From Truthout.org :
Rove Informs White House He Will Be Indicted
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t Report
Friday 12 May 2006
Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.
Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources confirmed Rove's indictment is imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove's situation. A spokesman in the White House press office said they would not comment on "wildly speculative rumors."
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, did not return a call for comment Friday.
Rove's announcement to President Bush and Bolten comes more than a month after he alerted the new chief of staff to a meeting his attorney had with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in which Fitzgerald told Luskin that his case against Rove would soon be coming to a close and that he was leaning toward charging Rove with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators, according to sources close to the investigation.
A few weeks after he spoke with Fitzgerald, Luskin arranged for Rove to return to the grand jury for a fifth time to testify in hopes of fending off an indictment related to Rove's role in the CIA leak, sources said.
That meeting was followed almost immediately by an announcement by newly-appointed White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten of changes in the responsibilities of some White House officials, including Rove, who was stripped of his policy duties and would no longer hold the title of deputy White House chief of staff.
The White House said Rove would focus on the November elections and his change in status in no way reflected his fifth appearance before the grand jury or the possibility of an indictment.
But since Rove testified two weeks ago, the White House has been coordinating a response to what is sure to be the biggest political scandal it has faced thus far: the loss of a key political operative who has been instrumental in shaping White House policy on a wide range of domestic issues.
Late Thursday afternoon and early Friday morning, several White House officials were bracing for the possibility that Fitzgerald would call a news conference and announce a Rove indictment today following the prosecutor's meeting with the grand jury this morning. However, sources close to the probe said that is unlikely to happen, despite the fact that Fitzgerald has already presented the grand jury with a list of charges against Rove. If an indictment is returned by the grand jury, it will be filed under seal.
Rove is said to have told Bolten that he will be charged with perjury regarding when he was asked how and when he discovered that covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the agency, and whether he discussed her job with reporters.
Rove testified that he first found out about Plame Wilson from reading a newspaper report in July 2003 and only after the story was published did he share damaging information about her CIA status with other reporters.
However, evidence has surfaced during the course of the two-year-old investigation that shows Rove spoke with at least two reporters about Plame Wilson prior to the publication of the column.
The explanation Rove provided to the grand jury - that he was dealing with more urgent White House matters and therefore forgot - has not convinced Fitzgerald that Rove has been entirely truthful in his testimony.
Sources close to the case said there is a strong chance Rove will also face an additional charge of obstruction of justice, adding that Fitzgerald has been working meticulously over the past few months to build an obstruction case against Rove because it "carries more weight" in a jury trial and is considered a more serious crime.
Some White House staffers said it's the uncertainty of Rove's status in the leak case that has made it difficult for the administration's domestic policy agenda and the announcement of an indictment and Rove's subsequent resignation, while serious, would allow the administration to move forward on a wide range of issues.
"We need to start fresh and we can't do that with the uncertainty of Karl's case hanging over our heads," said one White House aide. "There's no doubt that it will be front page news if and when (an indictment) happens. But eventually it will become old news quickly. The key issue here is that the president or Mr. Bolten respond to the charges immediately, make a statement and then move on to other important policy issues and keep that as the main focus going forward."
Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t. He is the author of the new book NEWS JUNKIE. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview.
Wrap...
Friday, May 12, 2006
Sen Russ Feingold: One smart guy...
From Tom Paine:
Feingold The Forthright
Is this man too smart to be president? When Russ Feingold talks about how national security and foreign policy intersect, you think this man might just know what he's talking about. His ideas don't sound canned or full of buzz phrases, nor do they appeal to fear. Plus, they make sense.
Speaking Monday at the National Press Club, Feingold described his vision for national security.
The senator from Wisconsin said he believes that "battling al-Qaida and associated networks" should be the nation's national security priority. Thinking about the war on terror in exclusively military terms is short-sighted and insufficient. Instead, Feingold argued, the U.S. should be focusing on safe havens of Islamist activity (like Indonesia), rescuing failed states and supporting human rights.
Put another way, Feingold seemed to be saying, where we consort with repressive leaders and ignore the human rights of their citizens, we sow the seeds of anti-American hatred. Sure, it would've been nice if he'd noted how large America's fossil fuel-dependency looms as a factor in U.S. foreign policy decisions and how the lack of a real energy plan undermines our national security (hat tip, my former colleague Patrick Doherty and Michael Klare). That aside, it was refreshing to hear a Democrat talk about national security strategies that transcend defensive, reactive postures, and are informed by principle, not polling.
On Iraq, Feingold displayed the candor and directness that makes him popular with why-don't-Dems-get-a-spine progressives. He blasted the Bush administration's decision to invade, his Democratic colleagues' decision to vote in 2002 to authorize the president's use of force ("We missed an opportunity to define a different approach to the war on terror"), and the White House's refusal to admit it's made any mistakes and thus lay the groundwork for solutions.
Feingold's own proposal relies on drawing down U.S. troops according to a "flexible timetable." When asked to counter those who claim that withdrawal of U.S. troops will plunge Iraq into further chaos, Feingold didn't flinch:
Our presence is a stimulant to terrorist activity. Reminiscent of France in Algeria and the Soviets in Afghanistan. The lesson of insurgencies is that when the occupying power leaves, it will lessen the power of the insurgency.
Feingold argued that there's nothing "weak" about saying the U.S. should redeploy troops. Alas, his colleagues don't share his view. He offered his redeployment plan as an unsuccessful amendment to the Iraq supplemental funding bill that passed the Senate last week.
The very first question from the audience concerned the president’s nomination of General Michael Hayden to be the director of the CIA. Feingold gave a measured response, neither signaling support nor an all-out fight:
It is unfortunate that the president made such a contentious choice at a time when the intelligence community, and this country, need consensus on how to move forward. General Hayden will need to convince me that he is committed to the rule of law in order to win my support.
The very last question concerned the criteria informing his decision to enter the 2008 presidential race—which he said he won't make until after the midterm elections. Feingold listed a few things—the outcome of the midterms, his family and whether he feels he's up to the job. When answering that last question, Feingold said, the answer some of his supporters offer him—"Look who we got there now!"—is not good enough.
UPDATE: AP has a good write-up of Feingold's remarks, particularly his assessment of what Dems need to do to win elections:
He said some Democrats in Congress gave in to "intimidation" by the Bush administration when they voted to authorize the war in 2002, and warned: "If we do not show both a practical and emotional readiness to lead in the fight against terrorism, we will lose in '06 and we will lose in '08, just like we did in '02 and '04."
--Alexandra Walker Monday, May 8, 2006 3:33 PM
Wrap...
Feingold The Forthright
Is this man too smart to be president? When Russ Feingold talks about how national security and foreign policy intersect, you think this man might just know what he's talking about. His ideas don't sound canned or full of buzz phrases, nor do they appeal to fear. Plus, they make sense.
Speaking Monday at the National Press Club, Feingold described his vision for national security.
The senator from Wisconsin said he believes that "battling al-Qaida and associated networks" should be the nation's national security priority. Thinking about the war on terror in exclusively military terms is short-sighted and insufficient. Instead, Feingold argued, the U.S. should be focusing on safe havens of Islamist activity (like Indonesia), rescuing failed states and supporting human rights.
Put another way, Feingold seemed to be saying, where we consort with repressive leaders and ignore the human rights of their citizens, we sow the seeds of anti-American hatred. Sure, it would've been nice if he'd noted how large America's fossil fuel-dependency looms as a factor in U.S. foreign policy decisions and how the lack of a real energy plan undermines our national security (hat tip, my former colleague Patrick Doherty and Michael Klare). That aside, it was refreshing to hear a Democrat talk about national security strategies that transcend defensive, reactive postures, and are informed by principle, not polling.
On Iraq, Feingold displayed the candor and directness that makes him popular with why-don't-Dems-get-a-spine progressives. He blasted the Bush administration's decision to invade, his Democratic colleagues' decision to vote in 2002 to authorize the president's use of force ("We missed an opportunity to define a different approach to the war on terror"), and the White House's refusal to admit it's made any mistakes and thus lay the groundwork for solutions.
Feingold's own proposal relies on drawing down U.S. troops according to a "flexible timetable." When asked to counter those who claim that withdrawal of U.S. troops will plunge Iraq into further chaos, Feingold didn't flinch:
Our presence is a stimulant to terrorist activity. Reminiscent of France in Algeria and the Soviets in Afghanistan. The lesson of insurgencies is that when the occupying power leaves, it will lessen the power of the insurgency.
Feingold argued that there's nothing "weak" about saying the U.S. should redeploy troops. Alas, his colleagues don't share his view. He offered his redeployment plan as an unsuccessful amendment to the Iraq supplemental funding bill that passed the Senate last week.
The very first question from the audience concerned the president’s nomination of General Michael Hayden to be the director of the CIA. Feingold gave a measured response, neither signaling support nor an all-out fight:
It is unfortunate that the president made such a contentious choice at a time when the intelligence community, and this country, need consensus on how to move forward. General Hayden will need to convince me that he is committed to the rule of law in order to win my support.
The very last question concerned the criteria informing his decision to enter the 2008 presidential race—which he said he won't make until after the midterm elections. Feingold listed a few things—the outcome of the midterms, his family and whether he feels he's up to the job. When answering that last question, Feingold said, the answer some of his supporters offer him—"Look who we got there now!"—is not good enough.
UPDATE: AP has a good write-up of Feingold's remarks, particularly his assessment of what Dems need to do to win elections:
He said some Democrats in Congress gave in to "intimidation" by the Bush administration when they voted to authorize the war in 2002, and warned: "If we do not show both a practical and emotional readiness to lead in the fight against terrorism, we will lose in '06 and we will lose in '08, just like we did in '02 and '04."
--Alexandra Walker Monday, May 8, 2006 3:33 PM
Wrap...
Voting: Use mail-in ballots ONLY!!!!
From Truthout.org:
Scientists Call Diebold Security Flaw "Worst Ever"
By Ian Hoffman
Inside Bay Area
Thursday 11 May 2006
Critics say hole created for upgrades could be exploited by someone with nefarious plans.
Computer scientists say a security hole recently found in Diebold Election Systems' touch-screen voting machines is the "worst ever" in a voting system.
Election officials from Iowa to Maryland have been rushing to limit the risk of vote fraud or disabled voting machines since the hole was reported Wednesday.
Scientists, who have conferred with Diebold representatives, said Diebold programmers created the security hole intentionally as a means of quickly upgrading voting software on its electronic voting machines.
The hole allows someone with a common computer component and knowledge of Diebold systems to load almost any software without a password or proof of authenticity and potentially without leaving telltale signs of the change.
"I think it's the most serious thing I've heard to date," said Johns Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin, who published the first security analysis of Diebold voting software in 2003. "Even describing why I think it's serious is dangerous. This is something that's so easy to do that if the public were to hear about it, it would raise the risk of someone doing it.... This is the worst-case scenario, almost."
Diebold representatives acknowledged the security hole to Pennsylvania elections officials in a May 1 memo but said the "probability for exploiting this vulnerability to install unauthorized software that could affect an election is considered low."
California elections officials echoed that assessment Friday in a message to county elections chiefs.
But several computer scientists said Wednesday that those judgments are founded on the mistaken assumption that taking advantage of the security hole would require access to voting machines for a long time.
"I don't know anyone who considers two minutes lengthy, if it's that," said Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor and veteran voting-systems examiner for the state of Pennsylvania.
"It's the most serious security breach that's ever been discovered in a voting system. On this one, the probability of success is extremely high because there's no residue.... Any kind of cursory inspection of the machine would not reveal it."
States using Diebold touch screens are "going to have to fix it because they can't have an election without having a fix to this," he said. Otherwise, states risk challenges from losing candidates while being unable to prove easily that the machines worked as designed.
At least two states - Pennsylvania and California - have ordered tighter security and reprogramming of all Diebold touch screens, using software supplied by the state and a method opened by the security hole. Local elections officials then must seal certain openings on the machines with tamper-evident tape.
David Wagner, an assistant professor of computer-science at the University of California, Berkeley and a technical adviser to the California secretary of state's office, said the new measures should minimize risks in the June 6 primary.
Elections officials in Georgia, which uses Diebold touch screens statewide, said existing state rules already are sufficient.
Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, a nonprofit group critical of electronic voting, said she isn't sure reprogramming and sealing the touch screens will fix the problem.
Voting machines often are delivered to polling places several days before elections, and the outside case of Diebold's touch screens is secured by common Phillips screws. Inside, a hacker can take advantage of the security hole, as well as access other security holes, without disturbing the tamper-evident seals, Harris said.
"Ultimately, there's no way to get rid of the huge security flaws in the design," she said.
Wrap...
Scientists Call Diebold Security Flaw "Worst Ever"
By Ian Hoffman
Inside Bay Area
Thursday 11 May 2006
Critics say hole created for upgrades could be exploited by someone with nefarious plans.
Computer scientists say a security hole recently found in Diebold Election Systems' touch-screen voting machines is the "worst ever" in a voting system.
Election officials from Iowa to Maryland have been rushing to limit the risk of vote fraud or disabled voting machines since the hole was reported Wednesday.
Scientists, who have conferred with Diebold representatives, said Diebold programmers created the security hole intentionally as a means of quickly upgrading voting software on its electronic voting machines.
The hole allows someone with a common computer component and knowledge of Diebold systems to load almost any software without a password or proof of authenticity and potentially without leaving telltale signs of the change.
"I think it's the most serious thing I've heard to date," said Johns Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin, who published the first security analysis of Diebold voting software in 2003. "Even describing why I think it's serious is dangerous. This is something that's so easy to do that if the public were to hear about it, it would raise the risk of someone doing it.... This is the worst-case scenario, almost."
Diebold representatives acknowledged the security hole to Pennsylvania elections officials in a May 1 memo but said the "probability for exploiting this vulnerability to install unauthorized software that could affect an election is considered low."
California elections officials echoed that assessment Friday in a message to county elections chiefs.
But several computer scientists said Wednesday that those judgments are founded on the mistaken assumption that taking advantage of the security hole would require access to voting machines for a long time.
"I don't know anyone who considers two minutes lengthy, if it's that," said Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor and veteran voting-systems examiner for the state of Pennsylvania.
"It's the most serious security breach that's ever been discovered in a voting system. On this one, the probability of success is extremely high because there's no residue.... Any kind of cursory inspection of the machine would not reveal it."
States using Diebold touch screens are "going to have to fix it because they can't have an election without having a fix to this," he said. Otherwise, states risk challenges from losing candidates while being unable to prove easily that the machines worked as designed.
At least two states - Pennsylvania and California - have ordered tighter security and reprogramming of all Diebold touch screens, using software supplied by the state and a method opened by the security hole. Local elections officials then must seal certain openings on the machines with tamper-evident tape.
David Wagner, an assistant professor of computer-science at the University of California, Berkeley and a technical adviser to the California secretary of state's office, said the new measures should minimize risks in the June 6 primary.
Elections officials in Georgia, which uses Diebold touch screens statewide, said existing state rules already are sufficient.
Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, a nonprofit group critical of electronic voting, said she isn't sure reprogramming and sealing the touch screens will fix the problem.
Voting machines often are delivered to polling places several days before elections, and the outside case of Diebold's touch screens is secured by common Phillips screws. Inside, a hacker can take advantage of the security hole, as well as access other security holes, without disturbing the tamper-evident seals, Harris said.
"Ultimately, there's no way to get rid of the huge security flaws in the design," she said.
Wrap...
Columbia Business School warns Fed Chair....
Check this out - done by people at the Columbia Business School, a video about the new
Fed Chair, to the tune of an old Sting/Police song - 4.11 minutes long and worth every
second.
www0.gsb.columbia.edu/students/organizations/follies/media/EveryBreath.wmv
Wrap...
Fed Chair, to the tune of an old Sting/Police song - 4.11 minutes long and worth every
second.
www0.gsb.columbia.edu/students/organizations/follies/media/EveryBreath.wmv
Wrap...
BBC's Greg Palast on Data-Mining...big time...
From Buzzflash :
May 12, 2006
The Spies Who Shag Us
The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story -- Again
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Greg Palast
I know your shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news.This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.
********************For the full story, see "Double Cheese With Fear," in Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War."
********************
The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company, formed , called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.
Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration.
Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect if for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from
ChoicePoint.
Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you? ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information.
I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 "felons" that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc.
And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply assuaged by the man the company elected.
And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States …linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records. And ChoicePoint lied about that too.
The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI.
" And that scares the hell out of me," said the executive (who has since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida "felons," Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test "results" on rape case evidence … that didn't exist.
And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records.
But it won't stop, despite Republican senators shedding big crocodile tears about "surveillance" of innocent Americans. That's because FEAR is a lucrative business -- not just for ChoicePoint, but for firms such as Syntech, Sybase and Lockheed-Martin -- each of which has provided lucrative posts or profits to connected Republicans including former Total Information Awareness chief John Poindexter (Syntech), Marvin Bush (Sybase) and Lynn Cheney (Lockheed-Martin).
But how can they get Americans to give up our personal files, our phone logs, our DNA and our rights? Easy. Fear sells better than sex -- and they want you to be afraid.
Back to today's New York Times, page 28: "Wider Use of DNA Lists is Urged in Fighting Crime." And who is providing the technology? It comes, says the Times, from the work done on using DNA fragments to identity victims of the September 11 attack. And who did that job (for $12 million, no bid)? ChoicePoint, Inc. Which is NOT mentioned by the Times."
Genetic surveillance would thus shift from the individual [the alleged criminal] to the family," says the Times -- which will require, of course, a national DNA database of NON-criminals.
It doesn't end there. Turn to the same newspaper, page 23, with a story about a weird new law passed by the state of Georgia to fight illegal immigration. Every single employer and government agency will be required to match citizen or worker data against national databases to affirm citizenship. It won't stop illegal border crossing, but hey, someone's going to make big bucks on selling data. And guess what local boy owns the data mine? ChoicePoint, Inc., of Alpharetta, Georgia.
The knuckleheads at the Times don't put the three stories together because the real players aren't in the press releases their reporters re-write.
But that's the Fear Industry for you. You aren't safer from terrorists or criminals or "felon" voters. But the national wallet is several billion dollars lighter and the Bill of Rights is a couple amendments shorter.
And that's their program. They get the data mine -- and we get the shaft.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Greg Palast is author of Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?
Wrap...
May 12, 2006
The Spies Who Shag Us
The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story -- Again
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Greg Palast
I know your shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news.This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.
********************For the full story, see "Double Cheese With Fear," in Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War."
********************
The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company, formed , called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.
Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration.
Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect if for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from
ChoicePoint.
Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you? ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information.
I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 "felons" that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc.
And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply assuaged by the man the company elected.
And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States …linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records. And ChoicePoint lied about that too.
The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI.
" And that scares the hell out of me," said the executive (who has since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida "felons," Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test "results" on rape case evidence … that didn't exist.
And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records.
But it won't stop, despite Republican senators shedding big crocodile tears about "surveillance" of innocent Americans. That's because FEAR is a lucrative business -- not just for ChoicePoint, but for firms such as Syntech, Sybase and Lockheed-Martin -- each of which has provided lucrative posts or profits to connected Republicans including former Total Information Awareness chief John Poindexter (Syntech), Marvin Bush (Sybase) and Lynn Cheney (Lockheed-Martin).
But how can they get Americans to give up our personal files, our phone logs, our DNA and our rights? Easy. Fear sells better than sex -- and they want you to be afraid.
Back to today's New York Times, page 28: "Wider Use of DNA Lists is Urged in Fighting Crime." And who is providing the technology? It comes, says the Times, from the work done on using DNA fragments to identity victims of the September 11 attack. And who did that job (for $12 million, no bid)? ChoicePoint, Inc. Which is NOT mentioned by the Times."
Genetic surveillance would thus shift from the individual [the alleged criminal] to the family," says the Times -- which will require, of course, a national DNA database of NON-criminals.
It doesn't end there. Turn to the same newspaper, page 23, with a story about a weird new law passed by the state of Georgia to fight illegal immigration. Every single employer and government agency will be required to match citizen or worker data against national databases to affirm citizenship. It won't stop illegal border crossing, but hey, someone's going to make big bucks on selling data. And guess what local boy owns the data mine? ChoicePoint, Inc., of Alpharetta, Georgia.
The knuckleheads at the Times don't put the three stories together because the real players aren't in the press releases their reporters re-write.
But that's the Fear Industry for you. You aren't safer from terrorists or criminals or "felon" voters. But the national wallet is several billion dollars lighter and the Bill of Rights is a couple amendments shorter.
And that's their program. They get the data mine -- and we get the shaft.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Greg Palast is author of Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?
Wrap...
Thursday, May 11, 2006
This nation may be the home of the brave, but...
From World Can't Wait :
Judge Orders World Can't Wait Activist to Jail Psych Unit
CAROL FISHER REMAINS STRONG AND UNAPOLOGETIC
May 9:
Judge Timothy McGinty forcibly incarcerated Carol Fisher in the psych unit of the Cuyahoga County Jail in downtown Cleveland, where she now sits for an indefinite period of time.
In a hastily called hearing yesterday, Judge McGinty made a highly unusual and outrageous decision to force Carol to undergo a state psychological exam as part of her pre-sentencing investigation. From the very start of Carol's case, the judge has openly said that she must have mental problems for resisting an unlawful and brutal encounter with Cleveland Heights police.
He went even further in yesterday's hearing, saying that her opposition to the Bush regime makes her "delusional."
The small courtroom on the 21st floor of the Justice Center was ringed with 5 armed court bailiffs. McGinty started off the hearing by making Carol stand up and had one of her attorneys read her t-shirt, which said:
"Wanted for Illegally Crossing Borders: The Bush Regime
"If you are going to insist that crossing borders illegally is a crime which cannot be tolerated, how about George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice (and yes, Colin Powell) and the rest of that gang, with their highly illegal, and violent, 'crossing of the border'-into Iraq, among other places?!"
McGinty then said this was proof of her delusion! He also kept saying Carol "wants" to go to jail, and that she has a "martyr complex."
When Carol tried to explain why she wouldn't take this test, the judge's only response was, "I do not negotiate with felons."
Does Carol really want to go to jail? No! But she is not willing to comply with a vindictive court ordered test to "prove" her sanity. And more than that, she is taking a stand for everyone who is angry and fearful of a government that, under the rubric of "national security and the war on terror," willfully and unapologetically tramples on the most basic rights of privacy. Think about this in light of the NSA spying scandal, and now Bush wants to install the head of the notorious NSA to be CIA chief! As Carol said before she went to jail, "I'd be crazy to go along with this shit! That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn--or be forced--to accept."
Just look at this whole case: a woman posts a "Bush Step Down" poster on a telephone pole, being brutalized by the police in the process, and now not only faces 3 years in prison but also a mandatory psych exam. As Terry Gilbert, one of Carol's attorneys said, "This is Gulag stuff--saying that people who are dissidents are crazy." He further added that in his 33 years of practicing law, he has never seen anything like this.
Is this the kind of country you want to live in?
On the phone this morning, Carol Fisher stated that, in addition to sending her to the psych unit, McGinty has also put her on "suicide watch"! They have taken away her eyeglasses. And if she refuses the psych exam, she will be forcibly sent to North Coast Mental Institute for a 20 day evaluation.
Legal challenges are continuing, including seeking a writ of habeas corpus.
When the transcripts are available to the public, they will show how outrageous this hearing was.
(Click here for previous news and more information about Carol Fishers arrest and trial)
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Donate to Carol's legal defense. It costs a lot of money to get transcripts, file appeals, etc. Make checks payable to “Carol Fisher Defense Fund” and mail to “NION/WCW PO Box 609034 Cleveland, OH 44109.
Call Judge Timothy McGinty and express your outrage: 216-443-8758
Join us at a "Speak Out!" for Carol Fisher - Saturday, May 13 at 7pm at the corner ofCoventry and Euclid Heights Blvd in Cleveland Heights.
Get your legal organization to be part of Carol's defense: make statements, file friend of the court briefs, etc.
Have your church group, school group, organization or club join this battle by sending statements of support, donating funds, etc.
Request radio stations play any of the following songs, dedicate it to Carol Fisher and explain what is going on with her case:
Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down”
Pearl Jam’s “World Wide Suicide”
Pink’s “Dear Mr President”
Neil Young’s “Let’s Impeach the President”
Write letters to the editor of:
The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Go to website:www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/lettertoeditor
The Cleveland Free Times. Email: editor@freetimes.com
The Sun Press. Email: sun@sunnews.com
Send this article to your list serves and post to blogs.
Join the World Can't Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime!Contact: World Cant Wait, Cleveland 216-633-6200PO Box 609034 Cleveland OH 44109cleveland@worldcantwait.orgwww.worldcantwait.org
Wrap...
Judge Orders World Can't Wait Activist to Jail Psych Unit
CAROL FISHER REMAINS STRONG AND UNAPOLOGETIC
May 9:
Judge Timothy McGinty forcibly incarcerated Carol Fisher in the psych unit of the Cuyahoga County Jail in downtown Cleveland, where she now sits for an indefinite period of time.
In a hastily called hearing yesterday, Judge McGinty made a highly unusual and outrageous decision to force Carol to undergo a state psychological exam as part of her pre-sentencing investigation. From the very start of Carol's case, the judge has openly said that she must have mental problems for resisting an unlawful and brutal encounter with Cleveland Heights police.
He went even further in yesterday's hearing, saying that her opposition to the Bush regime makes her "delusional."
The small courtroom on the 21st floor of the Justice Center was ringed with 5 armed court bailiffs. McGinty started off the hearing by making Carol stand up and had one of her attorneys read her t-shirt, which said:
"Wanted for Illegally Crossing Borders: The Bush Regime
"If you are going to insist that crossing borders illegally is a crime which cannot be tolerated, how about George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice (and yes, Colin Powell) and the rest of that gang, with their highly illegal, and violent, 'crossing of the border'-into Iraq, among other places?!"
McGinty then said this was proof of her delusion! He also kept saying Carol "wants" to go to jail, and that she has a "martyr complex."
When Carol tried to explain why she wouldn't take this test, the judge's only response was, "I do not negotiate with felons."
Does Carol really want to go to jail? No! But she is not willing to comply with a vindictive court ordered test to "prove" her sanity. And more than that, she is taking a stand for everyone who is angry and fearful of a government that, under the rubric of "national security and the war on terror," willfully and unapologetically tramples on the most basic rights of privacy. Think about this in light of the NSA spying scandal, and now Bush wants to install the head of the notorious NSA to be CIA chief! As Carol said before she went to jail, "I'd be crazy to go along with this shit! That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn--or be forced--to accept."
Just look at this whole case: a woman posts a "Bush Step Down" poster on a telephone pole, being brutalized by the police in the process, and now not only faces 3 years in prison but also a mandatory psych exam. As Terry Gilbert, one of Carol's attorneys said, "This is Gulag stuff--saying that people who are dissidents are crazy." He further added that in his 33 years of practicing law, he has never seen anything like this.
Is this the kind of country you want to live in?
On the phone this morning, Carol Fisher stated that, in addition to sending her to the psych unit, McGinty has also put her on "suicide watch"! They have taken away her eyeglasses. And if she refuses the psych exam, she will be forcibly sent to North Coast Mental Institute for a 20 day evaluation.
Legal challenges are continuing, including seeking a writ of habeas corpus.
When the transcripts are available to the public, they will show how outrageous this hearing was.
(Click here for previous news and more information about Carol Fishers arrest and trial)
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Donate to Carol's legal defense. It costs a lot of money to get transcripts, file appeals, etc. Make checks payable to “Carol Fisher Defense Fund” and mail to “NION/WCW PO Box 609034 Cleveland, OH 44109.
Call Judge Timothy McGinty and express your outrage: 216-443-8758
Join us at a "Speak Out!" for Carol Fisher - Saturday, May 13 at 7pm at the corner ofCoventry and Euclid Heights Blvd in Cleveland Heights.
Get your legal organization to be part of Carol's defense: make statements, file friend of the court briefs, etc.
Have your church group, school group, organization or club join this battle by sending statements of support, donating funds, etc.
Request radio stations play any of the following songs, dedicate it to Carol Fisher and explain what is going on with her case:
Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down”
Pearl Jam’s “World Wide Suicide”
Pink’s “Dear Mr President”
Neil Young’s “Let’s Impeach the President”
Write letters to the editor of:
The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Go to website:www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/lettertoeditor
The Cleveland Free Times. Email: editor@freetimes.com
The Sun Press. Email: sun@sunnews.com
Send this article to your list serves and post to blogs.
Join the World Can't Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime!Contact: World Cant Wait, Cleveland 216-633-6200PO Box 609034 Cleveland OH 44109cleveland@worldcantwait.orgwww.worldcantwait.org
Wrap...
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
All I can say is, "HOT DAMN! AT LAST!" The latest Lee Child thiller...
From NY Times:
Books of The Times 'The Hard Way'
Lee Child's Intrepid Hero Coolly Navigates a World of Hurt
By JANET MASLIN
Published: May 11, 2006
Manhattan. SoHo. Daybreak. A lone figure moves watchfully down West Broadway until he sees a partygoer passed out in a doorway. In the prone man's pocket he spots a rectangular shape, 2 5/8 inches by 3¼ inches, half an inch thick. He recognizes this as folding money: mostly $20 bills from an A.T.M. withdrawal, plus smaller-denomination change from a taxi fare. He's guessing it adds up to $173.
(cont below)
Sigrid Estrada
Lee Child
THE HARD WAY
By Lee Child.
371 pages. Delacorte Press. $25.00.
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews
Moving carefully, working one hand's middle and index fingers like a pincer, he reaches carefully into the pocket to extract the cash. And then — ouch! — he is very sorry. Because the sleeping giant in the doorway is Jack Reacher. And he hasn't been sleeping. And for Jack Reacher there is only one word for this would-be thief: amateur. Reacher, on the other hand, is a professional.
"I call it the dawn patrol," explains the newly injured pickpocket. "There's sometimes two or three guys like you."
"Not exactly like me," Reacher answers. This is an understatement. Nine red-hot books ago, Lee Child concocted the rough, tough Superman of the crime-busting genre, as smart and charismatic as he is unbeatable. And then Mr. Child broke the mold.
Early next week (why delay good news?), Reacher returns in this series' 10th installment, "The Hard Way." It's one more labyrinthine story that takes off like a shot: as usual, Mr. Child has you at hello.
Crime writers will do anything to grab attention in a book's opening paragraph, but Mr. Child achieves this without breaking a sweat. There's Reacher at a Greenwich Village café. He ordered espresso: "foam cup, no china," because he's a man who might leave in a hurry. "And before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change forever." Neat little flourish: "Not that the waiter was slow."
Once again Mr. Child combines brute force and brilliant deduction in the 6-foot-5 person of this footloose, mysterious former military police officer. Reacher's Army training serves him well when he is recruited to find the kidnapped wife of a shady figure named Edward Lane. Lane runs a highly profitable band of mercenaries who have meddled in other countries' affairs all around the globe. As one of them tells Reacher:
" 'We go anywhere Uncle Sam needs us.'
" 'What about where Uncle Sam doesn't need you?'
"Nobody spoke."
Mr. Child is so clever that he makes Reacher too clever. Reacher calmly reels off his suppositions about the kidnapping, and they all turn out to be wrong. That's part of what keeps this game interesting, as are the author's superb plotting skills and fondness for unusual story angles. Not long into "The Hard Way" it is revealed that the abduction of Kate Lane and her daughter, Jade, is the second of its kind. Why has Edward Lane had two beautiful wives kidnapped ?
When "The Hard Way" begins unraveling Lane's history, it winds up in grisly places. The mercenaries' activities in Africa have had lingering consequences, and the book describes them unflinchingly. For instance there is an imprisoned soldier of fortune who spends a year looking at his hand, for reasons that are ghastly in the extreme.
Lane's role in the book becomes an occasion for what is heavy sadism, even for Reacher. This mean streak goes (one hopes) beyond most readers' capacity for vicarious enjoyment.
But the unalloyed satisfaction in Mr. Child's books comes from his main character's thought processes. And Reacher's command of minuscule details remains sublime. There are no casual observations here, not even the superfastidious ones that seem more crazy than canny. Reacher is the kind of guy who has no idea what a Staples store sells (he doesn't have a change of clothing, let alone an office) but scopes out a store with relentless curiosity. The biggest thing Staples sells is a desk, he notices. Which is the smallest? Thumbtack or paper clip? That depends on whether the measure is size or weight.
Once again there is disarmingly dry humor in the contrast between Reacher's brawn and his delicate sensibilities. (As a child he was horrified by the punctuation of traffic signs reading, "DONT WALK.") And once again a book of Mr. Child's pivots on logistical details that amount to trigonometry, culminating in a prolonged siege enacted with stunning, compass-point precision.
Reading Mr. Child is not only a mentally transporting experience but also, at times, a physical one. Don't be surprised to find your hand replicating the finger movements that tip off Reacher to a keypad matrix's four-digit combination.
"The Hard Way" starts in New York and winds up in the English countryside. ("This is the back of beyond. Farm country. Somebody's always shooting something. Foxes, road signs, burglars, each other.") Beyond that, the specifics should remain surprising, but this much can be said: Reacher spends much of this book roaming around Manhattan. He's been there before. But in "The Hard Way" he does something that, by his own admission, he hasn't before: shop at Macy's, as part of a plot that also involves Bloomingdale's.
These are deflating moves. Something about this guy's maverick nature keeps him implausible as even a semidomesticated creature.
Then again, homebodies don't lie in downtown doorways. Neither do the detectives in other books in this genre. But Reacher knows there's no better way to hide in plain sight than to feign unconsciousness. He knows how to race across a plowed field with a stride calibrated to hit the top of every furrow. And he knows how to sprint around a building in 30 seconds, in this book's pièce de résistance, even though that isn't his top speed.
"An Olympic athlete would have done it in 10," he tells the reader. "But an Olympic athlete didn't need to be composed enough at the finish line to fire a submachine gun."
Wrap....
Books of The Times 'The Hard Way'
Lee Child's Intrepid Hero Coolly Navigates a World of Hurt
By JANET MASLIN
Published: May 11, 2006
Manhattan. SoHo. Daybreak. A lone figure moves watchfully down West Broadway until he sees a partygoer passed out in a doorway. In the prone man's pocket he spots a rectangular shape, 2 5/8 inches by 3¼ inches, half an inch thick. He recognizes this as folding money: mostly $20 bills from an A.T.M. withdrawal, plus smaller-denomination change from a taxi fare. He's guessing it adds up to $173.
(cont below)
Sigrid Estrada
Lee Child
THE HARD WAY
By Lee Child.
371 pages. Delacorte Press. $25.00.
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews
Moving carefully, working one hand's middle and index fingers like a pincer, he reaches carefully into the pocket to extract the cash. And then — ouch! — he is very sorry. Because the sleeping giant in the doorway is Jack Reacher. And he hasn't been sleeping. And for Jack Reacher there is only one word for this would-be thief: amateur. Reacher, on the other hand, is a professional.
"I call it the dawn patrol," explains the newly injured pickpocket. "There's sometimes two or three guys like you."
"Not exactly like me," Reacher answers. This is an understatement. Nine red-hot books ago, Lee Child concocted the rough, tough Superman of the crime-busting genre, as smart and charismatic as he is unbeatable. And then Mr. Child broke the mold.
Early next week (why delay good news?), Reacher returns in this series' 10th installment, "The Hard Way." It's one more labyrinthine story that takes off like a shot: as usual, Mr. Child has you at hello.
Crime writers will do anything to grab attention in a book's opening paragraph, but Mr. Child achieves this without breaking a sweat. There's Reacher at a Greenwich Village café. He ordered espresso: "foam cup, no china," because he's a man who might leave in a hurry. "And before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change forever." Neat little flourish: "Not that the waiter was slow."
Once again Mr. Child combines brute force and brilliant deduction in the 6-foot-5 person of this footloose, mysterious former military police officer. Reacher's Army training serves him well when he is recruited to find the kidnapped wife of a shady figure named Edward Lane. Lane runs a highly profitable band of mercenaries who have meddled in other countries' affairs all around the globe. As one of them tells Reacher:
" 'We go anywhere Uncle Sam needs us.'
" 'What about where Uncle Sam doesn't need you?'
"Nobody spoke."
Mr. Child is so clever that he makes Reacher too clever. Reacher calmly reels off his suppositions about the kidnapping, and they all turn out to be wrong. That's part of what keeps this game interesting, as are the author's superb plotting skills and fondness for unusual story angles. Not long into "The Hard Way" it is revealed that the abduction of Kate Lane and her daughter, Jade, is the second of its kind. Why has Edward Lane had two beautiful wives kidnapped ?
When "The Hard Way" begins unraveling Lane's history, it winds up in grisly places. The mercenaries' activities in Africa have had lingering consequences, and the book describes them unflinchingly. For instance there is an imprisoned soldier of fortune who spends a year looking at his hand, for reasons that are ghastly in the extreme.
Lane's role in the book becomes an occasion for what is heavy sadism, even for Reacher. This mean streak goes (one hopes) beyond most readers' capacity for vicarious enjoyment.
But the unalloyed satisfaction in Mr. Child's books comes from his main character's thought processes. And Reacher's command of minuscule details remains sublime. There are no casual observations here, not even the superfastidious ones that seem more crazy than canny. Reacher is the kind of guy who has no idea what a Staples store sells (he doesn't have a change of clothing, let alone an office) but scopes out a store with relentless curiosity. The biggest thing Staples sells is a desk, he notices. Which is the smallest? Thumbtack or paper clip? That depends on whether the measure is size or weight.
Once again there is disarmingly dry humor in the contrast between Reacher's brawn and his delicate sensibilities. (As a child he was horrified by the punctuation of traffic signs reading, "DONT WALK.") And once again a book of Mr. Child's pivots on logistical details that amount to trigonometry, culminating in a prolonged siege enacted with stunning, compass-point precision.
Reading Mr. Child is not only a mentally transporting experience but also, at times, a physical one. Don't be surprised to find your hand replicating the finger movements that tip off Reacher to a keypad matrix's four-digit combination.
"The Hard Way" starts in New York and winds up in the English countryside. ("This is the back of beyond. Farm country. Somebody's always shooting something. Foxes, road signs, burglars, each other.") Beyond that, the specifics should remain surprising, but this much can be said: Reacher spends much of this book roaming around Manhattan. He's been there before. But in "The Hard Way" he does something that, by his own admission, he hasn't before: shop at Macy's, as part of a plot that also involves Bloomingdale's.
These are deflating moves. Something about this guy's maverick nature keeps him implausible as even a semidomesticated creature.
Then again, homebodies don't lie in downtown doorways. Neither do the detectives in other books in this genre. But Reacher knows there's no better way to hide in plain sight than to feign unconsciousness. He knows how to race across a plowed field with a stride calibrated to hit the top of every furrow. And he knows how to sprint around a building in 30 seconds, in this book's pièce de résistance, even though that isn't his top speed.
"An Olympic athlete would have done it in 10," he tells the reader. "But an Olympic athlete didn't need to be composed enough at the finish line to fire a submachine gun."
Wrap....
Hot books on the way to publication...really hot!
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
GENERAL/OTHER:
Stewart O'Nan's LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER, to Josh Kendall at Viking, by David Gernert at The Gernert Company (NA).
DEBUT:
Shouts and Murmurs" contributor and former writer for The Simpsons Larry Doyle's I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER, a humorous and endearing debut novel which follows the coming-of-age (all in one night) of a high school valedictorian who uses his 15 minutes of fame to confess his eternal love for the most popular girl in school, to Lee Boudreaux at Ecco, by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company. michael.mckenzie@harpercollins.com
Peter Behrens's THE LAW OF DREAMS, set during the Irish Potato Famine of 1847 and inspired by the author's own family history, about an Homeric journey, to Roland Pease at Steerforth, in a nice deal, by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company (NA).chip@steerforth.com
MYSTERY/CRIME:
The Dead Room author Robert Ellis's CITY OF FIRE, the first in a new series featuring an L.A. detective and blending the mystery/thriller elements of Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker with the suspense of Silence of the Lambs, to Ben Sevier at Minotaur, in a three-books deal, by Scott Miller at Trident Media Group (world).
SCI-FI/FANTASY:
NYT and USA Today bestselling Land of Elyon trilogy author Patrick Carman's INTO THE MIST, to David Levithan at Scholastic, by Peter Rubie at Peter Rubie Literary Agency.
THRILLER:
PRAYERS FOR THE ASSASSIN author Robert Ferrigno's HYMN FOR THE ASSASSIN and RESURRECTION FOR THE ASSASSIN, books 2 and 3 in what will be the trilogy, starting three years after the end of PRAYERS, in which the Islamic Republic of America continues to fracture and deteriorate, and in the third book, the quest for reunification of North and South continues, the failure of which will spell doom to the entire globe, to Colin Harrison at Scribner, by Mary Evans at Mary Evans (NA). mary@maryevansinc.com
BIOGRAPHY:
29-year-old Cambridge instructor Anna Whitelock's MARY, THE FIRST QUEEN OF ENGLAND, a biography of Henry VIII's eldest child popularly known as Bloody Mary, viewing her ambition and ruthless treatment of her enemies as necessary to insure her rightful inheritance of the throne, to Susanna Porter at Random House, by Emma Parry at Fletcher & Parry (NA).
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Valerie Plame Wilson's memoir FAIR GAME, including discussion of "her actual role in the American intelligence community, as well as the prominence of her role in the lead-up to the war," to Rick Horgan at Crown, in a major deal, for reportedly for more than $2.5 million, by Elsye Cheney at Elyse Cheney Agency.
Lincoln on Leadership author Donald T. Phillips's CLINTON CHARISMA: How Bill Clinton Led America, re-evaluating the 42nd U.S. president, and showing how would-be leaders can apply his teachings to their lives, to Anthony Wahl at Palgrave, by Marc Gerald at The Agency Group (world english).marcgerald@theagencygroup.com
ILLUSTRATED/ART:
Jordan Wright's CAMPAIGNING FOR PRESIDENT, an illustrated book telling the story of the American Presidential elections through the author's collection of presidential election memorabilia, to Elisabeth Dyssegaard at Smithsonian Books, for publication in winter 2008, by Andrew Wylie of The Wylie Agency (NA).crissmand@si.edu
MEMOIR:
Dennis Hopper's OUT TAKES, about his career, his life as a Hollywood provocateur and about all the amazing people he has encountered -- and the women he's loved along the way, to Judy Clain at Little, Brown, for publication in early 2008, by James Fitzgerald of the James Fitzgerald Agency.heather.rizzo@hbgusa.com
Bill German's coming-of-age memoir documenting the journey he made beginning as a young man in the Rolling Stones' inner circle, where he created and maintained the official Stones fanzine, Beggar's Banquet, to Claire Tisne for Villard, by Jim Fitzgerald at the James Fitzgerald Agency (world, excl. UK).Rights: ctisne@randomhouse.com UK rights: arabella@abnerstein.co.uk
GENERAL/OTHER:
O.C. Weekly reporter and columnist Gustavo Arellano's ASK A MEXICAN!: Everything You Wanted to Know About Mexicans But Were Afraid to Ask, a guide to all things Mexican and Mexican-American, weaving together cultural commentary, history, and the author's own humorous take on the relationship between those who make up two-thirds of America's Latino population and the rest of the country, to Brant Rumble at Scribner, in a two-book deal, at auction, by David Kuhn at Kuhn Projects (NA).billy@kuhnprojects.com
FILM:
Mike Iaconelli's FISHING ON THE EDGE, on the author's rise to the top of the sport of competitive bass fishing, to Fox Searchlight, by Marc Gerald at The Agency Group. marcgerald@theagencygroup.com
Wrap....
GENERAL/OTHER:
Stewart O'Nan's LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER, to Josh Kendall at Viking, by David Gernert at The Gernert Company (NA).
DEBUT:
Shouts and Murmurs" contributor and former writer for The Simpsons Larry Doyle's I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER, a humorous and endearing debut novel which follows the coming-of-age (all in one night) of a high school valedictorian who uses his 15 minutes of fame to confess his eternal love for the most popular girl in school, to Lee Boudreaux at Ecco, by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company. michael.mckenzie@harpercollins.com
Peter Behrens's THE LAW OF DREAMS, set during the Irish Potato Famine of 1847 and inspired by the author's own family history, about an Homeric journey, to Roland Pease at Steerforth, in a nice deal, by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company (NA).chip@steerforth.com
MYSTERY/CRIME:
The Dead Room author Robert Ellis's CITY OF FIRE, the first in a new series featuring an L.A. detective and blending the mystery/thriller elements of Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker with the suspense of Silence of the Lambs, to Ben Sevier at Minotaur, in a three-books deal, by Scott Miller at Trident Media Group (world).
SCI-FI/FANTASY:
NYT and USA Today bestselling Land of Elyon trilogy author Patrick Carman's INTO THE MIST, to David Levithan at Scholastic, by Peter Rubie at Peter Rubie Literary Agency.
THRILLER:
PRAYERS FOR THE ASSASSIN author Robert Ferrigno's HYMN FOR THE ASSASSIN and RESURRECTION FOR THE ASSASSIN, books 2 and 3 in what will be the trilogy, starting three years after the end of PRAYERS, in which the Islamic Republic of America continues to fracture and deteriorate, and in the third book, the quest for reunification of North and South continues, the failure of which will spell doom to the entire globe, to Colin Harrison at Scribner, by Mary Evans at Mary Evans (NA). mary@maryevansinc.com
BIOGRAPHY:
29-year-old Cambridge instructor Anna Whitelock's MARY, THE FIRST QUEEN OF ENGLAND, a biography of Henry VIII's eldest child popularly known as Bloody Mary, viewing her ambition and ruthless treatment of her enemies as necessary to insure her rightful inheritance of the throne, to Susanna Porter at Random House, by Emma Parry at Fletcher & Parry (NA).
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Valerie Plame Wilson's memoir FAIR GAME, including discussion of "her actual role in the American intelligence community, as well as the prominence of her role in the lead-up to the war," to Rick Horgan at Crown, in a major deal, for reportedly for more than $2.5 million, by Elsye Cheney at Elyse Cheney Agency.
Lincoln on Leadership author Donald T. Phillips's CLINTON CHARISMA: How Bill Clinton Led America, re-evaluating the 42nd U.S. president, and showing how would-be leaders can apply his teachings to their lives, to Anthony Wahl at Palgrave, by Marc Gerald at The Agency Group (world english).marcgerald@theagencygroup.com
ILLUSTRATED/ART:
Jordan Wright's CAMPAIGNING FOR PRESIDENT, an illustrated book telling the story of the American Presidential elections through the author's collection of presidential election memorabilia, to Elisabeth Dyssegaard at Smithsonian Books, for publication in winter 2008, by Andrew Wylie of The Wylie Agency (NA).crissmand@si.edu
MEMOIR:
Dennis Hopper's OUT TAKES, about his career, his life as a Hollywood provocateur and about all the amazing people he has encountered -- and the women he's loved along the way, to Judy Clain at Little, Brown, for publication in early 2008, by James Fitzgerald of the James Fitzgerald Agency.heather.rizzo@hbgusa.com
Bill German's coming-of-age memoir documenting the journey he made beginning as a young man in the Rolling Stones' inner circle, where he created and maintained the official Stones fanzine, Beggar's Banquet, to Claire Tisne for Villard, by Jim Fitzgerald at the James Fitzgerald Agency (world, excl. UK).Rights: ctisne@randomhouse.com UK rights: arabella@abnerstein.co.uk
GENERAL/OTHER:
O.C. Weekly reporter and columnist Gustavo Arellano's ASK A MEXICAN!: Everything You Wanted to Know About Mexicans But Were Afraid to Ask, a guide to all things Mexican and Mexican-American, weaving together cultural commentary, history, and the author's own humorous take on the relationship between those who make up two-thirds of America's Latino population and the rest of the country, to Brant Rumble at Scribner, in a two-book deal, at auction, by David Kuhn at Kuhn Projects (NA).billy@kuhnprojects.com
FILM:
Mike Iaconelli's FISHING ON THE EDGE, on the author's rise to the top of the sport of competitive bass fishing, to Fox Searchlight, by Marc Gerald at The Agency Group. marcgerald@theagencygroup.com
Wrap....
Intelligence ... one tough job....
From Strategic Forecasting Inc:
The Intelligence Problem
By George Friedman
Porter Goss has been fired as director of the CIA and is to be replaced by Gen. Michael Hayden -- who is now deputy to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and formerly was director of the National Security Agency (NSA). Viewed from beyond the Beltway -- and we are far outside the Beltway -- it appears that the Bush administration is reshuffling the usual intelligence insiders, and to a great extent, that is exactly what is happening.
But there is more: White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, having decided such matters as who the new press secretary should be, has turned to what is a very real problem for President George W. Bush: a vicious battle between the White House and the CIA.
The fight is simply about who bears the blame for Iraq. The White House and the Defense Department have consistently blamed the CIA for faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and over the failure to predict and understand the insurgency in Iraq. The CIA has responded by leaking studies showing that its intelligence indeed was correct but was ignored by Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle.
There certainly were studies inside the CIA that were accurate on the subject -- but given the thousands of people working for the agency, someone had to be right. The question is not whether someone got it right, but what was transmitted to the White House in then-Director George Tenet's briefings. At this point, it really does not matter. There was a massive screw-up, with plenty of blame to go around. Still, it is probably not good for the White House and the CIA to be in a vicious fight while a war is still going on.
The firing of Goss, who was a political appointee brought in to bring the agency to heel, is clearly a concession to the CIA, where he and his aides were hated (that is not too strong a word.)
Hayden at least is an old hand in the intelligence community, albeit it at the NSA and not the CIA. Whether this is an attempt to placate the agency in order to dam up its leaks to the press, or whether Bush is bringing in the big guns to crush agency resistance, is unclear. This could be a move by Rumsfeld to take CIA turf. But in many ways, these questions are simply what we call "Washington gas" -- meaning something that is of infinite fascination within Washington, D.C., but of no interest elsewhere and of little lasting significance anywhere.
The issue is not who heads the CIA or what its bureaucratic structure might be. The issue is, as it has been for decades, what it is that the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community are supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it.
On the surface, the answer to that is clear: The job of the intelligence community, taken as a whole, is to warn the president of major threats or changes in the international system. At least that appears to be the mission, but the problem with that definition is that the intelligence community (or IC) has never been good at dealing with major surprises, threats and issues. Presidents have always accepted major failures on the part of the IC.
Consider. The IC failed to predict the North Korean invasion of South Korea. It failed to predict Chinese intervention there. It failed to predict the Israeli-British-French invasion of Suez in 1956. It failed to recognize that Castro was a communist until well after he took power. It failed to predict the Berlin Wall. It failed to predict or know that the Soviets had placed missiles in Cuba (a discovery that came with U-2 overflights by the Air Force). It failed to recognize the Sino-Soviet split until quite late. It failed to predict the tenacity of the North Vietnamese in the face of bombing, and their resilience in South Vietnam.
The IC was very late in recognizing the fall of the shah of Iran. It was taken by surprise by the disintegration of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It failed to predict the intentions of al Qaeda. And it failed in Iraq.
Historically, the American intelligence community has been superb when faced with clearly defined missions. It had the ability to penetrate foreign governments, to eavesdrop on highly secure conversations, to know the intentions of a particular foreign minister at a particular meeting. Given a clear mission, the IC performed admirably. Where it consistently failed was in the amorphous mission of telling the president what he did not know about something that was about to change everything. When the IC was told to do something specific, it did it well. When it was asked to tell the president what he needed to know -- a broad and vague brief -- it consistently fell down.
This is why the argument going on between the CIA and the White House/Defense Department misses the point. Bush well might have ignored or twisted intelligence on Iraq's WMD. But the failure over Iraq is not the exception, it is the rule. The CIA tends to get the big things wrong, while nailing the lesser things time and again. This is a persistent and not easily broken pattern, for which there are some fundamental causes.
The first is that the IC sees its task as keeping its customers -- the president and senior members of his administration -- happy. They have day-to-day requirements, such as being briefed for a meeting with a foreign leader. The bread-and-butter work of the IC is the briefing book, which tells a secretary of state what buttons to push at a ministerial meeting.
Ninety-nine percent of the taskings that come to the IC concern these things. And the IC could get 99 percent of the task right; they know that this minister is on the take, or that that minister is in a terrible fight with a rival, or that some leader is dying. They do that over and over again -- that is their focus. They are rarely rewarded for the risky business of forecasting, and if they fail to forecast the invasion of South Korea, they can still point to the myriad useful things at which they did succeed.
When members of the IC say that no one sees the vital work they do, they are right. And they are encouraged to do this work by their customers. If they miss the fall of the Soviet Union, it is the bread-and-butter work that keeps them going. If the nuts and bolts of intelligence compete with the vital need of a government to be ready for the unexpected, the nuts and bolts must win every time. The reason is simple: the unexpected rarely happens, but meetings of the G-8 happen every year. The system is built for the routine. It is hard to build a system for the unexpected.
A second problem is size. The American intelligence community is much too big. It has way too many resources. It is awash in information that is not converted into intelligence that is delivered to its customers. Huge organizations will lose information in the shuffle. The bigger they are, the more they lose. Little Stratfor struggles to make sure that intelligence flowing from the field is matched to the right analyst and that analysts working on the same problem talk to each other, and it is tough. Doing it with tens of thousands of sources and intelligence officers, thousands of analysts and hundreds of briefers is a failure waiting to happen. All of the databases dreamt of by all of the information technology people in the IC cannot make up for total overload.
It can be argued that there is no alternative. The United States has global interests and thus must have global and massive resources. But the fact is that global interests are not well-served by a system that is too large to function efficiently. Whatever the need is, the reality is that managing the vast apparatus of the IC is overwhelmingly difficult, to the point of failure.
Moreover, the management piece is so daunting that finding space to look for the unexpected -- and transmit that finding efficiently to the customer -- has been consistently impossible. The intelligence services of smaller countries sometimes do much better at the big things than massive intelligence services.
The KGB was an example of intelligence paralysis due, among other things, to size.
A third issue is the cult of sourcing. There is a belief that a man on the ground is the most valuable asset there is. But that depends on where he is on the ground and who he is. A man on the ground can see hundreds of feet in any direction, assuming that there are no buildings in the way. It always amuses us to hear that so-and-so spent three years in some country -- implying expertise. We always wonder whether an Iranian spending three years in Washington, D.C., would be regarded as an expert around whom analysis could be built. Moreover, these three-year wonders frequently start doing freelance analysis, overriding analysts who have been studying a country for decades -- after all, they are "on the ground." But a blond American on the ground in the Philippines is fairly obvious, especially when he starts buying drinks for everyone, and the value of his "intelligence" is therefore suspect.
Sourcing is vital; so are the questions of who, where and for how long.The most significant weakness of the cult of sourcing is that the most important events -- like the Chinese intervention in Korea -- might be unreported, or -- like the fall of the shah -- might not be known to anyone. These things happened, but there was an intelligence collection failure in the first case; the second failure stemmed not from a collection problem, but from a purely analytic one. In any case, the lack of a source does not mean an event is not happening; it just means there is no source. There is no question but that sources are the foundation of intelligence -- but the heart of intelligence is the ability to infer when there is no source.
Another problem is the IC's obsession with security, compartmentalization and counterintelligence. The Soviet Union's prime mission was to penetrate the U.S. IC. Huge inefficiencies were, therefore, appropriately incurred in order to prevent penetration. The compartmentalization of sensitive information increases security, but it pyramids inefficiency.
Al Qaeda is not engaged in penetrating the IC. It is dangerous in a different way than the Soviets were. Security and counterintelligence remain vital, but shifting the balance to take current realities into account also is vital. Intelligence work involves calculated risk. The current system not only keeps smart and interesting people out of jobs, but more important, it keeps them from access to the information they need to make the smart inferences that are so vital. That would seem to be too high a price to pay in the current threat environment.
Information on China can be compartmentalized; information on the Muslim world could be treated differently.
The IC wants consistent messaging. They want to produce one product that speaks with a single coherent voice. The problem is that the world is much messier than that. Giving a president the benefit of the official CIA position on a matter is useful, but not as useful as allowing him to see the disputes, discomfort and doubts stemming from the different schools of thought. Those disagreements are sometimes treated as embarrassing by the IC -- but honest, public self-criticism builds confidence.
Stratfor -- and we are not comparing our tiny outfit to the IC, with its massive responsibilities -- publishes an annual report card with our forecasts, specifying where we succeeded and failed. We may as well; our readers and clients know anyway.
This may not be what the president wants, of course, and Negroponte and Hayden will want to give him what he wants. But the head of an intelligence agency is like a doctor: He must give the patient what he needs and try to make it look like what the patient wants. In the end, it doesn’t matter what you do, as Porter Goss has just found out. Negroponte and Hayden will probably lose their jobs anyway -- through resigning or being sacked, or through Bush's second term ending. Even if they are lucky, their jobs won't last much more than two years. There is no percentage in hedging, when you think of it that way.
Perhaps the single greatest weakness of the IC is its can-do attitude. It cannot do everything that it is being asked to do -- and by trying, it cannot do the most important things that need to be done. It has had, as its mission, covering the world and predicting major events for the president. It has failed to do so on major issues since its founding, finding solace in substantial success on lesser issues.
But it is possible that the bandwidth of the IC, already sucked up by massive management burdens, is completely burned up by the lesser issues. It may be that the briefing book to the president for his next meeting with the president of Paraguay or Botswana will be thinner, or he might just have to wing it. The republic will survive that. The focus must be on the things that count.
Rethinking why there is an intelligence community and how it does its job is the prerequisite for Hayden and Negroponte to be successful. We do not believe for a minute that they will do so. They don't have enough time in office, they have too many meetings to attend, they have too many divergent views to reconcile into a single coherent report.
Above all, the CIA has to be prepared to battle the real enemy, which is the rest of the intelligence community -- from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the FBI. And, of course, the odd staffer at the White House.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
The Intelligence Problem
By George Friedman
Porter Goss has been fired as director of the CIA and is to be replaced by Gen. Michael Hayden -- who is now deputy to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and formerly was director of the National Security Agency (NSA). Viewed from beyond the Beltway -- and we are far outside the Beltway -- it appears that the Bush administration is reshuffling the usual intelligence insiders, and to a great extent, that is exactly what is happening.
But there is more: White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, having decided such matters as who the new press secretary should be, has turned to what is a very real problem for President George W. Bush: a vicious battle between the White House and the CIA.
The fight is simply about who bears the blame for Iraq. The White House and the Defense Department have consistently blamed the CIA for faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and over the failure to predict and understand the insurgency in Iraq. The CIA has responded by leaking studies showing that its intelligence indeed was correct but was ignored by Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle.
There certainly were studies inside the CIA that were accurate on the subject -- but given the thousands of people working for the agency, someone had to be right. The question is not whether someone got it right, but what was transmitted to the White House in then-Director George Tenet's briefings. At this point, it really does not matter. There was a massive screw-up, with plenty of blame to go around. Still, it is probably not good for the White House and the CIA to be in a vicious fight while a war is still going on.
The firing of Goss, who was a political appointee brought in to bring the agency to heel, is clearly a concession to the CIA, where he and his aides were hated (that is not too strong a word.)
Hayden at least is an old hand in the intelligence community, albeit it at the NSA and not the CIA. Whether this is an attempt to placate the agency in order to dam up its leaks to the press, or whether Bush is bringing in the big guns to crush agency resistance, is unclear. This could be a move by Rumsfeld to take CIA turf. But in many ways, these questions are simply what we call "Washington gas" -- meaning something that is of infinite fascination within Washington, D.C., but of no interest elsewhere and of little lasting significance anywhere.
The issue is not who heads the CIA or what its bureaucratic structure might be. The issue is, as it has been for decades, what it is that the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community are supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it.
On the surface, the answer to that is clear: The job of the intelligence community, taken as a whole, is to warn the president of major threats or changes in the international system. At least that appears to be the mission, but the problem with that definition is that the intelligence community (or IC) has never been good at dealing with major surprises, threats and issues. Presidents have always accepted major failures on the part of the IC.
Consider. The IC failed to predict the North Korean invasion of South Korea. It failed to predict Chinese intervention there. It failed to predict the Israeli-British-French invasion of Suez in 1956. It failed to recognize that Castro was a communist until well after he took power. It failed to predict the Berlin Wall. It failed to predict or know that the Soviets had placed missiles in Cuba (a discovery that came with U-2 overflights by the Air Force). It failed to recognize the Sino-Soviet split until quite late. It failed to predict the tenacity of the North Vietnamese in the face of bombing, and their resilience in South Vietnam.
The IC was very late in recognizing the fall of the shah of Iran. It was taken by surprise by the disintegration of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It failed to predict the intentions of al Qaeda. And it failed in Iraq.
Historically, the American intelligence community has been superb when faced with clearly defined missions. It had the ability to penetrate foreign governments, to eavesdrop on highly secure conversations, to know the intentions of a particular foreign minister at a particular meeting. Given a clear mission, the IC performed admirably. Where it consistently failed was in the amorphous mission of telling the president what he did not know about something that was about to change everything. When the IC was told to do something specific, it did it well. When it was asked to tell the president what he needed to know -- a broad and vague brief -- it consistently fell down.
This is why the argument going on between the CIA and the White House/Defense Department misses the point. Bush well might have ignored or twisted intelligence on Iraq's WMD. But the failure over Iraq is not the exception, it is the rule. The CIA tends to get the big things wrong, while nailing the lesser things time and again. This is a persistent and not easily broken pattern, for which there are some fundamental causes.
The first is that the IC sees its task as keeping its customers -- the president and senior members of his administration -- happy. They have day-to-day requirements, such as being briefed for a meeting with a foreign leader. The bread-and-butter work of the IC is the briefing book, which tells a secretary of state what buttons to push at a ministerial meeting.
Ninety-nine percent of the taskings that come to the IC concern these things. And the IC could get 99 percent of the task right; they know that this minister is on the take, or that that minister is in a terrible fight with a rival, or that some leader is dying. They do that over and over again -- that is their focus. They are rarely rewarded for the risky business of forecasting, and if they fail to forecast the invasion of South Korea, they can still point to the myriad useful things at which they did succeed.
When members of the IC say that no one sees the vital work they do, they are right. And they are encouraged to do this work by their customers. If they miss the fall of the Soviet Union, it is the bread-and-butter work that keeps them going. If the nuts and bolts of intelligence compete with the vital need of a government to be ready for the unexpected, the nuts and bolts must win every time. The reason is simple: the unexpected rarely happens, but meetings of the G-8 happen every year. The system is built for the routine. It is hard to build a system for the unexpected.
A second problem is size. The American intelligence community is much too big. It has way too many resources. It is awash in information that is not converted into intelligence that is delivered to its customers. Huge organizations will lose information in the shuffle. The bigger they are, the more they lose. Little Stratfor struggles to make sure that intelligence flowing from the field is matched to the right analyst and that analysts working on the same problem talk to each other, and it is tough. Doing it with tens of thousands of sources and intelligence officers, thousands of analysts and hundreds of briefers is a failure waiting to happen. All of the databases dreamt of by all of the information technology people in the IC cannot make up for total overload.
It can be argued that there is no alternative. The United States has global interests and thus must have global and massive resources. But the fact is that global interests are not well-served by a system that is too large to function efficiently. Whatever the need is, the reality is that managing the vast apparatus of the IC is overwhelmingly difficult, to the point of failure.
Moreover, the management piece is so daunting that finding space to look for the unexpected -- and transmit that finding efficiently to the customer -- has been consistently impossible. The intelligence services of smaller countries sometimes do much better at the big things than massive intelligence services.
The KGB was an example of intelligence paralysis due, among other things, to size.
A third issue is the cult of sourcing. There is a belief that a man on the ground is the most valuable asset there is. But that depends on where he is on the ground and who he is. A man on the ground can see hundreds of feet in any direction, assuming that there are no buildings in the way. It always amuses us to hear that so-and-so spent three years in some country -- implying expertise. We always wonder whether an Iranian spending three years in Washington, D.C., would be regarded as an expert around whom analysis could be built. Moreover, these three-year wonders frequently start doing freelance analysis, overriding analysts who have been studying a country for decades -- after all, they are "on the ground." But a blond American on the ground in the Philippines is fairly obvious, especially when he starts buying drinks for everyone, and the value of his "intelligence" is therefore suspect.
Sourcing is vital; so are the questions of who, where and for how long.The most significant weakness of the cult of sourcing is that the most important events -- like the Chinese intervention in Korea -- might be unreported, or -- like the fall of the shah -- might not be known to anyone. These things happened, but there was an intelligence collection failure in the first case; the second failure stemmed not from a collection problem, but from a purely analytic one. In any case, the lack of a source does not mean an event is not happening; it just means there is no source. There is no question but that sources are the foundation of intelligence -- but the heart of intelligence is the ability to infer when there is no source.
Another problem is the IC's obsession with security, compartmentalization and counterintelligence. The Soviet Union's prime mission was to penetrate the U.S. IC. Huge inefficiencies were, therefore, appropriately incurred in order to prevent penetration. The compartmentalization of sensitive information increases security, but it pyramids inefficiency.
Al Qaeda is not engaged in penetrating the IC. It is dangerous in a different way than the Soviets were. Security and counterintelligence remain vital, but shifting the balance to take current realities into account also is vital. Intelligence work involves calculated risk. The current system not only keeps smart and interesting people out of jobs, but more important, it keeps them from access to the information they need to make the smart inferences that are so vital. That would seem to be too high a price to pay in the current threat environment.
Information on China can be compartmentalized; information on the Muslim world could be treated differently.
The IC wants consistent messaging. They want to produce one product that speaks with a single coherent voice. The problem is that the world is much messier than that. Giving a president the benefit of the official CIA position on a matter is useful, but not as useful as allowing him to see the disputes, discomfort and doubts stemming from the different schools of thought. Those disagreements are sometimes treated as embarrassing by the IC -- but honest, public self-criticism builds confidence.
Stratfor -- and we are not comparing our tiny outfit to the IC, with its massive responsibilities -- publishes an annual report card with our forecasts, specifying where we succeeded and failed. We may as well; our readers and clients know anyway.
This may not be what the president wants, of course, and Negroponte and Hayden will want to give him what he wants. But the head of an intelligence agency is like a doctor: He must give the patient what he needs and try to make it look like what the patient wants. In the end, it doesn’t matter what you do, as Porter Goss has just found out. Negroponte and Hayden will probably lose their jobs anyway -- through resigning or being sacked, or through Bush's second term ending. Even if they are lucky, their jobs won't last much more than two years. There is no percentage in hedging, when you think of it that way.
Perhaps the single greatest weakness of the IC is its can-do attitude. It cannot do everything that it is being asked to do -- and by trying, it cannot do the most important things that need to be done. It has had, as its mission, covering the world and predicting major events for the president. It has failed to do so on major issues since its founding, finding solace in substantial success on lesser issues.
But it is possible that the bandwidth of the IC, already sucked up by massive management burdens, is completely burned up by the lesser issues. It may be that the briefing book to the president for his next meeting with the president of Paraguay or Botswana will be thinner, or he might just have to wing it. The republic will survive that. The focus must be on the things that count.
Rethinking why there is an intelligence community and how it does its job is the prerequisite for Hayden and Negroponte to be successful. We do not believe for a minute that they will do so. They don't have enough time in office, they have too many meetings to attend, they have too many divergent views to reconcile into a single coherent report.
Above all, the CIA has to be prepared to battle the real enemy, which is the rest of the intelligence community -- from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the FBI. And, of course, the odd staffer at the White House.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Perhaps...a Dead Drop....????
From WUSA9.com :
White House Responds To 9 News Exclusive
Play Video
Entire 30-page Presidential Plans (Sensitive Details Edited)
Written By Bruce Leshan 9 News
Created:5/9/2006 7:50:45 PM
Last Updated:5/10/2006 2:48:33 PM
The White House is now responding to the 9 News exclusive story first reported on wusa9.com. How much do you think Osama bin Laden would pay to know exactly when and where the President was traveling, and who was with him? Turns out, he wouldn't have had to pay a dime. All he had to do was go through the trash early Tuesday morning.
It appears to be a White House staff schedule for the President's trip to Florida Tuesday. And a sanitation worker was alarmed to find in the trash long hours before Mr. Bush left for his trip.
It's the kind of thing you would expect would be shredded or burned, not thrown in the garbage.
Randy Hopkins could not believe what he was seeing.There on the floor next to a big trash truck was a thick sheaf of papers with nearly every detail of the President's voyage.“I saw locations and names and places where the President was going to be. I knew it was important. And it shouldn't have been in a trash hole like this,” he said.
Hopkins works in sanitation. He's an ex-con, and he's worried about fallout from talking to us, so he's asked us not to say exactly where he's employed. But he also felt it was his civic duty to tell somebody about what he'd found.“We're going through a war, and if it would have fell into the wrong hands at the right time, it would have been something really messy for the President's sake,” he said.
The documents details the exact arrival and departure time for Air Force One, Marine One and the back up choppers, Nighthawk 2 and Three. It lists every passenger on board each aircraft, from the President to military attaché with nuclear football. It offers the order of vehicles in the President's motorcade.
We faxed a copy to the Secret Service, which as usual rule declined to say much, other than insisting that it was a White House staff document, not a Secret Service document. A spokesman traveling with President Bush says officials are still trying to learn more about the papers. The White House confirms the 9 News story and says many White House offices have "burn bags" that are used to discard sensitive documents like the schedule. However, it appears this one ended up in the general trash. While it is marked official the Secret Service says it is NOT classified.
But you don't have to be in Presidential security to figure out the big mistake here. What do you think the message is that comes out of this? Shred the important papers. Some of this information in the document goes out to the media before every Presidential trip. But we're always told not to publish it.
And there are a whole lot of details in it that we do NOT get.
Wrap...
White House Responds To 9 News Exclusive
Play Video
Entire 30-page Presidential Plans (Sensitive Details Edited)
Written By Bruce Leshan 9 News
Created:5/9/2006 7:50:45 PM
Last Updated:5/10/2006 2:48:33 PM
The White House is now responding to the 9 News exclusive story first reported on wusa9.com. How much do you think Osama bin Laden would pay to know exactly when and where the President was traveling, and who was with him? Turns out, he wouldn't have had to pay a dime. All he had to do was go through the trash early Tuesday morning.
It appears to be a White House staff schedule for the President's trip to Florida Tuesday. And a sanitation worker was alarmed to find in the trash long hours before Mr. Bush left for his trip.
It's the kind of thing you would expect would be shredded or burned, not thrown in the garbage.
Randy Hopkins could not believe what he was seeing.There on the floor next to a big trash truck was a thick sheaf of papers with nearly every detail of the President's voyage.“I saw locations and names and places where the President was going to be. I knew it was important. And it shouldn't have been in a trash hole like this,” he said.
Hopkins works in sanitation. He's an ex-con, and he's worried about fallout from talking to us, so he's asked us not to say exactly where he's employed. But he also felt it was his civic duty to tell somebody about what he'd found.“We're going through a war, and if it would have fell into the wrong hands at the right time, it would have been something really messy for the President's sake,” he said.
The documents details the exact arrival and departure time for Air Force One, Marine One and the back up choppers, Nighthawk 2 and Three. It lists every passenger on board each aircraft, from the President to military attaché with nuclear football. It offers the order of vehicles in the President's motorcade.
We faxed a copy to the Secret Service, which as usual rule declined to say much, other than insisting that it was a White House staff document, not a Secret Service document. A spokesman traveling with President Bush says officials are still trying to learn more about the papers. The White House confirms the 9 News story and says many White House offices have "burn bags" that are used to discard sensitive documents like the schedule. However, it appears this one ended up in the general trash. While it is marked official the Secret Service says it is NOT classified.
But you don't have to be in Presidential security to figure out the big mistake here. What do you think the message is that comes out of this? Shred the important papers. Some of this information in the document goes out to the media before every Presidential trip. But we're always told not to publish it.
And there are a whole lot of details in it that we do NOT get.
Wrap...
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
More news on Divine Strake...
NEXT TO AN EARTHQUAKE FAULT AND THEY DIDN'T COMPLETE THE REPORT?!!!
From AP via Drudge:
Mushroom Cloud Blast in Nevada Delayed
By KEN RITTER, Associated Press Writer
Tue May 9, 10:00 PM ET
A non-nuclear explosion expected to generate a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert will be postponed at least three weeks, while a federal court reviews plans for the blast, test officials said Tuesday.
"The planned Divine Strake experiment will not be conducted earlier than June 23," said Cheri Abdelnour, spokeswoman for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, Va. The blast was originally scheduled for June 2.
Darwin Morgan, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration in North Las Vegas, confirmed the date change but declined further comment.
In documents filed Monday with U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, federal Justice Department lawyers sought to push back from May 23 until early June a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the Winnemucca Indian Colony and several Nevada and Utah "downwinders" to block the blast. The judge did not issue an immediate ruling.
Nevada Division of Environmental Protection spokesman Dante Pistone also said Tuesday his agency was reviewing a revised environmental assessment that test planners filed Friday.
The lawsuit, filed April 20 by Reno-based lawyer Bob Hager, accuses the government of skipping public comment and failing to complete required environmental studies before picking a date and place for the explosion.
It claims the planned 700-ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb will kick up radioactive fallout left from nuclear weapons tests conducted from 1951 to 1992 at the Nevada Test Site and irreparably desecrate land that members of the Western Shoshone tribe have never acknowledged turning over to the U.S.
The blast, some 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is expected to generate a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud and a shock wave that officials say will probably be felt in Indian Springs, about 35 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency claims the explosion will help design a weapon to penetrate hardened and deeply buried targets. Critics have called it a surrogate for a low-yield nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.
Wrap...
From AP via Drudge:
Mushroom Cloud Blast in Nevada Delayed
By KEN RITTER, Associated Press Writer
Tue May 9, 10:00 PM ET
A non-nuclear explosion expected to generate a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert will be postponed at least three weeks, while a federal court reviews plans for the blast, test officials said Tuesday.
"The planned Divine Strake experiment will not be conducted earlier than June 23," said Cheri Abdelnour, spokeswoman for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, Va. The blast was originally scheduled for June 2.
Darwin Morgan, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration in North Las Vegas, confirmed the date change but declined further comment.
In documents filed Monday with U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, federal Justice Department lawyers sought to push back from May 23 until early June a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the Winnemucca Indian Colony and several Nevada and Utah "downwinders" to block the blast. The judge did not issue an immediate ruling.
Nevada Division of Environmental Protection spokesman Dante Pistone also said Tuesday his agency was reviewing a revised environmental assessment that test planners filed Friday.
The lawsuit, filed April 20 by Reno-based lawyer Bob Hager, accuses the government of skipping public comment and failing to complete required environmental studies before picking a date and place for the explosion.
It claims the planned 700-ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb will kick up radioactive fallout left from nuclear weapons tests conducted from 1951 to 1992 at the Nevada Test Site and irreparably desecrate land that members of the Western Shoshone tribe have never acknowledged turning over to the U.S.
The blast, some 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is expected to generate a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud and a shock wave that officials say will probably be felt in Indian Springs, about 35 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency claims the explosion will help design a weapon to penetrate hardened and deeply buried targets. Critics have called it a surrogate for a low-yield nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.
Wrap...
BushCo using immigrants to whip up his usual fear and hate...
From Tom Paine :
No Free Ride
Shikha Dalmia
May 08, 2006
Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation, a free-market think tank. This column was originally distributed by the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service and is reprinted here by permission.
Denying public services to people who pay their taxes is an affront to America's bedrock belief in fairness. But many "pull-up-the-drawbridge" politicians want to do just that when it comes to illegal immigrants.
The fact that illegal immigrants pay taxes at all will come as news to many Americans. A stunning two-thirds of illegal immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes. Yet nativists like Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., have popularized the notion that illegal aliens are a colossal drain on the nation's hospitals, schools and welfare programs—consuming services that they don't pay for.
In reality, the 1996 welfare reform bill disqualified illegal immigrants from nearly all means-tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare-funded hospitalization. The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education.
Nevertheless, Tancredo and his ilk pushed a bill through the House criminalizing all aid to illegal aliens—even private acts of charity by priests, nurses and social workers. Potentially, any soup kitchen that offers so much as a free lunch to an illegal could face up to five years in prison and seizure of assets.
The Senate bill that recently collapsed would have tempered these draconian measures against private aid. But no one—Democrat or Republican—seems to oppose the idea of withholding public services. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law that requires everyone who gets Medicaid—the government-funded health care program for the poor—to offer proof of U.S. citizenship so we can avoid "theft of these benefits by illegal aliens," as Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., puts it.
But immigrants aren't flocking to the United States to mooch off the government. According to a study by the Urban Institute, the 1996 welfare reform effort dramatically reduced the use of welfare by undocumented immigrant households, exactly as intended. And another vital thing happened in 1996: the Internal Revenue Service began issuing identification numbers to enable illegal immigrants who don't have Social Security numbers to file taxes.
One might have imagined that those fearing deportation or confronting the prospect of paying for their safety net through their own meager wages would take a pass on the IRS' scheme. Not so. Close to 8 million of the 12 million or so illegal aliens in the country today file personal income taxes using these numbers, contributing billions to federal coffers. No doubt they hope that this will one day help them acquire legal status—a plaintive expression of their desire to play by the rules and come out of the shadows.
What's more, aliens who are not self-employed have Social Security and Medicare taxes automatically withheld from their paychecks. Since undocumented workers have only fake numbers, they'll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers—that the Social Security administration stashes in the “earnings suspense file”—added up to 10 percent of the Social Security surplus. The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year.
Beyond federal taxes, all illegals automatically pay state sales taxes that contribute toward the upkeep of public facilities such as roads that they use, and property taxes through their rent that contribute toward the schooling of their children. The non-partisan National Research Council found that when the taxes paid by the children of low-skilled immigrant families—most of whom are illegal—are factored in, they contribute on average $80,000 more to federal coffers than they consume.
Yes, many illegal migrants impose a strain on border communities on whose doorstep they first arrive, broke and unemployed. To solve this problem equitably, these communities ought to receive the surplus taxes that federal government collects from immigrants. But the real reason border communities are strained is the lack of a guest worker program. Such a program would match willing workers with willing employers in advance so that they wouldn't be stuck for long periods where they disembark while searching for jobs.
The cost of undocumented aliens is an issue that immigrant bashers have created to whip up indignation against people they don't want here in the first place. With the Senate having just returned from yet another vacation and promising to revisit the stalled immigration bill, politicians ought to set the record straight: Illegals are not milking the government. If anything, it is the other way around.
Wrap....
No Free Ride
Shikha Dalmia
May 08, 2006
Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation, a free-market think tank. This column was originally distributed by the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service and is reprinted here by permission.
Denying public services to people who pay their taxes is an affront to America's bedrock belief in fairness. But many "pull-up-the-drawbridge" politicians want to do just that when it comes to illegal immigrants.
The fact that illegal immigrants pay taxes at all will come as news to many Americans. A stunning two-thirds of illegal immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes. Yet nativists like Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., have popularized the notion that illegal aliens are a colossal drain on the nation's hospitals, schools and welfare programs—consuming services that they don't pay for.
In reality, the 1996 welfare reform bill disqualified illegal immigrants from nearly all means-tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare-funded hospitalization. The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education.
Nevertheless, Tancredo and his ilk pushed a bill through the House criminalizing all aid to illegal aliens—even private acts of charity by priests, nurses and social workers. Potentially, any soup kitchen that offers so much as a free lunch to an illegal could face up to five years in prison and seizure of assets.
The Senate bill that recently collapsed would have tempered these draconian measures against private aid. But no one—Democrat or Republican—seems to oppose the idea of withholding public services. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law that requires everyone who gets Medicaid—the government-funded health care program for the poor—to offer proof of U.S. citizenship so we can avoid "theft of these benefits by illegal aliens," as Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., puts it.
But immigrants aren't flocking to the United States to mooch off the government. According to a study by the Urban Institute, the 1996 welfare reform effort dramatically reduced the use of welfare by undocumented immigrant households, exactly as intended. And another vital thing happened in 1996: the Internal Revenue Service began issuing identification numbers to enable illegal immigrants who don't have Social Security numbers to file taxes.
One might have imagined that those fearing deportation or confronting the prospect of paying for their safety net through their own meager wages would take a pass on the IRS' scheme. Not so. Close to 8 million of the 12 million or so illegal aliens in the country today file personal income taxes using these numbers, contributing billions to federal coffers. No doubt they hope that this will one day help them acquire legal status—a plaintive expression of their desire to play by the rules and come out of the shadows.
What's more, aliens who are not self-employed have Social Security and Medicare taxes automatically withheld from their paychecks. Since undocumented workers have only fake numbers, they'll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers—that the Social Security administration stashes in the “earnings suspense file”—added up to 10 percent of the Social Security surplus. The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year.
Beyond federal taxes, all illegals automatically pay state sales taxes that contribute toward the upkeep of public facilities such as roads that they use, and property taxes through their rent that contribute toward the schooling of their children. The non-partisan National Research Council found that when the taxes paid by the children of low-skilled immigrant families—most of whom are illegal—are factored in, they contribute on average $80,000 more to federal coffers than they consume.
Yes, many illegal migrants impose a strain on border communities on whose doorstep they first arrive, broke and unemployed. To solve this problem equitably, these communities ought to receive the surplus taxes that federal government collects from immigrants. But the real reason border communities are strained is the lack of a guest worker program. Such a program would match willing workers with willing employers in advance so that they wouldn't be stuck for long periods where they disembark while searching for jobs.
The cost of undocumented aliens is an issue that immigrant bashers have created to whip up indignation against people they don't want here in the first place. With the Senate having just returned from yet another vacation and promising to revisit the stalled immigration bill, politicians ought to set the record straight: Illegals are not milking the government. If anything, it is the other way around.
Wrap....
More than 1 Divine Strake planned...
NOTE: PROBLEM WITH THIS IS THAT THIS THING IS GOING OFF NOT ALL THAT FAR FROM A MAJOR EARTHQUAKE FAULT...
From Salt Lake Tribune via truthout.org :
There Is Nothing Divine About a Bomb Test
By Barb Guy
The Salt Lake Tribune
Monday 08 May 2006
The first I heard of Divine Strake was last month. I was standing a few feet from the Nevada Nuclear Test Site where the experiment will happen. Corbin Harney, a Western Shoshone elder, winkingly gave me permission to enter the U.S. government-run, restricted-access site as his guest, since, if you believe the treaty the government signed, his people still own the land. I declined his invitation - I didn't have time to go to jail. Still, he and I stood together, holding hands, our heads bowed in prayer, or in respect for the prayers of others, as a religious service was held in the nuclear dust. This Catholic mass welcomed the Shoshone spiritual leader, a Jewish man wearing a tallit and reading from the Torah, a Mennonite, an Episcopal priest, a Jesuit priest, a Zen priest, a Methodist minister, an elderly nun in microfleece pants and sneakers, a former Marine officer, a hibakusha (Japanese survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb), my husband Chris, and me. It was a fine American exercise in people of many faiths coming together, talking through difference, wishing for peace, and petitioning our government.
Divine Strake is the code name for a massive non-nuclear test planned for June 2. An explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil - ANFO - will send a mushroom cloud perhaps 10,000 feet into the Nevada sky. This gigantic experimental blast will use 280 times the amount of ANFO that demolished Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building in 1995, killing 168 people and damaging or destroying more than 300 buildings.
Some experts worry the test is a precursor to developing a nuclear bunker-buster bomb. I suppose reasonable people can disagree about whether to test, but Utahns, downwind from so many nuclear tests that were supposed to be safe, yet turned out to be deadly, can be forgiven if they're wary.
After Sept. 11 nearly five years ago, some Americans began to wonder why people in other countries hate us. They don't all hate us, of course, but suddenly many Americans were shocked at the image of ourselves we saw reflected in infuriated eyes. Historically, America has enjoyed international goodwill, never more so than on Sept. 12, 2001. But that has slipped through our fingers.
A strake, by the way, is a metal strap that holds boats or planes together. Odd. But what makes me go nuclear is the use of "Divine" in the name. I've really had it with the Bush administration positioning things like they were ordered up by God. And this isn't the first time. There are at least nine other divine tests on the books, including Divine Warhawk and, to really prove the point, Divine Hates.
Up close, each day, Americans are doing lovely, honorable things, but I wonder how we look as a group from far away. We ignore poor people and people stricken with unrelenting illness and pain, we turn our backs on genocide, and we spend our vast wealth and waste our sharp minds on war. Then we name the effort after deity. As if this experiment is ordained by God. The appalling arrogance, the blind blasphemy, the colossal chutzpah, in essentially naming this test after God!
Could this be why people hate us? We make bad choices. We choose to enrich the already wealthy, making everyone else poorer; we ignore the sick and starving; we invent wars but give them very real death tolls; we ruin the only land the world will ever get; we spend sinful amounts of money to create a better way to wage war; and, more and more, we literally do it in God's name.
The Bush administration acts like God prefers us to other countries. Like God isn't also God to Iceland and Bhutan and France and Rwanda. With President Bush in charge, we surely look like we think we're special. A little too special for some people.
We see people across the globe possessed by such a religious vehemence that their humanity is ruined. Crazed with bloodlust, they must destroy human life, American life, to prove God is on their side. Americans find this indefensible - that's not how reasonable people behave.
Then why is President Bush's team putting the language of the holy to our war efforts? To imply that God approves of our actions? I can only wonder what God might really think of America's "Divine" projects.
Who would Jesus bomb? First and foremost, no one. If we fail to grasp that lesson, if we keep confusing the unholy with the sacred, our jihad looks a lot like theirs.
Wrap...
From Salt Lake Tribune via truthout.org :
There Is Nothing Divine About a Bomb Test
By Barb Guy
The Salt Lake Tribune
Monday 08 May 2006
The first I heard of Divine Strake was last month. I was standing a few feet from the Nevada Nuclear Test Site where the experiment will happen. Corbin Harney, a Western Shoshone elder, winkingly gave me permission to enter the U.S. government-run, restricted-access site as his guest, since, if you believe the treaty the government signed, his people still own the land. I declined his invitation - I didn't have time to go to jail. Still, he and I stood together, holding hands, our heads bowed in prayer, or in respect for the prayers of others, as a religious service was held in the nuclear dust. This Catholic mass welcomed the Shoshone spiritual leader, a Jewish man wearing a tallit and reading from the Torah, a Mennonite, an Episcopal priest, a Jesuit priest, a Zen priest, a Methodist minister, an elderly nun in microfleece pants and sneakers, a former Marine officer, a hibakusha (Japanese survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb), my husband Chris, and me. It was a fine American exercise in people of many faiths coming together, talking through difference, wishing for peace, and petitioning our government.
Divine Strake is the code name for a massive non-nuclear test planned for June 2. An explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil - ANFO - will send a mushroom cloud perhaps 10,000 feet into the Nevada sky. This gigantic experimental blast will use 280 times the amount of ANFO that demolished Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building in 1995, killing 168 people and damaging or destroying more than 300 buildings.
Some experts worry the test is a precursor to developing a nuclear bunker-buster bomb. I suppose reasonable people can disagree about whether to test, but Utahns, downwind from so many nuclear tests that were supposed to be safe, yet turned out to be deadly, can be forgiven if they're wary.
After Sept. 11 nearly five years ago, some Americans began to wonder why people in other countries hate us. They don't all hate us, of course, but suddenly many Americans were shocked at the image of ourselves we saw reflected in infuriated eyes. Historically, America has enjoyed international goodwill, never more so than on Sept. 12, 2001. But that has slipped through our fingers.
A strake, by the way, is a metal strap that holds boats or planes together. Odd. But what makes me go nuclear is the use of "Divine" in the name. I've really had it with the Bush administration positioning things like they were ordered up by God. And this isn't the first time. There are at least nine other divine tests on the books, including Divine Warhawk and, to really prove the point, Divine Hates.
Up close, each day, Americans are doing lovely, honorable things, but I wonder how we look as a group from far away. We ignore poor people and people stricken with unrelenting illness and pain, we turn our backs on genocide, and we spend our vast wealth and waste our sharp minds on war. Then we name the effort after deity. As if this experiment is ordained by God. The appalling arrogance, the blind blasphemy, the colossal chutzpah, in essentially naming this test after God!
Could this be why people hate us? We make bad choices. We choose to enrich the already wealthy, making everyone else poorer; we ignore the sick and starving; we invent wars but give them very real death tolls; we ruin the only land the world will ever get; we spend sinful amounts of money to create a better way to wage war; and, more and more, we literally do it in God's name.
The Bush administration acts like God prefers us to other countries. Like God isn't also God to Iceland and Bhutan and France and Rwanda. With President Bush in charge, we surely look like we think we're special. A little too special for some people.
We see people across the globe possessed by such a religious vehemence that their humanity is ruined. Crazed with bloodlust, they must destroy human life, American life, to prove God is on their side. Americans find this indefensible - that's not how reasonable people behave.
Then why is President Bush's team putting the language of the holy to our war efforts? To imply that God approves of our actions? I can only wonder what God might really think of America's "Divine" projects.
Who would Jesus bomb? First and foremost, no one. If we fail to grasp that lesson, if we keep confusing the unholy with the sacred, our jihad looks a lot like theirs.
Wrap...
Coconuts for biofuel....
From Reuters via Environmental News via UN Wire :
Pacific Islands Look to Coconuts to Cut Oil Costs
May 09, 2006
By Michelle Nichols, Reuters
HONIARA, Solomon Islands — Palm trees conjure an enduring image of the South Pacific, providing shade on a white sandy beach as the water gently laps the shore and coconuts for cocktails garnished with small brightly colored paper umbrellas. But many impoverished Pacific island nations are also looking to coconuts to combat soaring world oil prices and cut severe balance of payment deficits by using coconut oil to make biofuel.
Electricity companies in Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa are testing blends of coconut oil and diesel to run power generators. A report by the 20-member South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) has found that if Pacific island countries were to replace 50 percent of diesel imports with coconut oil then the region's average import bill would be cut by 10 percent.
Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Federated States of Micronesia, Tonga, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Cook Islands and Palau spend more than $800 million a year on fuel imports, SOPAC says. In half of those countries fuel imports account for more than a quarter of total imports.
"Given the expected continuing rise in fuel prices and the increasing demand for energy supplies, without any indigenous fuel substitutes, Pacific island countries' balance of payments can be expected to further deteriorate," the SOPAC report says.
Australia, New Zealand and 18 Pacific island countries and territories are members of SOPAC.
The price of oil hit a record high of $75.35 a barrel in April.
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
Coconut oil -- extracted from copra, or coconut meat -- can be used to make biodiesel to directly substitute diesel, or be blended with diesel. SOPAC said engines only need to be adapted for diesel blends of more than 10 percent coconut oil. Biodiesel is made by enhancing the chemical composition of vegetable, seed or animal fats and oils. The process known as transesterification, removes glycerol from the oil or fat and replaces it with an alcohol.
In the troubled Solomon Islands, which relies on aid for 70 percent of its budget and has a population of 500,000, fuel for electricity and transport makes-up one-third of imports, Finance Minister Peter Boyers told Reuters in an interview. Boyers says the Solomons must explore "creative solutions" to ease external pressures on a struggling economy.
One such solution is a plan by the Australian Biodiesel Group to produce biodiesel using coconut oil that was last month approved by the Solomons Foreign Investment Review Board.
"We're hoping that industry can come in and consume the copra production ... they would produce all that into biofuel, which would be an import subsidization against fuel," Boyers says. "But most importantly it will stabilize the rural man's income by having a base line price per kilo (for copra). That's very important because that affects 80 percent of the population, which is involved in our rural informal sector."
GOVERNMENT REVENUE LOSS
Boyers says the government is currently finalizing incentive programs for the Australian Biodiesel Group investment, which he valued at about SB$250 million ($33 million). Australian Biodiesel Group Chief Executive Officer Len Humphreys told Reuters the company was considering similar projects in other places in the South Pacific, like Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. He says the company is still in the early stages of planning a biodiesel plant to satisfy local need in the Solomons, but that the project will be reassessed following rioting in Honiara last month sparked by the election of a new prime minister. "It's a great shame because there are a lot benefits the islands can gain from the growing biodiesel industry if properly managed," he says.
But SOPAC has warned that while using coconut oil can cut fuel import bills, Pacific island countries need to consider how much revenue can be lost from import taxes and customs duties. "(Our study) suggests that that some duty on locally grown biofuels will be required to offset this loss," SOPAC says. "Import substitution can have a positive impact on government revenues if both impact on trade balance, duties and taxes are taken into account."
($1-SB$7.60) Source: Reuters
Wrap...
Pacific Islands Look to Coconuts to Cut Oil Costs
May 09, 2006
By Michelle Nichols, Reuters
HONIARA, Solomon Islands — Palm trees conjure an enduring image of the South Pacific, providing shade on a white sandy beach as the water gently laps the shore and coconuts for cocktails garnished with small brightly colored paper umbrellas. But many impoverished Pacific island nations are also looking to coconuts to combat soaring world oil prices and cut severe balance of payment deficits by using coconut oil to make biofuel.
Electricity companies in Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa are testing blends of coconut oil and diesel to run power generators. A report by the 20-member South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) has found that if Pacific island countries were to replace 50 percent of diesel imports with coconut oil then the region's average import bill would be cut by 10 percent.
Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Federated States of Micronesia, Tonga, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Cook Islands and Palau spend more than $800 million a year on fuel imports, SOPAC says. In half of those countries fuel imports account for more than a quarter of total imports.
"Given the expected continuing rise in fuel prices and the increasing demand for energy supplies, without any indigenous fuel substitutes, Pacific island countries' balance of payments can be expected to further deteriorate," the SOPAC report says.
Australia, New Zealand and 18 Pacific island countries and territories are members of SOPAC.
The price of oil hit a record high of $75.35 a barrel in April.
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
Coconut oil -- extracted from copra, or coconut meat -- can be used to make biodiesel to directly substitute diesel, or be blended with diesel. SOPAC said engines only need to be adapted for diesel blends of more than 10 percent coconut oil. Biodiesel is made by enhancing the chemical composition of vegetable, seed or animal fats and oils. The process known as transesterification, removes glycerol from the oil or fat and replaces it with an alcohol.
In the troubled Solomon Islands, which relies on aid for 70 percent of its budget and has a population of 500,000, fuel for electricity and transport makes-up one-third of imports, Finance Minister Peter Boyers told Reuters in an interview. Boyers says the Solomons must explore "creative solutions" to ease external pressures on a struggling economy.
One such solution is a plan by the Australian Biodiesel Group to produce biodiesel using coconut oil that was last month approved by the Solomons Foreign Investment Review Board.
"We're hoping that industry can come in and consume the copra production ... they would produce all that into biofuel, which would be an import subsidization against fuel," Boyers says. "But most importantly it will stabilize the rural man's income by having a base line price per kilo (for copra). That's very important because that affects 80 percent of the population, which is involved in our rural informal sector."
GOVERNMENT REVENUE LOSS
Boyers says the government is currently finalizing incentive programs for the Australian Biodiesel Group investment, which he valued at about SB$250 million ($33 million). Australian Biodiesel Group Chief Executive Officer Len Humphreys told Reuters the company was considering similar projects in other places in the South Pacific, like Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. He says the company is still in the early stages of planning a biodiesel plant to satisfy local need in the Solomons, but that the project will be reassessed following rioting in Honiara last month sparked by the election of a new prime minister. "It's a great shame because there are a lot benefits the islands can gain from the growing biodiesel industry if properly managed," he says.
But SOPAC has warned that while using coconut oil can cut fuel import bills, Pacific island countries need to consider how much revenue can be lost from import taxes and customs duties. "(Our study) suggests that that some duty on locally grown biofuels will be required to offset this loss," SOPAC says. "Import substitution can have a positive impact on government revenues if both impact on trade balance, duties and taxes are taken into account."
($1-SB$7.60) Source: Reuters
Wrap...
Monday, May 08, 2006
Molly Ivins lets BushCo have it!
From truthdig.com :
Molly Ivins: The Best Little Whorehouse in Washington
Posted on May 8, 2006
By Molly Ivins
AUSTIN, Texas—Of course I am above sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. So serious a servant of the public interest am I, I can fogey with the best: On my better days, I make David Broder look like Page Six.
I don’t care what anyone smoked 20 years ago, I approve of those who boogie ‘til they puke, and I don’t care who anyone in politics is screwing in private, as long as they’re not screwing the public.
On other hand, if you expect me to pass up a scandal involving poker, hookers and the Watergate building with crooked defense contractors and the No. 3 guy at the CIA, named Dusty Foggo (Dusty Foggo?! Be still my heart), you expect too much. Any journalist who claims Hookergate is not a legitimate scandal is dead—has been for some time and needs to be unplugged. In addition to sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Hookergate is rife with public interest questions, misfeasance, malfeasance and non-feasance, and many splendid moral points for the children. Recommended for Sunday school use, grades seven and above.
But for starters, let us consider the unenviable record of Porter Goss at the CIA. From the beginning of his tenure, Goss has been criticized for politicizing the agency. He brought a bunch of political hacks with him for staff, one of whom turns out to be the poker player called “Nine Fingers.” And in the end, he was likely fired for not having politicized the agency sufficiently.
What is the point of politicizing an intelligence agency? So the CIA officials would get a report from some agent in Iraq saying, “Looks bad.” The first thing they’d ask was, “Is this agent a Republican or a Democrat?”
Maybe there really are conservatives who believe everything in Iraq is hunky-dory and there’s a giant media conspiracy to hide the joyous tidings. But as you may recall, the ever-nimble minds at Donny Rumsfeld’s shop have already tried paying public relations people to invent good news about Iraq and then plant it in newspapers there—it didn’t work.
In fact, it was so stupid it was humiliating. Fortunately, the Pentagon was once again able to investigate itself and determine it had done nothing illegal.
So now they’re turning the CIA over to a general who not only ran the warrantless wiretap program, but still can’t figure out that it’s unconstitutional. Why do I get the feeling this is W. and Karl again flipping the finger at some grown-up they don’t like?
Hayden had mixed reviews as director of the National Security Agency—he’s evidently not a good manager, which makes him a perfect Bushie. But is he straightforward enough to have admitted some warrantless spying has been done for political reasons? None of the usual Washington insiders seems to have a bead on this. Hayden would theoretically report to John Negroponte, Bush’s supposed intelligence czar. Negroponte is widely considered worthless. His major achievement so far seems to be organizational charts and buying furniture.
You know me, no conspiracy theories here, but the Bush administration, which doesn’t seem to be able to run much, set out to retool the CIA after 9-11 and the Iraq War. Problem is, everything that worked at the CIA—that it warned about 9-11 and said the Iraq War was a bad idea—was on the hit list. The Bushies wanted to eliminate the people who were right and promote those who were wrong. This is no way to shape up an intelligence agency, not to mention the White House spit fit over Joe Wilson’s wife.
Next, we need to contemplate sincere, old-fashioned, non-ideological greed, theft and bribery. In the beginning, there was only Duke Cunningham, the high-living, fun-loving super-patriot congressman from San Diego. His yacht was called “The Duke-Stir,” and he had nice taste in 19th century French commodes. While we are all happy to see our elected representatives enjoying themselves in Washington, that’s real people’s money. Actually, the yacht and commode were paid for by Brent Wilkes (keep an eye on that player), the crooked defense contractor. It was people’s money that paid for the defense contracts Wilkes bribed public officials into landing for his clients.
The former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, Clark Kent Ervin—that would be the DHS equivalent of a police department’s internal affairs chief—tried to blow the whistle on shady contracts at DHS and instead was thrown overboard himself. Folks, we’ll never get government straightened out again if we don’t keep the IGs strong and independent.
If the Bush administration continues to fall apart at this clip, I think we’ll be grateful for incompetence as an excuse.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
Wrap...
Molly Ivins: The Best Little Whorehouse in Washington
Posted on May 8, 2006
By Molly Ivins
AUSTIN, Texas—Of course I am above sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. So serious a servant of the public interest am I, I can fogey with the best: On my better days, I make David Broder look like Page Six.
I don’t care what anyone smoked 20 years ago, I approve of those who boogie ‘til they puke, and I don’t care who anyone in politics is screwing in private, as long as they’re not screwing the public.
On other hand, if you expect me to pass up a scandal involving poker, hookers and the Watergate building with crooked defense contractors and the No. 3 guy at the CIA, named Dusty Foggo (Dusty Foggo?! Be still my heart), you expect too much. Any journalist who claims Hookergate is not a legitimate scandal is dead—has been for some time and needs to be unplugged. In addition to sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Hookergate is rife with public interest questions, misfeasance, malfeasance and non-feasance, and many splendid moral points for the children. Recommended for Sunday school use, grades seven and above.
But for starters, let us consider the unenviable record of Porter Goss at the CIA. From the beginning of his tenure, Goss has been criticized for politicizing the agency. He brought a bunch of political hacks with him for staff, one of whom turns out to be the poker player called “Nine Fingers.” And in the end, he was likely fired for not having politicized the agency sufficiently.
What is the point of politicizing an intelligence agency? So the CIA officials would get a report from some agent in Iraq saying, “Looks bad.” The first thing they’d ask was, “Is this agent a Republican or a Democrat?”
Maybe there really are conservatives who believe everything in Iraq is hunky-dory and there’s a giant media conspiracy to hide the joyous tidings. But as you may recall, the ever-nimble minds at Donny Rumsfeld’s shop have already tried paying public relations people to invent good news about Iraq and then plant it in newspapers there—it didn’t work.
In fact, it was so stupid it was humiliating. Fortunately, the Pentagon was once again able to investigate itself and determine it had done nothing illegal.
So now they’re turning the CIA over to a general who not only ran the warrantless wiretap program, but still can’t figure out that it’s unconstitutional. Why do I get the feeling this is W. and Karl again flipping the finger at some grown-up they don’t like?
Hayden had mixed reviews as director of the National Security Agency—he’s evidently not a good manager, which makes him a perfect Bushie. But is he straightforward enough to have admitted some warrantless spying has been done for political reasons? None of the usual Washington insiders seems to have a bead on this. Hayden would theoretically report to John Negroponte, Bush’s supposed intelligence czar. Negroponte is widely considered worthless. His major achievement so far seems to be organizational charts and buying furniture.
You know me, no conspiracy theories here, but the Bush administration, which doesn’t seem to be able to run much, set out to retool the CIA after 9-11 and the Iraq War. Problem is, everything that worked at the CIA—that it warned about 9-11 and said the Iraq War was a bad idea—was on the hit list. The Bushies wanted to eliminate the people who were right and promote those who were wrong. This is no way to shape up an intelligence agency, not to mention the White House spit fit over Joe Wilson’s wife.
Next, we need to contemplate sincere, old-fashioned, non-ideological greed, theft and bribery. In the beginning, there was only Duke Cunningham, the high-living, fun-loving super-patriot congressman from San Diego. His yacht was called “The Duke-Stir,” and he had nice taste in 19th century French commodes. While we are all happy to see our elected representatives enjoying themselves in Washington, that’s real people’s money. Actually, the yacht and commode were paid for by Brent Wilkes (keep an eye on that player), the crooked defense contractor. It was people’s money that paid for the defense contracts Wilkes bribed public officials into landing for his clients.
The former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, Clark Kent Ervin—that would be the DHS equivalent of a police department’s internal affairs chief—tried to blow the whistle on shady contracts at DHS and instead was thrown overboard himself. Folks, we’ll never get government straightened out again if we don’t keep the IGs strong and independent.
If the Bush administration continues to fall apart at this clip, I think we’ll be grateful for incompetence as an excuse.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
Wrap...
Take your choice: Liberty or....
From Secrecy News:
CIVIL LIBERTIES AS AN ANTIDOTE TO VIOLENT EXTREMISM
It is often asserted or assumed that American traditions of open government and civil liberties place the United States at a disadvantage in confronting terrorism. But the opposite may be closer to the truth.
"In an open society like ours... it is impossible to protect against every threat," said President Bush in an August 24, 2005 speech."That's a fact we have to deal with. In a free society it is impossible to protect against every possible threat," implying that it might be possible in a closed or unfree society.
Similarly, according to February 15 testimony by Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice, "terrorists and criminals... would exploit our open society to do us harm."And "precious little can be done to prevent [terrorist attacks onsoft targets] in a society like ours that rightly values personal liberty so highly," wrote Clark Kent Ervin, former Homeland Security Inspector General, in a Washington Post opinion piece on May 7.
But a distinctly different perspective was offered by John C. Gannon, former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Among the reasons that there has not been another terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, he proposed, are precisely the openness and freedom that some others view with anxiety.
"I believe that the hard-won Constitutional freedoms enjoyed by Americans, along with our unparalleled commitment to civil liberties embedded in law, work against the development of domestic terrorist networks that could be exploited by foreigners," testified Gannon, who is now a Vice President at BAE Systems Information Technology. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_hr/050206gannon.html
Secrecy News asked Dr. Gannon to elaborate on this point.
"Americans have unparalleled Constitutional and legal protections to express grievances and to openly criticize government at all levels," he replied in a May 6 email message. "This doesn't mean that terrorists wouldn't try to operate here. It means that the terrorists or other extremists would find less fertile ground to build networks in the US because local support would be harder to come by and because local opposition would be more certain."
"In this sense, our liberties are a powerful antidote to violent extremism."
"This is not an academic point for me. It is an observation from a career of watching the domestic consequences of repressive regimes elsewhere in the world--including US-friendly Islamic governments such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt," Gannon wrote.
The question of whether openness and civil liberties tend to enhance national security or to undermine it is not a theoretical one. Much depends on which one of the two perspectives prevails. If openness and the rule of law are sources of vulnerability, or viewed as such, then they will be quickly surrendered in the name of security. Torture may be redefined to permit non-lethal abuses, habeas corpus may be suspended, statutes regulating domestic surveillance may be disregarded.
Conversely, if civil liberties and the rule of law are a source of strength, it follows that they should be bolstered and scrupulously upheld even in the conduct of vital security operations.
Secrecy News asked Dr. Gannon whether his views on civil liberties could be reconciled with intelligence programs such as warrantless domestic surveillance.
"The NSA warrantless surveillance program--the details of which are mired in secrecy--should not be seen as a tradeoff between security and civil liberties. But, for this to be true, the program must be bound by law and subject to both judicial review and competent Congressional oversight--the latter now in short supply," he explained."I believe our democracy has the instruments to advance security and protect civil liberties at the same time," he said.
Wrap...
CIVIL LIBERTIES AS AN ANTIDOTE TO VIOLENT EXTREMISM
It is often asserted or assumed that American traditions of open government and civil liberties place the United States at a disadvantage in confronting terrorism. But the opposite may be closer to the truth.
"In an open society like ours... it is impossible to protect against every threat," said President Bush in an August 24, 2005 speech."That's a fact we have to deal with. In a free society it is impossible to protect against every possible threat," implying that it might be possible in a closed or unfree society.
Similarly, according to February 15 testimony by Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice, "terrorists and criminals... would exploit our open society to do us harm."And "precious little can be done to prevent [terrorist attacks onsoft targets] in a society like ours that rightly values personal liberty so highly," wrote Clark Kent Ervin, former Homeland Security Inspector General, in a Washington Post opinion piece on May 7.
But a distinctly different perspective was offered by John C. Gannon, former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Among the reasons that there has not been another terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, he proposed, are precisely the openness and freedom that some others view with anxiety.
"I believe that the hard-won Constitutional freedoms enjoyed by Americans, along with our unparalleled commitment to civil liberties embedded in law, work against the development of domestic terrorist networks that could be exploited by foreigners," testified Gannon, who is now a Vice President at BAE Systems Information Technology. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_hr/050206gannon.html
Secrecy News asked Dr. Gannon to elaborate on this point.
"Americans have unparalleled Constitutional and legal protections to express grievances and to openly criticize government at all levels," he replied in a May 6 email message. "This doesn't mean that terrorists wouldn't try to operate here. It means that the terrorists or other extremists would find less fertile ground to build networks in the US because local support would be harder to come by and because local opposition would be more certain."
"In this sense, our liberties are a powerful antidote to violent extremism."
"This is not an academic point for me. It is an observation from a career of watching the domestic consequences of repressive regimes elsewhere in the world--including US-friendly Islamic governments such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt," Gannon wrote.
The question of whether openness and civil liberties tend to enhance national security or to undermine it is not a theoretical one. Much depends on which one of the two perspectives prevails. If openness and the rule of law are sources of vulnerability, or viewed as such, then they will be quickly surrendered in the name of security. Torture may be redefined to permit non-lethal abuses, habeas corpus may be suspended, statutes regulating domestic surveillance may be disregarded.
Conversely, if civil liberties and the rule of law are a source of strength, it follows that they should be bolstered and scrupulously upheld even in the conduct of vital security operations.
Secrecy News asked Dr. Gannon whether his views on civil liberties could be reconciled with intelligence programs such as warrantless domestic surveillance.
"The NSA warrantless surveillance program--the details of which are mired in secrecy--should not be seen as a tradeoff between security and civil liberties. But, for this to be true, the program must be bound by law and subject to both judicial review and competent Congressional oversight--the latter now in short supply," he explained."I believe our democracy has the instruments to advance security and protect civil liberties at the same time," he said.
Wrap...
Court Marshal the anti-Rummy Generals?...Man!!!
From Slate.com :
Could Rumsfeld Court-Martial the Retired Generals?Surprisingly, yes.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006, at 2:59 PM ET
Donald Rumsfeld has a notorious vindictive streak. How low will he stoop to pursue it? Let's put him to the test. If he wanted to get really brutal, Rumsfeld could convene a court-martial and prosecute the six retired generals <http://www.slate.com/id/2139777/> who have been calling for his head. Military law, if read literally, permits him to do this. So, will he?One of the assumptions surrounding the recent criticism of Rumsfeld is that the retired generals, unlike active-duty officers, are free to criticize the defense secretary without fear of reprisal.
Surprisingly, this assumption is untrue. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice <http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj.htm#SUBCHAPTER%20III.%20NON-JUDICIAL%20PUNISHMENT <http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj.htm> > , one of the many activities deemed punishable by court-martial is "contempt toward officials." This code of laws applies not just to active-duty officers but to retired ones, too. It's right there in Article 2, Section (a) (5): Persons subject to the UCMJ include "retired members of a regular component of the armed forces who are entitled to pay."The key phrase is "entitled to pay." If you resign from the military, and thus give up all retirement pay and benefits, you're free from the clutches of military law. But if you retire and thus keep getting paid 50 percent to 75 percent <http://www.military.com/Finance/Content?file=Money_Retirement.htm&area=Content> of your peak active-duty salary (plus cost-of-living adjustments pegged to the consumer price index), you're still in the cage. (Many retirees learned this the hard way, when they were called back into service in Iraq.)
If Rumsfeld wanted to stick it to the retired generals who are daring to question his wisdom: Anthony Zinni, Greg Newbold, Paul Eaton, Charles Swannack, John Batiste, and John Riggs, he could invoke Article 88 of the military justice code, which reads:Any commissioned officer [and, under Article 2, this includes any retired officer] who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation [!], or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present, shall be punished as a court-martial may direct. [Italics and exclamation mark added.]
The military's Manual for Courts-Martial <http://www.uscg.mil/Legal/MJ/Courts-MartialManual.pdf> , the implementing document for the UCMJ, could be read as strengthening Rumsfeld's case against his critics, in two ways.
First, in its elaboration of Article 88, the manual states:It is immaterial whether the [contemptuous] words are used against the official in an official or private capacity.In short, it's no defense for a retired general to say, "I'm just speaking as a private citizen."
Second, the manual notes:Giving broad circulation to a written publication containing contemptuous words of the kind made punishable by this article aggravates the offense. The truth or falsity of the statements is immaterial.
This is pretty shocking stuff. It means a lieutenant could get court-martialed for e-mailing all of his friends a newspaper or magazine story that's contemptuous of Rumsfeld. The six retired generals didn't merely give "broad circulation" to such stories. They wrote the stories, or gave on-the-record interviews to those who did, in publications with extremely broad circulation.
If Rumsfeld wanted to take this law literally and crack down, how could he go about it?
Article 22, Section (a) states that a court-martial may be convened by, among others, the president, the secretary of defense, the "secretary concerned" (i.e., the official who's been the object of contempt), or any commanding officer designated by the secretary concerned or by the president. So, Secretary Rumsfeld or President Bush could set up a court-martial, or either of them could get a loyal henchman to do the dirty work.
If the generals were found guilty, the maximum penalty under Article 88 is "dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for one year."
Now, before Secretary Rumsfeld and his small circle of friends start salivating, they should consider two things. First and most obvious, trying to court-martial these six generals would be stupid beyond all measure. Very few officers and, as far as I can tell, no retired officers, have ever been prosecuted under Article 88. I'm hardly suggesting that Rumsfeld break precedent; nor am I predicting that he might. But if he wanted to interpret the law literally, as the Justice Department does http://www.slate.com/id/2136324/ when it prosecutes someone under the federal espionage statute for receiving classified information, this would let him bring down the hammer.
But second, Rumsfeld should take a closer look at Article 88. In fact, all officers, active and retired, should take a look. In its commentary on that article, the Manual for Courts-Martial notes: If not personally contemptuous, adverse criticism of one of the officials or legislatures named in the article in the course of a political discussion, even though emphatically expressed, may not be charged as a violation of the article.
In other words, if officers (active or retired) merely criticize Rumsfeld, even emphatically, they are not violating military law, as long as they avoid "contemptuous" words. (I guess this means you should preface your remarks by saying, "With all due respect, sir, ") So, it turns out that military law, which actually protects most critical speech, may not be why active-duty officers won't harsh on Rumsfeld. They refrain from criticism of any sort not because they fear court-martial, but because they know their careers will hit a brick wall. They'll never be promoted; they'll probably be transferred to the Arctic Circle.
The open question is: What is the legal meaning of "contemptuous"? Article 88 offers no definition. Neither does the commentary in the Manual for Courts-Martial. The only guidance that the Defense Department's public-affairs office could come up with was this definition from The Military Judges' Benchbook http://www.jag.navy.mil/documents/MJBenchbook.pdf , paragraph 3-12-1d: "Contemptuous" means insulting, rude, disdainful or otherwise disrespectfully attributing to another qualities of meanness, disreputableness, or worthlessness.
This sounds more like an 18th-century guide on gentlemen's etiquette than a modern-day casebook on military law. But if it is a crime, punishable by court-martial, to disdain Donald Rumsfeld, he could lock up half the Army officer corps.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com .
Wrap...
Could Rumsfeld Court-Martial the Retired Generals?Surprisingly, yes.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006, at 2:59 PM ET
Donald Rumsfeld has a notorious vindictive streak. How low will he stoop to pursue it? Let's put him to the test. If he wanted to get really brutal, Rumsfeld could convene a court-martial and prosecute the six retired generals <http://www.slate.com/id/2139777/> who have been calling for his head. Military law, if read literally, permits him to do this. So, will he?One of the assumptions surrounding the recent criticism of Rumsfeld is that the retired generals, unlike active-duty officers, are free to criticize the defense secretary without fear of reprisal.
Surprisingly, this assumption is untrue. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice <http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj.htm#SUBCHAPTER%20III.%20NON-JUDICIAL%20PUNISHMENT <http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj.htm> > , one of the many activities deemed punishable by court-martial is "contempt toward officials." This code of laws applies not just to active-duty officers but to retired ones, too. It's right there in Article 2, Section (a) (5): Persons subject to the UCMJ include "retired members of a regular component of the armed forces who are entitled to pay."The key phrase is "entitled to pay." If you resign from the military, and thus give up all retirement pay and benefits, you're free from the clutches of military law. But if you retire and thus keep getting paid 50 percent to 75 percent <http://www.military.com/Finance/Content?file=Money_Retirement.htm&area=Content> of your peak active-duty salary (plus cost-of-living adjustments pegged to the consumer price index), you're still in the cage. (Many retirees learned this the hard way, when they were called back into service in Iraq.)
If Rumsfeld wanted to stick it to the retired generals who are daring to question his wisdom: Anthony Zinni, Greg Newbold, Paul Eaton, Charles Swannack, John Batiste, and John Riggs, he could invoke Article 88 of the military justice code, which reads:Any commissioned officer [and, under Article 2, this includes any retired officer] who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation [!], or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present, shall be punished as a court-martial may direct. [Italics and exclamation mark added.]
The military's Manual for Courts-Martial <http://www.uscg.mil/Legal/MJ/Courts-MartialManual.pdf> , the implementing document for the UCMJ, could be read as strengthening Rumsfeld's case against his critics, in two ways.
First, in its elaboration of Article 88, the manual states:It is immaterial whether the [contemptuous] words are used against the official in an official or private capacity.In short, it's no defense for a retired general to say, "I'm just speaking as a private citizen."
Second, the manual notes:Giving broad circulation to a written publication containing contemptuous words of the kind made punishable by this article aggravates the offense. The truth or falsity of the statements is immaterial.
This is pretty shocking stuff. It means a lieutenant could get court-martialed for e-mailing all of his friends a newspaper or magazine story that's contemptuous of Rumsfeld. The six retired generals didn't merely give "broad circulation" to such stories. They wrote the stories, or gave on-the-record interviews to those who did, in publications with extremely broad circulation.
If Rumsfeld wanted to take this law literally and crack down, how could he go about it?
Article 22, Section (a) states that a court-martial may be convened by, among others, the president, the secretary of defense, the "secretary concerned" (i.e., the official who's been the object of contempt), or any commanding officer designated by the secretary concerned or by the president. So, Secretary Rumsfeld or President Bush could set up a court-martial, or either of them could get a loyal henchman to do the dirty work.
If the generals were found guilty, the maximum penalty under Article 88 is "dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for one year."
Now, before Secretary Rumsfeld and his small circle of friends start salivating, they should consider two things. First and most obvious, trying to court-martial these six generals would be stupid beyond all measure. Very few officers and, as far as I can tell, no retired officers, have ever been prosecuted under Article 88. I'm hardly suggesting that Rumsfeld break precedent; nor am I predicting that he might. But if he wanted to interpret the law literally, as the Justice Department does http://www.slate.com/id/2136324/ when it prosecutes someone under the federal espionage statute for receiving classified information, this would let him bring down the hammer.
But second, Rumsfeld should take a closer look at Article 88. In fact, all officers, active and retired, should take a look. In its commentary on that article, the Manual for Courts-Martial notes: If not personally contemptuous, adverse criticism of one of the officials or legislatures named in the article in the course of a political discussion, even though emphatically expressed, may not be charged as a violation of the article.
In other words, if officers (active or retired) merely criticize Rumsfeld, even emphatically, they are not violating military law, as long as they avoid "contemptuous" words. (I guess this means you should preface your remarks by saying, "With all due respect, sir, ") So, it turns out that military law, which actually protects most critical speech, may not be why active-duty officers won't harsh on Rumsfeld. They refrain from criticism of any sort not because they fear court-martial, but because they know their careers will hit a brick wall. They'll never be promoted; they'll probably be transferred to the Arctic Circle.
The open question is: What is the legal meaning of "contemptuous"? Article 88 offers no definition. Neither does the commentary in the Manual for Courts-Martial. The only guidance that the Defense Department's public-affairs office could come up with was this definition from The Military Judges' Benchbook http://www.jag.navy.mil/documents/MJBenchbook.pdf , paragraph 3-12-1d: "Contemptuous" means insulting, rude, disdainful or otherwise disrespectfully attributing to another qualities of meanness, disreputableness, or worthlessness.
This sounds more like an 18th-century guide on gentlemen's etiquette than a modern-day casebook on military law. But if it is a crime, punishable by court-martial, to disdain Donald Rumsfeld, he could lock up half the Army officer corps.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com .
Wrap...
When Russ Baker talks, we'd better listen....
From Tom Paine :
Crashing WatergateGate
Russ Baker
May 08, 2006
[Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker is a longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He is also the founder of the Real News Project , a new not-for-profit investigative journalism outlet. He can be reached at russ@russbaker.com.]
We knew this was big back in March, when a court sent ex-Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif.—convicted of taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors—off to serve eight years in prison, the most severe sentence ever handed out to a member of Congress. From then on, the sleaze chain has been metastasizing. More members of the House might be implicated—and even top CIA officials. Now it is being described as the largest federal corruption scandal in a century. With stories of prostitutes and all-night poker games at the Watergate hotel, it is one scandal that truly is deserving of the "-gate" suffix that has become such a dreary journalistic cliché.
No matter how big the affair grows, though, it is likely to follow in the path of so many of its predecessors—distracting public attention from a larger and more important reality: Today, “the largest corruption scandal in a century” is not WatergateGate—it is the everyday performance of the U.S. government. The worst sleaze in Washington is mainly legal, as the old saying goes; and that includes the sorry state of the entire intelligence apparatus—beyond whether the #3 CIA official improperly participated in those late-night, high-stakes card games.
Too many in the media treat a juicy mess like the Cunningham Affair as a shocking aberration. Consider the wording in a New York Times article on Sunday, which described “a growing suspicion among some lawmakers that corrupt practices may have influenced decision-making in Congress and at executive-branch agencies.”
Who would have thought? Don’t the editors read their own paper? It’s been clear for some time that corruption in the Bush administration has exceeded a Washington standard that already was pretty tawdry. Some of the stories are known already, especially to TomPaine.com readers: White House procurement chief taken out in handcuffs in connection with a sprawling lobbying corruption investigation; the vice president’s chief of staff indicted for perjury; the unseemly setup between Bush’s first FEMA director and Brownie, the incompetent neophyte who replaced him.
But many of the larger misdeeds have gone unreported, in part because—technically illegal or not—they represent business as usual in Republican Washington today. Virtually every federal agency is now captive to the corporate interests it is supposed to regulate. The reach of corporate influence has even compromised the science agencies on whose fact-finding and truth-telling crucial questions of national safety and even survival depend.
And then there is Congress. A quick comparison of committee activity and floor votes with campaign finance reports tells the story. Never mind the now-controversial “earmarks,” in which legislators secretly slip goodies at the last minute into larger bill packages. The real scandal is going on in plain sight. The entities that give the most get the most—and the goodies keep on coming. That outfits like Halliburton can survive a never-ending series of contracting horror shows with their federal contacts intact says a lot about Congress’s willful abrogation of fiduciary duty on behalf of the taxpayer.
The main mistake Randy Cunningham made was accepting the goodies while he was still in Congress. There is no crime involved in doing the exact same favors for government contractors, and later joining the company’s board or getting hired as a highly-paid lobbyist, or getting payback on a more indirect basis. That’s the deal all over town, and some of the most “well-respected” names in America have such arrangements—and not all of them are Republicans. The whole thing stinks, but what to do about it? That’s the rub.
Speaking of a rub, besides the careless greed, in the Cunningham Caper we are blessed by the emergence of a sexual angle worthy of a British tabloid, with the congressman alleged to have enjoyed the favors of big-league prostitutes in return for military contracts. Sexual peccadilloes always get the public’s attention in a way that other misdeeds, like accepting bribes from defense contractors, cannot. That Cunningham and his buddies may have preferred presumably-discreet professional company over out-of-wedlock friends of the Gennifer Flowers ilk, makes perfect sense in an atmosphere where holier-than-thou sanctimony cannot bear scrutiny. That might take the story to a new level, since these sins would have been committed by the staunchest defenders of the "sanctity of marriage."
Those who care about the ever more brazen sellout of the public interest over the last five years have no choice but to take these revelations in whatever garb they come—and if they’re scantily clad, so be it. Meanwhile, consorting with prostitutes—the thing that will get perhaps get the most attention—is the one thing that matters least to the future of our body politic.
With this new WatergateGate, we must at all costs beware the Woodward Fallacy—that sanitation is a substitute for politics and ideas. It is the conceit of the reigning elite. But in fact we can get rid of Cunningham and his cronies and the rot will continue, unless change goes much deeper to the root.
Wrap...
Crashing WatergateGate
Russ Baker
May 08, 2006
[Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker is a longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He is also the founder of the Real News Project , a new not-for-profit investigative journalism outlet. He can be reached at russ@russbaker.com.]
We knew this was big back in March, when a court sent ex-Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif.—convicted of taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors—off to serve eight years in prison, the most severe sentence ever handed out to a member of Congress. From then on, the sleaze chain has been metastasizing. More members of the House might be implicated—and even top CIA officials. Now it is being described as the largest federal corruption scandal in a century. With stories of prostitutes and all-night poker games at the Watergate hotel, it is one scandal that truly is deserving of the "-gate" suffix that has become such a dreary journalistic cliché.
No matter how big the affair grows, though, it is likely to follow in the path of so many of its predecessors—distracting public attention from a larger and more important reality: Today, “the largest corruption scandal in a century” is not WatergateGate—it is the everyday performance of the U.S. government. The worst sleaze in Washington is mainly legal, as the old saying goes; and that includes the sorry state of the entire intelligence apparatus—beyond whether the #3 CIA official improperly participated in those late-night, high-stakes card games.
Too many in the media treat a juicy mess like the Cunningham Affair as a shocking aberration. Consider the wording in a New York Times article on Sunday, which described “a growing suspicion among some lawmakers that corrupt practices may have influenced decision-making in Congress and at executive-branch agencies.”
Who would have thought? Don’t the editors read their own paper? It’s been clear for some time that corruption in the Bush administration has exceeded a Washington standard that already was pretty tawdry. Some of the stories are known already, especially to TomPaine.com readers: White House procurement chief taken out in handcuffs in connection with a sprawling lobbying corruption investigation; the vice president’s chief of staff indicted for perjury; the unseemly setup between Bush’s first FEMA director and Brownie, the incompetent neophyte who replaced him.
But many of the larger misdeeds have gone unreported, in part because—technically illegal or not—they represent business as usual in Republican Washington today. Virtually every federal agency is now captive to the corporate interests it is supposed to regulate. The reach of corporate influence has even compromised the science agencies on whose fact-finding and truth-telling crucial questions of national safety and even survival depend.
And then there is Congress. A quick comparison of committee activity and floor votes with campaign finance reports tells the story. Never mind the now-controversial “earmarks,” in which legislators secretly slip goodies at the last minute into larger bill packages. The real scandal is going on in plain sight. The entities that give the most get the most—and the goodies keep on coming. That outfits like Halliburton can survive a never-ending series of contracting horror shows with their federal contacts intact says a lot about Congress’s willful abrogation of fiduciary duty on behalf of the taxpayer.
The main mistake Randy Cunningham made was accepting the goodies while he was still in Congress. There is no crime involved in doing the exact same favors for government contractors, and later joining the company’s board or getting hired as a highly-paid lobbyist, or getting payback on a more indirect basis. That’s the deal all over town, and some of the most “well-respected” names in America have such arrangements—and not all of them are Republicans. The whole thing stinks, but what to do about it? That’s the rub.
Speaking of a rub, besides the careless greed, in the Cunningham Caper we are blessed by the emergence of a sexual angle worthy of a British tabloid, with the congressman alleged to have enjoyed the favors of big-league prostitutes in return for military contracts. Sexual peccadilloes always get the public’s attention in a way that other misdeeds, like accepting bribes from defense contractors, cannot. That Cunningham and his buddies may have preferred presumably-discreet professional company over out-of-wedlock friends of the Gennifer Flowers ilk, makes perfect sense in an atmosphere where holier-than-thou sanctimony cannot bear scrutiny. That might take the story to a new level, since these sins would have been committed by the staunchest defenders of the "sanctity of marriage."
Those who care about the ever more brazen sellout of the public interest over the last five years have no choice but to take these revelations in whatever garb they come—and if they’re scantily clad, so be it. Meanwhile, consorting with prostitutes—the thing that will get perhaps get the most attention—is the one thing that matters least to the future of our body politic.
With this new WatergateGate, we must at all costs beware the Woodward Fallacy—that sanitation is a substitute for politics and ideas. It is the conceit of the reigning elite. But in fact we can get rid of Cunningham and his cronies and the rot will continue, unless change goes much deeper to the root.
Wrap...
Bush in up to his neck...as usual....
From Capitol Hill Blue :
From Capitol Hill Blue
Bush Leagues
Libby's lawyer plans to link Bush to Plame scandal
By Staff and Wire Reports
May 7, 2006, 08:43
The lawyer for former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby said on Friday he would argue that his client revealed intelligence on Iraq after Vice President Dick Cheney authorized it and President George W. Bush declassified the information.
At a hearing on what documents the prosecution must turn over to the defense, lawyer Theodore Wells also said he believed there may be testimony or statements by Bush and Cheney that the disclosure of the intelligence was authorized.
Wells said he was entitled to any such information from the special prosecutor investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to the news media.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled that prosecutors must turn over information about how the intelligence was declassified because it was important to Libby's defense.
Prosecutors disclosed last month that Libby had testified he had been authorized to disclose the intelligence to reporters in the summer of 2003, to counter criticism of Bush's Iraq policy from Plame's husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson.
Bush has acknowledged declassifying the information, prompting charges of hypocrisy from Democrats who say he has denounced some leaks while encouraging others.
Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, is charged with lying to investigators as they sought to determine who disclosed Plame's name to a conservative columnist in July 2003.
Wells said he would tell the jury that Libby disclosed the intelligence with Cheney's authorization and with the understanding Bush had declassified it.
The trial is scheduled to begin in January, keeping alive an issue that has dogged the White House for months.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he already turned over the relevant documents.
Fitzgerald said he agreed with the defense the intelligence had been declassified, but did not know precisely when that happened.
The leak occurred at a time when opponents were stepping up their criticism of the March 2003 invasion after U.S. forces had failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Wells also said he planned to attack the credibility of Wilson, a former ambassador. He said he planned to call five witnesses who would say that Wilson told them about his wife working at the CIA.
Wilson investigated for the CIA an administration claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium, an ingredient used in nuclear weapons, in Niger, and he later wrote in a New York Times article that the charges could not be substantiated.
Wells said he wanted a wide range of government documents about Wilson's trip to Niger.
The judge rejected the request on the grounds that it was not relevant to the lying charges against Libby. "I'm just not going to let this case become a judicial resolution of the legitimacy of the (Iraq) war," he said.
Wells also said top White House aide Karl Rove would likely be a defense witness at the trial and the prosecutor must turn over information about Rove, who remains under investigation.
Fitzgerald said he was not withholding information about Rove. Rove, who faces possible perjury charges, last month testified before a grand jury for the fifth time. Fitzgerald has yet to decide whether to charge Rove.
© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue
Wrap...
From Capitol Hill Blue
Bush Leagues
Libby's lawyer plans to link Bush to Plame scandal
By Staff and Wire Reports
May 7, 2006, 08:43
The lawyer for former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby said on Friday he would argue that his client revealed intelligence on Iraq after Vice President Dick Cheney authorized it and President George W. Bush declassified the information.
At a hearing on what documents the prosecution must turn over to the defense, lawyer Theodore Wells also said he believed there may be testimony or statements by Bush and Cheney that the disclosure of the intelligence was authorized.
Wells said he was entitled to any such information from the special prosecutor investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to the news media.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled that prosecutors must turn over information about how the intelligence was declassified because it was important to Libby's defense.
Prosecutors disclosed last month that Libby had testified he had been authorized to disclose the intelligence to reporters in the summer of 2003, to counter criticism of Bush's Iraq policy from Plame's husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson.
Bush has acknowledged declassifying the information, prompting charges of hypocrisy from Democrats who say he has denounced some leaks while encouraging others.
Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, is charged with lying to investigators as they sought to determine who disclosed Plame's name to a conservative columnist in July 2003.
Wells said he would tell the jury that Libby disclosed the intelligence with Cheney's authorization and with the understanding Bush had declassified it.
The trial is scheduled to begin in January, keeping alive an issue that has dogged the White House for months.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he already turned over the relevant documents.
Fitzgerald said he agreed with the defense the intelligence had been declassified, but did not know precisely when that happened.
The leak occurred at a time when opponents were stepping up their criticism of the March 2003 invasion after U.S. forces had failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Wells also said he planned to attack the credibility of Wilson, a former ambassador. He said he planned to call five witnesses who would say that Wilson told them about his wife working at the CIA.
Wilson investigated for the CIA an administration claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium, an ingredient used in nuclear weapons, in Niger, and he later wrote in a New York Times article that the charges could not be substantiated.
Wells said he wanted a wide range of government documents about Wilson's trip to Niger.
The judge rejected the request on the grounds that it was not relevant to the lying charges against Libby. "I'm just not going to let this case become a judicial resolution of the legitimacy of the (Iraq) war," he said.
Wells also said top White House aide Karl Rove would likely be a defense witness at the trial and the prosecutor must turn over information about Rove, who remains under investigation.
Fitzgerald said he was not withholding information about Rove. Rove, who faces possible perjury charges, last month testified before a grand jury for the fifth time. Fitzgerald has yet to decide whether to charge Rove.
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