it's illegal to make fascists look bad in a fascist state

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Just a reminder....

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love, 99
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eco-farming can double food production

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But will that stop the Monsantoing? Not a chance.

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love, 99
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wake up, america

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It makes me so crazy because I remember bellowing about this on the airwaves some six years ago. I was screaming about the fortresses that would be surrounded by naked and starving hordes here, and around the world, if this Democratic-Fascist and Republican-Fascist plan for globalization were allowed to go forward. So I almost want to smack the guys bellowing about it now, when it's this close to midnight.

From now on, whenever you hear the term "the global economy" you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class.  Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system.  Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do.  Therefore, the massive global corporations that now dominate our economy are able to pay workers in other countries slave labor wages and import the products that they make into the United States to compete with products made by "expensive" American workers.  This has resulted in a mass exodus of manufacturing facilities and jobs from the United States.

But without good, high paying jobs the U.S. middle class cannot continue to be the U.S middle class.  The only thing that the vast majority of Americans have to offer in the economic marketplace is their labor.  Sadly, that labor has now been dramatically devalued.  American workers now must directly compete for jobs with millions upon millions of workers on the other side of the world that toil away for 15 hours a day at slave labor wages.  This is causing jobs to leave the United States at an almost unbelievable rate, and it is putting tremendous downward pressure on the wages of millions of jobs that are still in the United States.

So when you hear terms such as "globalization" and "the global economy", it is important to keep in mind that those are code words for the emerging one world economic system that is systematically wiping out the U.S. middle class.

A one world labor pool means that the standard of living for the U.S. middle class will continue falling toward the standard of living in the third world.

We keep hearing about how the U.S. economy is being transformed from a "manufacturing economy" into a "service economy".  But "service jobs" are generally much lower paying than "manufacturing jobs".  The number of good paying "middle class jobs" in the United States is rapidly decreasing.  So how can the U.S. middle class survive in such an environment?

What makes things even worse for manufacturers in the United States is that other nations often impose a "value-added tax" of 20 percent or more on U.S. goods entering their shores and yet most of the time we do not reciprocate with similar taxes.

But whenever someone mentions how incredibly unfair and unbalanced our trade agreements with other nations are, they are immediately labeled as a "protectionist".

Well, someone should be looking out for U.S. interests when it comes to trade, because the current state of the global economy is ripping the U.S. middle class to shreds.

Right now, the United States consumes far more wealth than it produces.  This nation buys much, much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.  This is called a "trade deficit", and it is one of the most important economic statistics.  The U.S. runs a massive trade deficit every single year, and it is wiping out our national wealth, it is destroying our surviving industries and it is absolutely shredding middle class America.

We cannot allow tens of thousands of factories to continue to leave the United States.  We cannot allow millions of jobs to continue to be "outsourced" and "offshored".  We cannot allow tens of billions of dollars of our national wealth to continue to be transferred into foreign hands every single month.

The truth is that the global economy is bad for America.  The following are 23 facts which prove that globalism is pushing the standard of living of the middle class down to third world levels....

#1 From December 2000 to December 2010, the U.S. ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars.

#2 The U.S. trade deficit was about 33 percent larger in 2010 than it was in 2009.

#3 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#4 The U.S. economy is rapidly trading high wage jobs for low wage jobs.  According to a new report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth.  Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.

#5 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.

#6 In Germany, exports account for approximately 40 percent of GDP.  In China, exports account for approximately 30 percent of GDP.  In the United States, exports account for approximately 13 percent of GDP.

#7 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe?  Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.

#8 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.

#9 The U.S. economy now has 10 percent fewer "middle class jobs" than it did just ten years ago.

#10 The United States currently has 7.7 million fewer payroll jobs than it did back in December 2007.

#11 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#12 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in "advanced technology products" of $16 billion with the rest of the world.  In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.

#13 The United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#14 In China, working conditions are so bad that large numbers of "employees" regularly try to commit suicide.  One major employer, Foxconn, has even gone so far as to install "anti-suicide nets" in an attempt to keep their employees from jumping off of their buildings.

#15 Wages for workers in China are incredibly low.  For example, one facility in the city of Longhua that makes iPods employs approximately 200,000 workers.  These workers put in endless 15-hour days but they only make about $50 per month.

#16 In Bangladesh, manufacturing workers toil in absolutely horrific conditions and make an average of about $38 per month.

#17 In Vietnam, teenage workers often work seven days a week for as little as 6 cents an hour making promotional Disney toys for McDonald's.

#18 Since 2001, over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been closed.

#19 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#20 In the United States today, 6.2 million Americans have been out of work for 6 months of longer.

#21 8.4 million Americans are currently working part-time jobs for "economic reasons".  These jobs are mostly very low paying service jobs.

#22 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.

#23 According to Willem Buiter, the chief economist at Citigroup, China will be the largest economy in the world by the year 2020, and India will surpass China by the year 2050.

Those that promote "free trade" can never explain how the U.S. middle class is going to continue to have plenty of jobs in the new global economy.

By merging our labor pool with the rest of the world, we have also merged our standard of living with the rest of the world.  High unemployment is rapidly becoming "the new normal" in America, and wages are going to continue to decline in many, many industries.

Already, there are quite a few formerly great U.S. cities (such as Detroit) that are beginning to resemble third world hellholes.  If something is not done about our massive trade imbalance, even more cities are going to follow Detroit into oblivion.

Unfortunately, most of our politicians continue to insist that globalism is good for our society.  They continue to insist that we should not be worried that jobs formerly done by middle class American workers are now being done by slave laborers on the other side of the globe.  They continue to insist that having 43 million Americans on food stamps is a temporary thing and that soon our economy will be better than ever.

Well, it is time to stop listening to the politicians that are promoting "the global economy".  They are lying to us.

Globalism is great for nations such as China and it is helping multinational corporations make huge profits, but for the U.S. middle class it is an economic death sentence.

If you want an America where there are less jobs, where more Americans are on food stamps and other anti-poverty programs and where our cities continue to be transformed into deindustrialized hellholes, then you should strongly support the emerging global economy.

But if you care about the standard of living of the U.S. middle class and you want for there to be some kind of viable economic future for your children and your grandchildren then you had better start caring about these issues and doing something about them.

Please wake up America.

Globalization would be jake IF there were a plan in place to protect workers, but everybody, INCLUDING workers, just skips over that part.

I'm about ready to start pleading with Agent BB2 to hop in my go cart from the eighth dimension with me and onward to Wisconsin, but this needs to be happening in EVERY government outpost from city all the way up to federal—and the airports, and the bus stations, and and the train stations, and the hotels, and the sports stadiums, and the goddam pits of murderating delusion shopping malls—across the nation.

NOW.

Or, you'll be a half-clad and barefoot beggar who pleads to put on a sterile suit and clean glass for the real people.

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love, 99
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consider this

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It could mean you wouldn't have to be so picky about where off the grid you go to survive.

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love, 99
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commodity bubbles are going out of control

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You fuckers doing yer speculating should curl up and die instead.

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.

The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.

The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to choke off demand.

I sprung out of blogging mode last night the moment my eyes landed on BB2's comment about the loss of Gary Moore—losing myself in my life of loving guitar heroes and transcendental vocalists who are now damn old—not willing or able, I don't know which, to face any of this for nearly a day.

I gotta say, I had this entire problem completely parsed by the time I was thirteen years old, and have endured all manner of karma for it my whole life, only to live to see for undeniably certain that I was right from the git. Yes, that and two bucks will buy me a cup of coffee, I know, but, you fuckers, WHY won't you wake up?

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love, 99
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closer to the truth

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I have noticed some troubling inconsistencies in the al Jazeera coverage, and, as you know, have been complaining about the precipitous drop in the veracity meter in general there over the last year or so. Webster Tarpley seems to think it's a puppet of British Intelligence. I don't know, and we have all seen that Webster is not infallible, but we've also got all kinds of reason to respect his demonstrated level of expertise over the years. So I heavily recommend you listen to this.

And it's NOT just me and Webster saying this....

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love, 99
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food, it's about food

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Everyone in the world has been hypnotized with the glories of democracy [code for fascism] and they think they can get FOOD if they take the power away from privileged despots. In Egypt, "the opposition" isn't actually opposed at all. They are so close to the edge of death from starvation they can be bought in their millions, and even those who are not bought to oppose their countrymen have NO choice but to fight the upheaval because it is depriving them of the almost nothing they had before.

Just contemplate for a moment the difficulty of dieting. Now multiply that by millions.

Commodity speculators are cornering the market on FOOD and holding it to drive up prices. Just like, say, the gold and silver speculators. We're being driven out of our homes and starved by people making money on money. Since we no longer have the industrial base to generate the revenue to cover our spending, those who are able have turned to speculation to keep generating income and this is increasing the abjection of those who are NOT able. And it isn't just people here who are being affected. They're all over the world. They are dying of starvation and they are rioting in the streets.

Meanwhile, we're busy sniping at each other, literally and figuratively, when we're all basically upset about the same things, but just such well-trained monkeys we think style differences are the mark of the beast. This sniping serves ONE demographic, the one creating global famine....

Right click to download large pdf of UN standard excuses re food and agriculture....

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love, 99
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there was a christian, a capitalist and a marxist

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Bryan Rostron
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Over the new year, it occurred to me I had only known one real Christian in my life. Thinking about this, it dawned on me that I’d also only met one absolute capitalist — and one true Marxist, one I’d trust to pull off a revolution and not shoot me afterwards.

It’s not that I’ve led a particularly sheltered life, having lived in — and reported from — several continents. In doing so, I have met some astonishing people, good and bad, and interviewed, or exposed, some very nasty capitalists.

But the real thing? The Christian I am thinking of, for example, lives not far from me outside Cape Town. She is a pastor and spends much of her time in the most forsaken areas of the Eastern Cape, setting up networks of “surrogate mothers” for AIDS orphans. She threw a party over the holiday period, having cashed in a burial policy in order to bring twenty of these rural women to Cape Town. None had ever seen the sea.

One Zulu-speaking lady, who also happened to be there, told me about the time she and her husband had tried to buy a house in a white area in order for him to be close to his work. My friend had to inspect the house and pretend that this dignified, educated black woman was her domestic. “When we finally moved in, the neighbours were terribly shocked”, recalled this now elderly black woman. “They complained — but apartheid was coming to an end, so nothing happened. In fact, we became friendly with some of them.”

Not that this qualifies as exclusively Christian. Many atheist left-wingers resorted to such stratagems to get round the grotesque distortions of apartheid. Nor is it her openness and simplicity, or the fact that she opens her home to people who have stolen from her before. What struck me as truly remarkable is her response a couple of years ago to a gang of teenage boys from the nearby township. They went on the rampage, stealing from fellow township dwellers. Then they murdered a man.

These kids, some of whom were 12 or 13, were driven out of Imizamo Yethu and informed that they would be killed instantly if they were seen in the township again. They took up residence, in mid-winter, among the dunes along the Atlantic Ocean. They had no way of supporting themselves, apart from occasional bag snatches. They became ragged and thin. No one — not the police, churches nor social services — was interested.

My friend, with her own money, would buy food and feed these boys in the dunes. “If I didn’t care for the real outcasts of society”, she said, “what sort of Christian would I be?” That’s not a question, I suspect, that the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury ask themselves.

The only capitalist, on the other hand, I met in London about 15 years ago. He was the other dinner guest of a young American banker and his wife. All three were baffled by my views. The argument got heated. The banker was at least prepared to admit exactly what level of deprivation and misery he was willing to tolerate in order to sustain his capitalist convictions. Mass starvation was over the limit. “Of course, if there’s a famine, one must intervene”, he conceded. “You can’t just leave people to starve.”

His British businessman friend, however, was intransigent. “Look, you want to give away your own money to stop people starving? That’s commendable — just so long as it’s your own choice and your personal cash”, he replied. “But nothing, absolutely nothing, should interfere with the laws of the free market.”

It’s useful to have the real argument put, shorn of all platitudes and palliatives. I soon dipped out of that dispute and sat back to enjoy the sight of a rich young American banker so hugely discomfited by the implications of his own ideology.

And the Marxist? Actually, until about a year ago, I used to say there were two that I would trust. But one, a white South African revolutionary, has proved so intransigent that he’s fallen out with almost everyone, including me and even, apparently, one of his own children. So I don’t fancy taking my chances of not being put before his firing squad.

That, again, leaves me with only one. And he’s now dead. It was a much-loved former colleague, the great investigative journalist Paul Foot. I once said to him, only half joking, that if I was confident that some of his comrades were as generous and non-sectarian as he, I’d be more inclined to sign up for the revolution.

Of course, Tribune readers will be able to provide outstanding examples of all three: Christians, capitalists, communists. But I haven’t personally met these fine folks. Maybe my luck will change in 2011. I try to keep an open mind.

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Go to first half of today's Keiser Report for refresher....

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And then you'll want to go contemplate the links here....

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love, 99
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albania

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Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Albania...

Berisha accused the socialist opposition of wanting to trigger "a Tunisian-style scenario for Albania" by staging "a coup to seize power by force," AFP reported.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for an anti-government protest called by the socialist opposition on 21 January. The demonstration ended with violent clashes between protesters and the police, and three people were killed. ...

Berisha and opposition Socialist Party leader Edi Rama blamed one another for the deaths, with each side promising new rallies in an escalating political row. ...

In a move to bolster support, Berisha on Saturday gave a bonus of one month's wages to security officials who patrolled the protest on Friday, and four months' wages for police officials who were wounded.

Security officials have placed coils of barbed wire on the ground around government buildings on the capital's main boulevard.

They're trying to give all kinds of fancy excuses—corruption, bogus elections, partisan bickering, housing, human rights—but the bottom line, the motive force in all these places seems to be FOOD.

[THE CORPORATION, two and a half hour documentary that does bear on all this....]

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UPDATE — And Egypt....

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love, 99
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the food bubble is inflating

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Bottom line:

The ministers from 48 countries called on the G-20 nations to “fight the abuse and manipulation of prices” in agricultural markets, according to a joint statement handed out at a press conference in the German capital today. ...

“All the member countries in the G-20 have to oppose this price volatility,” Le Maire said in a press conference. “With this text we already have a good starting point.”

World food prices rose to a record in December on higher costs for sugar, grain and oilseeds, the United Nations reported Jan. 4. An index of 55 food commodities tracked by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization gained for a sixth month to 214.7 points, above the previous high of 213.5 in June 2008.

The rising cost of food helped provoke deadly riots this year in Algeria and Tunisia, and at least 13 people died in Mozambique last year in protests against plans to increase bread prices. Surging food prices in 2008 sparked protests and riots in more than 30 countries, including Egypt, Haiti and Cameroon. ...

I hope you don't delude yourself we are being protected from the ravages of this action.

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love, 99
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i'm gonna do another trainwreck today

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Which means that if yer on the feed and you care, you should periodically poke back in. I think I'm starting a mild crusade against headline readers. I keep realizing people have the wrong impression of a lot of things on the tubes because they read headlines and maybe give a split-second's splat of their eyeprints and then don't seem to know what is going on. This isn't as awful as it might be in a world where even reading every last word leaves one completely confused, but there are some important things still to be missed, like:

Rudolf Elmer, the former banker who handed WikiLeaks details of rich and famous tax evaders, has been found guilty of coercion.

A Zürich court on Wednesday also found him guilty of breaching Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws, publicising private client data, and threatening an employee at his former firm Julius Baer, BUT HE FACES NO JAIL TIME.

Judge Sebastian Aeppli rejected prosecution demands to give Elmer an eight-month prison sentence.

Instead the court sentenced him to a fine of 7,200 Swiss francs ($7,505), suspended for two years.

Elmer was accused of stealing information from clients then trying to extort money from his employers after they fired him.

How many people are out there all chuffed that Elmer has to go to jail for being a hero? A lot. I would've been one of them if I hadn't decided not to simply be bummed but instead to know the details of my bummertude.

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Trusted Internet ID:

... US Department of Commerce [is] preparing to create an Internet ID for all Americans. White House Cyber security Coordinator Howard Schmidt said that the Department of Commerce is "the absolute perfect spot in the US government" to build an online "identity ecosystem." ...

Thanks to a nearly dead technology known as “history books”, we know that the US government has a long history of misinterpreting the commerce clause and that their many attempts to micromanage most aspects of the economy and centralize economic authority have been well documented. Historically this is a new low for them.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke ... "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

Internet and technology expert hit Lauren Weinstein ... “This entire scheme rests on the ability to link Internet presence/roles with real-world identities. So even if no physical card ever exists, the system as currently understood would very much equate to a national ID card for accessing the Internet.”

... right now it doesn’t look like Americans will have any say in how this Internet ID goes down.

"Sure, you don't have to get a credential. But then again, you don't have to access the Internet either. Just like you don't have to get a driver's license — unless you want to be able to legally drive anywhere."

But, oh, uhm, CERTAINLY they're not talking about a national ID card. Nooooo.

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Ellsberg dreaming....

Hey, I think it's Poirot's kid....

Just shove 'em through and shoot 'em if they don't like it....

Today in global famine....

Today in climate sophistry....

Today in token populist legislatin'....

The obvious is beating us over the head again....

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The deputy speaker of Britain's House of Commons has asked lawmakers not to use Twitter while sitting in the chamber. Lindsay Hoyle intervened after Kevin Brennan, a Labour lawmaker, noted midway through a debate on education that two other lawmakers there were tweeting about the debate on Twitter.

Brennan complained the lawmakers should have voiced their arguments in Parliament so other lawmakers could have a chance to rebut them, instead of making comments online.

Hoyle warned Wednesday that lawmakers should not use Twitter to update followers while they sit in the Commons.

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Today in the audacity of opacity....

Today in the audacity of capitulation....

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And this, of course, has been the point all along: the WikiLeaks disclosures are significant precisely because they expose government deceit, wrongdoing and brutality, but the damage to innocent people has been deliberately and wildly exaggerated — fabricated — by the very people whose misconduct has been revealed. There is harm from the WikiLeaks documents, but it's to wrongdoers in power, which is why they are so desperate to malign and then destroy the group.

Just as was true in 2003 — when the joint, falsehood-based government/media demonization campaign led 69% of Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein participated in the planning of the 9/11 attacks (the Bush era's most revealing fact about American politics) — this orgy of anti-WikiLeaks propaganda has succeeded, with polls reliably showing the American public largely against the group and even favoring its prosecution (citizens in countries not subjected to this propaganda barrage view the group far more favorably). As has been demonstrated over and over, when the U.S. Government and its media collaborate to propagandize, its efficacy is not in doubt. And as Marcy Wheeler notes, these lies were told not only to distort public opinion and justify prosecuting WikiLeaks for doing nothing more than engaging in journalism, but also to coerce private corporations (MasterCard, Amazon, Visa, Paypal) to cut all services to the group.

The case against WikiLeaks is absolutely this decade's version of the Saddam/WMD campaign. It's complete with frivolous invocations of Terrorism, grave public warnings about National Security negated by concealed information, endlessly repeated falsehoods, a competition among political and media elites to advocate the harshest measures possible, a cowardly Congress that (with a few noble exceptions) acquiesces to it all on a bipartisan basis and is eager to enable it, and a media that not only fails to subject these fictions to critical scrutiny, but does the opposite: it takes the lead in propagating them. One might express bewilderment that most American journalists never learn their lesson about placing their blind faith in government claims, but that assumes — falsely — that their objective is to report truthfully.

—Glenn Greenwald

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I do so hope the fears of a youth rebellion are well-founded. People are SO squeamish about this stuff, but somehow don't feel squeamish about the PTB culling masses of people at will. It doesn't make SENSE. I know some people try to make sense of it by use of the delusion that one can comport oneself such that the genocide machine will pass one by unharmed. That's too easy to debunk anymore, okay?

Still, I hope all these kids aren't rising up only to get Obama-style hope and change. That's a REAL possibility, and you can BET—their farms, their houses, their yachts, their jets, their gold cards, their Swiss bank accounts, and your life—it's covered already. Capice? Check?

People need to be ON providing real alternatives before that ugliness can be substituted in for the present ugliness. It isn't enough to merely rise up. You have to STAY up until REAL improvement is in place.

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love, 99
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transferring back to the death star

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They really said no? Who Knew?

Members of Switzerland’s parliament are demanding the ouster of US diplomats who are believed to be involved in illegal spying activities out of their Geneva embassy, a revelation which came out of a WikiLeaks cable from 2005.

The cable, released by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, cited US embassy officials “checking out” a Middle Eastern-looking couple on the grounds that they were near the embassy and had the word “Islam” on a sign inside their car.

The Swiss Justice Ministry is investigating the program, and says there is evidence of the same sort of widespread surveillance out of the Geneva embassy as the US was found to be conducting in Norway and Denmark.

However while Norway eventually conceded that certain of its officials had secretly approved of the spying (while not telling the officials launching the investigation), Swiss officials say the US approached them on the possibility of launching such operations and was rebuffed at least twice. The evidence now is that they decided to go through with it anyhow.

Sorta like here, where we keep saying no to fascist stuff and they do it anyway.

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Coleen Rowley....

Damn right, Helen....

Nick Turse....

LEAVE CHILE RIGHT NOW....

COMPLETELY doesn't matter WHAT we say... ever....

Oh, fucking hell, I guess I can stop worrying about lifesaving pharmaceuticals drying up in the crash....

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The CIA is "out of control" and often refuses to cooperate with other parts of the national security community, even undermining their efforts, said former National Security Agency head William Odom, according to a recently released record of a 9/11 Commission interview.

"The CIA currently doesn't work for anyone. It thinks it works for the president, but it doesn't and it's out of control," says a report summarizing remarks made by Odom, a retired three-star general who served as director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988.

Odom, who also served on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform. He died in 2008.

William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform.

The 2003 interview, among others conducted by the 9/11 Commission, was posted on the website Cryptome, which is often compared to the secret-spilling WikiLeaks website. The report was not a leak, however, but one of many records relating to the 9/11 Commission that have been released and made available on the National Archives website.

"Quite a few remain 'access restricted' for classification review," John Young, who runs Cryptome, told AOL News in an e-mail about the records, some of which he has reposted. "We expect to make an FOIA [Freedom of information Act] request for their release once we have a full listing of those restricted."

In the commission interview, Odom portrayed CIA officers as individualistic, saying they were interested in writing "exposes." He also accused the CIA of not sharing "humint," meaning intelligence collected through contact with people, and of trying to sabotage the Pentagon's own work in this area.

"The director of the CIA has as much reason to brief the president as the man on the moon," Odom told the staff of the commission investigating the failure to prevent the terror attacks.

Odom also believed that intelligence officials weren't held sufficiently accountable for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said he believed that the heads of the NSA and the CIA should both have been fired by the president after 9/11 for "symbolic purposes."

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Ravingly-jealous old fuck is either poisoning the well or warning compatriots... which?

Something else to heap sleeping powder on the masses and come to naught....

Today's Keiser Report....

Austerity hits home....

Got food?

Whut, restoring their buddhas and installing satellite dishes?

Third millennium opium den....

Gorgeous toxic soup....

Stuxnet not so threatening... but nice try....

HAIL MEDVEDEV....

Hail Mary....

Yuh, "rambling" probably was more like "sputtering" over the psychedelia we call "policy" nowadays....

It's come to this....

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In the early months of Obama's presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft on defense (specifically "soft on Terror") and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack. But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding — rather than reversing — the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise — and claiming vindication — based on Obama's switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power).

As early as May, 2009, former Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith wrote in The New Republic that Obama was not only continuing Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, but was strengthening them — both because he was causing them to be codified in law and, more important, converting those policies from right-wing dogma into harmonious bipartisan consensus. Obama's decision "to continue core Bush terrorism policies is like Nixon going to China,"Goldsmith wrote. Last October, former Bush NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden — one of the most ideological Bush officials, whose confirmation as CIA chief was opposed by then-Sen. Obama on the ground he had overseen the illegal NSA spying program — gushed with praise for Obama: "there's been a powerful continuity between the 43rd and the 44th president." James Jay Carafano, a homeland-security expert at the Heritage Foundation, told The New York Times' Peter Baker last January: "I don’t think it's even fair to call it Bush Lite. It's Bush. It's really, really hard to find a difference that's meaningful and not atmospheric."

Those are the nation's most extreme conservatives praising Obama's Terrorism policies. And now Dick Cheney himself — who once led the "soft on Terror" attacks — is sounding the same theme. In an interview last night with NBC News, Cheney praised Obama for continuing his and Bush's core approach to Terrorism:

He obviously has been through the fires of becoming President and having to make decisions and live with the consequences. And it's different than being a candidate. When he was candidate he was all for closing Gitmo. He was very critical of what we'd done on the counterterrorism area to protect America from further attack and so forth. . . .

I think he's — in terms of a lot of the terrorism policies — the early talk, for example, about prosecuting people in the CIA who've been carrying out our policies — all of that's fallen by the wayside. I think he's learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he's learned from experience.

Cheney was then specifically asked whether he stood by his early attacks on Obama's national security policies — "You said you believe President Obama has made America less safe. That he's actually raised the risk of attack. Do you still feel that way?" — and Cheney, not exactly known for changing his mind, essentially said that, thanks to Obama's continuity, he now does not:

Well, when I made that comment, I was concerned that the counterterrorism policies that we'd put in place after 9/11 that had kept the nation safe for over seven years were being sort of rapidly discarded. Or he was going to attempt to discard them. . . . As I say, I think he's found it necessary to be more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did.

It overstates the case to say there are no differences. There were some: Obama formally ended the "enhanced interrogation program" (the authorization for which had been withdrawn when he took office); banned CIA black sites (which were empty when he took office); and has not invoked the Article II lawbreaking theories of Bush's first term (Bush largely abandoned them as well in his second term as Congress began legalizing his programs). And there is a more conciliatory tone, and some greater technocratic efficiency, in some foreign policy pronouncements. But the crux of Bush/Cheney radicalism — the mindset and policies that caused much of the controversy — continues and has even been strengthened. Gen. Hayden put it best, as quoted by The Washington Times:

"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]," Mr. Hayden said, listing the continuities. "And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action."

And that list, impressive though it is, doesn't even include the due-process-free assassination hit lists of American citizens, the sweeping executive power and secrecy theories used to justify it, the multi-tiered, "state-always-wins" justice system the Obama DOJ concocted for detainees, the vastly more aggressive war on whistleblowers and press freedoms, or the new presidential immunity doctrines his DOJ has invented. Critically, this continuity extends beyond specific policies into the underlying sloganeering mentality in which they're based: we're in a Global War; the whole Earth is the Battlefield; the Terrorists want to kill us because they're intrinsically Evil (not in reaction to anything we do); we're justified in doing anything and everything to eradicate Them; the President's overarching obligation (contrary to his Constitutional oath) is to keep us Safe; this should all be kept secret from us; we can't be bothered with obsolete dogma like Due Process and Warrants, etc. etc.

Aside from the repressiveness of the policies themselves, there are three highly significant and enduring harms from Obama's behavior.

First, it creates the impression that Republicans were right all along in the Bush-era War on Terror debates and Democratic critics were wrong. The same theme is constantly sounded by conservatives who point out Obama's continuation of these policies: that he criticized those policies as a candidate out of ignorance and partisan advantage, but once he became President, he realized they were right as a result of accessing the relevant classified information and needing to keep the country safe from the Terrorist threat. Goldsmith, for instance, claimed Obama changed his mind about these matters "after absorbing the classified intelligence and considering the various options. GOP Sen. Susan Collins told the NYT's Baker that Obama "is finding that many of those policies were better-thought-out than they realized." Cheney boasted that Obama "obviously has been through the fires of becoming President and having to make decisions and live with the consequences." Predictably — and understandably — here's the headline Cheney's interview generated in The Hill this morning.

This has settled in as orthodoxy: one could criticize Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies only out of ignorance and/or being free of the solemn obligation to Keep America Safe.

Second, Obama has single-handedly eliminated virtually all mainstream debate over these War on Terror policies. At least during the Bush years, we had one party which steadfastly supported them but one party which claimed (albeit not very persuasively) to vehemently oppose them. At least there was a pretense of vigorous debate over their legality, morality, efficacy, and compatibility with our national values.

Those debates are no more. Even the hardest-core right-wing polemicists — Gen. Hayden, the Heritage Foundation, Dick Cheney — now praise Obama's actions in these areas. Opposition from national Democrats has faded away to almost complete nonexistence now that it's a Democratic President doing these things. What was once viewed as the signature of Bush/Cheney radicalism is now official, bipartisan Washington consensus: the policies equally of both parties and all Serious people. Thanks to Barack Obama, this architecture is firmly embedded in place and invulnerable to meaningful political challenge.

Third, Obama's embrace of these policies has completely rehabilitated the reputations and standing of the Bush officials responsible for them. Yesterday, J. Gerald Herbert — a long-time DOJ official — told The Raw Story that Obama's refusal to investigate or prosecute Bush era crimes is both a violation of DOJ's duties and sets a "dangerous precedent" by vesting lawbreaking elites with immunity. The active protection of torturers and other high-level lawbreakers both signals that they did nothing seriously wrong and, independently, ensures that such conduct will be repeated in the future.

But Obama's impact in this area extends far beyond that. Dick Cheney is not only free of ignominy, but can run around claiming vindication from Obama's actions because he's right. The American Right constantly said during the Bush years that any President who knew what Bush knew and was faced with the duty of keeping the country safe would do the same thing. Obama has provided the best possible evidence imaginable to prove those claims true.

Conservatives would love to bash Obama for being weak on Terrorism so that, in the event of another attack, they can blame him (and Cheney, in last night's interview, left open that possibility by suggesting Obama may suffer from unknown failures). If it were at all possible, they'd be out accusing him of abandoning critical programs that Keep us Safe; that's what they do best. But they cannot with a straight face claim that Obama has abandoned their core approach, so they do the only thing they can do: acknowledge that he has continued and strengthened it and point out that it proves they were right — and he was wrong — all along. If Obama has indeed changed his mind over the last two years as a result of all the Secret Scary Things he's seen as President, then I genuinely believe that he and the Democratic Party owe a heartfelt, public apology to Bush, Cheney and the GOP for all the harsh insults they spewed about them for years based on policies that they are now themselves aggressively continuing.

Obama has won the War on Terror debate — for the American Right. And as Dick Cheney's interview last night demonstrates, they're every bit as appreciative as they should be.

—Glenn Greenwald

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About sums it up, eh?

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DEPRESSING ENOUGH?

I mean—and I should strive to be clearer always—does all this help blank out the urge to do something? And do you realize that you are relying on it? It's NOT merely that they're doing it to you. You are relying on it. Do you see how this is so?

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love, 99
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confucius say invasion far too strenuous

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You must be getting the point of my gripe about people being only about making a buck off "problem-solving" these days. Well this is more of that. It occurs to me also that this very capitalizing on existential threats is a huge part of the flashing of unease images on our cell walls thing. I heavily recommend you do more than just glance at this piece.

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love, 99
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economic depression, wars, environmental catastrophes, famine

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Spike their food with hallucinogens.

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love, 99
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on my way out

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Will try not to feel too sorry for myself...

Global food prices....

Desperate geoengineering projects....

All things considered.

I'll try to get back to you this evening.

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love, 99
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too bad he was rushed at the end

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Very clear explanation of our debt slavery. You should consider sending it to people you know who don't understand the fractional reserve system or monetized debt or what central banks do to the people of the world. And it might be kind of you to mention that we're all very likely to be much thinner really soon.

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love, 99
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worth it to screw on yer thinking cap for this

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Have I mentioned lately how glad I am Rafael Correa always has his on straight?

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i was listening to some jackasses pontificating the other night

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On the New Yorker Out Loud thing, and they were going on about WTF could be the problem with everyone worrying about runaway inflation when it's deflation, baby, deflation happening all around us. I was sitting there wondering who did the grocery shopping for these boobs, wondering what in the heck time/space warp they'd dropped into or if it was me. Then it hit me that they were probably talking about stuff, things, doodads, crap, iPhones.

They most CERTAINLY were NOT talking about FOOD. If they thought they were, they need decapitating, okay?

Of course, in their defense, deflationary spirals are the flip side of hyperinflation.... So. I'm just being crabby about having to eat lawn clippings.

[A word to the wise: YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS MOST OF WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY ON THAT LAST LINK.]

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spooky-cold weather

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In North America, Native Americans formed leagues in response to food shortages.
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i'm going to go hide my head under my pillow now

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I give up.
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