....
your meditation assignment, should you choose to accept it
Plague kills 3rd man in sealed-off Chinese townCompare our handling of the Flying Pig Flu outbreak to China's handling of this plague. Russia already has tightened border security... before it's even gotten out of a remote town, substantially smaller than La Gloria, Mexico, and bip-bam, they're on it, and every agency and news outlet on the planet has the full scoop.
By HENRY SANDERSON (AP) – 4 hours ago
BEIJING — Medical staff raced to disinfect a sealed-off town in northwestern China on Tuesday after a third person died within four days in a pneumonic plague outbreak in the farming community of 10,000, local authorities said.
Police set up checkpoints around Ziketan in Qinghai province after the outbreak was first detected last Thursday. The lung infection is highly contagious can kill a human in 24 hours if left untreated.
Medical staff are disinfecting the area and killing rats, insects and fleas that can be carriers for the bacteria, a notice on the provincial health department Web site said. Authorities are keeping close track of people who came into contact with those infected.
Authorities urged anyone who had visited the town since mid-July and has developed a cough or fever to seek hospital treatment. Pneumonic plague is spread through the air and can be passed from person to person through coughing.
The latest victim was a 64-year-old man named Danzhi, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
He was a neighbor of a 32-year-old herdsman in Ziketan and a 37-year-old man who died earlier. A further nine people — mainly relatives of the herdsman — are infected and in a hospital, according to the local health bureau.
Of those, one is in an extremely serious condition and one other has developed symptoms of coughing and chest pain, but the rest are in stable condition and there have been no reports of new infections, Xinhua and the health department said.
Police checkpoints were set up in a 17-mile (28-kilometer) radius around Ziketan and people were not allowed to leave, a resident said. Many shops remained closed Tuesday, residents said, although more vehicles were out on the street.
Some people tried to leave the quarantined area on Monday evening after the third death was reported, mostly by foot, one resident reached by The Associated Press said Tuesday.
"A lot of people ran off last night when they heard that another person died of this plague. They are mostly from other provinces," said a foodseller surnamed Han who runs a stall at the Crystal Alley Market. "They headed back home with food, mineral water and their donkeys."
It was unclear if the people who headed out of the town made it past the police checkpoints. Officials at the local and provincial level were unavailable to comment.
According to the World Health Organization, pneumonic plague is one of the deadliest infectious diseases, capable of killing humans within 24 hours of infection.
A 2006 WHO report from an international meeting on plague cited a Chinese government disease expert as saying that most cases of the plague in China's northwest occur when hunters are contaminated while skinning infected animals.
Pneumonic plague is caused by the same bacteria that causes bubonic plague — the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe in the Middle Ages. However, bubonic plague is usually transmitted by flea bites and can be easily treated with antibiotics.
i suppose this is splattered all over the front pages of groupthink
[click image]But I have not had the vitality to look today and so just now found out about it....
Ex-U.S. President Clinton makes surprise visit to North Korea
09:48 | 04/08/2009
MOSCOW, August 4 (RIA Novosti) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton arrived on Tuesday in Pyongyang on a visit that could secure the release of two American journalists jailed in North Korea, the Yonhap news agency said.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegally crossing the border from China in March while working on a story for San Francisco-based Current TV about refugees fleeing the impoverished communist nation.
"Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, and his party arrived here Tuesday by air," Yonhap quoted the official Korean Central News Agency as saying.
The report said Clinton, who was president from 1993 to 2001, was greeted at the airport by Yang Hyong-sop, vice president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, and Kim Kye-gwan, the North's deputy foreign minister and chief nuclear envoy.
Some analysts have expressed hope that Clinton's visit could also convince the reclusive regime to return to multilateral talks on North Korea's controversial nuclear program.
Pyongyang quit the six-party talks, involving the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States, and announced the restart of its nuclear weapons program after the UN Security Council condemned its April 5 long-range missile launch. The Security Council imposed tougher sanctions on the North after it conducted its second nuclear test in May.
North Korea said on July 27 it was ready for bilateral talks with the U.S., but made it clear that it would not rejoin the six-party nuclear talks, which it said sought only to "disarm and incapacitate" the nation.
Do you think that's wise to send Bubba to go save a couple damsels in distress?
03 August 2009
if at first you don't succeed, try being clear and making no mistake
[click image]Tensions rise in South Ossetia ahead of war's first anniversary
10:11 | 04/08/2009
MOSCOW, August 4 (RIA Novosti) - With the anniversary of last August's five-day war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia just a few days away, events in the region are taking on an oddly familiar tone.
In an echo of the accusations and counter-accusations that marked the buildup to last year's August 8-12 conflict, both Georgia and its former republic of South Ossetia have been trading claims of attacks on one another's territories.
On Tuesday, the South Ossetian communications ministry told RIA Novosti that the village of Otrev, near the republic's capital of Tskhinvali, had been shelled by Georgian forces from across the border. No injuries were reported.
The village was among the first to come under attack last August 8, when Georgian forces attacked the republic in an attempt to bring it back under central control. South Ossetia had enjoyed de facto independence since the early 1990s.
The Georgian Interior Ministry said late on Monday that three rocket-propelled grenades had been launched from South Ossetia at a Georgian village. Again, no injuries were reported.
Both sides also alleged attacks on their territories at the weekend. Russia has said it will use force to protect South Ossetian residents.
Last August's war saw Russian forces chase invading Georgian troops deep into Georgia amid accusations on both sides of human rights abuses. Russia eventually withdrew from Georgian territory and recognized the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another former Georgian republic, on August 24. It has since stationed some 4,000 troops in the two republics.
The European Union, in a statement issued by current president Sweden, called for calm in the region.
"The European Union notes with concern the recent accusations of shellings and other incidents on both sides of the South Ossetian administrative boundary line," the statement said. "The EU urges all sides to refrain from any statement or action that may lead to increased tensions at this particularly sensitive time."
The statement also called on both sides to grant the European Union Monitoring Mission unrestricted access to both sides of the South Ossetian border.
And lest you think Russia is simply awaiting our encirclement with a scowl on its face....
let me tell you just how weird i really am
[click image]I figured this out all by myself right away.
If you wonder how I can continually be so exasperated by things, this has something to do with it. Stuff that seems to me to be perfectly evident is just too damn abstruse for almost everyone else, takes them all this researching and stilted/stunted empiricism to get there... if they ever get there... and... uhm... I am SO not bragging. I'm damn ordinary, and am appalled to find just how weird that makes me.
oh, by the way
[click image]Do not die without reading everything ever written by George Saunders.
I'm not kidding.
I know I've mentioned this before, but you do not pay enough attention.
I'm not kidding.
whoa
[click image]Put this in your pipe and smoke it!
We better decide soon if we want "them" controlling the technology or "us"....
Yep. Yes indeedy, we better.
02 August 2009
coldest story ever told
[click image]New HIV strain discovered in woman from Cameroon
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID (AP) – 4 hours ago
WASHINGTON — A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.
The finding "highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa," said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.
The three previously known HIV strains are related to the simian virus that occurs in chimpanzees.
The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission, Plantier's team said. But they added they cannot rule out the possibility that the new strain started in chimpanzees and moved into gorillas and then humans, or moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans.
The 62-year-old patient tested positive for HIV in 2004, shortly after moving to Paris from Cameroon, according to the researchers. She had lived near Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, but said she had no contact with apes or bush meat, a name often given to meat from wild animals in tropical countries.
The woman currently shows no signs of AIDS and remains untreated, though she still carries the virus, the researchers said.
How widespread this strain is remains to be determined. Researchers said it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere. The virus' rapid replication indicates that it is adapted to human cells, the researchers reported.
Their research was supported by the French Health Watch Institute, the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis and Rouen University Hospital.
A separate paper, also in Nature Medicine, reports that people with genital herpes remain at increased risk of HIV infection even after the herpes sores have healed and the skin appears normal.
Researchers led by Drs. Lawrence Corey and Jia Zhu of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that long after the areas where the herpes sores existed seem to be clear, they still have immune-cell activity that can encourage HIV infection.
Herpes is marked by recurring outbreaks and has been associated with higher rates of infection with HIV. It had been thought that the breaks in the skin were the reason for higher HIV rates, but a study last year found that treatment of herpes with drugs did not reduce the HIV risk.
The researchers tested the skin of herpes patients for several weeks after their sores had healed and found that, compared with other genital skin, from twice to 37 times more immune cells remained at the locations where the sores had been.
HIV targets immune cells and in laboratory tests the virus reproduced three to five times faster in tissue from the healed sites as in tissue from other areas.
"Understanding that even treated (herpes) infections provide a cellular environment conducive to HIV infection suggests new directions for HIV prevention research," commented Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
That study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Tietze Foundation.
triple-cross
[click image, C-SPAN video, one hour and 45 minutes, h/t Flo]His web page routes through Web Me, which is weird, but he keeps claiming you need to look at his timeline there....
--------------------------------------------
So... he gives a pretty good accounting of how intimately we knew of several Egyptian players over the decade before 9/11, gives all kind of evidence that makes it very hard to believe the government wasn't well aware of the plot for this, well in advance of it ever happening, but, of course, won't go so far as to accuse them of deliberately letting it happen, and won't touch the helping it happen stuff with a ten-foot pole. I know he doesn't want to be branded a conspiracy nut, but a bunch of the stuff he says seems as much of an excuse for bad behavior as a complaint against negligence or an indictment of anyone's behavior... except Patrick Fitzgerald, who it seems did everything he could to stop the publication of this book.
Pfeh. Maybe this will help some people put it together, but, at this late date, his inability to even mention about the evidence for controlled demolition of the Towers, and still whining about the terrorist attack on the Pentagon, pfeh, wimp... wimp at best, well poisoner at worst.
No. Really. He names almost everyone in the FBI, but omits mention of John O'Neill? Omits mention of the fact that eight or ten of the putative hijackers have been recognized as still among the living? All kinds of blaring omissions, and in places where he should have made mention and completely didn't. Tsk.
Maybe his book or his timeline will be better, but, pfeh....
this has been true for decades
[click image, h/t Big Danny]... but I guess it's good it gets mentioned in the popular media sometimes....
01 August 2009
ideal vacation destination
[click image]
Iran detains US nationals at border
1 August 2009
Three US nationals who crossed into Iran via Iraq have been arrested, the state-owned Al-Alam television has reported.
"An informed Iranian source confirmed the arrest of three Americans after they infiltrated through the Iraqi border," the Arabic-language television station said on Saturday.
The two men and a woman entered Iranian territory a day earlier from Iraqi Kurdistan despite repeated warnings not to do so, a Kurdish official said.
A fourth American originally with the hiking party had not joined the trek due to illness, said Beshro Ahmed, a media adviser for the general security department in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
He named the three as Shane Bower, Sara Short and Joshua Steel, while Shaun Gabriel Maxwell stayed behind in their hotel in the autonomous Kurdish region's second-largest city of Sulaimaniyah.
Falah Mustafa, foreign policy chief for the Iraqi Kurdistan government, said: "They were interested in going up the mountain and after that they walked down the other side, which is the Iranian side.
"Because they don't know the area, they entered Iran's lands."
There is no clear border marker between Iran and Iraq at Ahmed Awa.
A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Baghdad said: "We've seen the reports and are looking into it but can't confirm anything at this time."
An official at the Pentagon in Washington said no US military personnel were involved.
Mountainous region
The arrests came after the three visited the mountainous resort region of Ahmed Awa, about 90km northeast of Sulaimaniyah.
Ahmed said: "The [Kurdish] tourist police in the area asked them not to climb the mountains because the Iranian border was very close.
"On Friday, they went close to the mountains, and climbed them. Then they called their friend in the hotel telling him that they were arrested by Iranian forces at the border."
"Shaun was in the hotel and he called the US embassy in Iraq to tell them about this information, and the Americans came to the hotel and took him."
Ahmed said the group had originally been in Syria before going to Turkey and eventually crossing the Turkey-Kurdistan border.
tinfoil hats rendered useless once and for all
[click image]The course of paranoia will never be the same again.... We're doomed.
the most amazingly fucked-up thing just happened this morning
[click image]... and it is of a character that is the essence of why I admire Marianne Faithfull's version of Working Class Hero so much. It isn't in the words, or even in the music really... it's a convergence of her arrangement of it and that particular band and her history and that song's history... it calls up the harm of human disregard... it is in some ways more powerful than the perfection of John's delivery, and today is the day my posting it here again the other night for consideration presaged.
Some of it's sort of in the lyrics. Take out the whining and leave in these lines, and the message is clearer:
As soon as you're born they make you feel smallI have to go see if I can't figure out how to deal with this train wreck.... Back after a little while....
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
Keep you doped with religion and sex and tv
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
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