Palin’s Pipeline : Rigged from the Start

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

‘This deal smells like the same old Republican policy of enriching their friends at the expense of American citizens.’
By Ted McLaughin / October 27, 2008

Sarah Palin has repeatedly referred to her approval of a $40 billion natural gas pipeline as evidence of her competence and ability to help solve America’s energy problems. The pipeline would bring natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to the lower 48 states. But now it looks like it is just more evidence of old-style Republican favoritism.

Before the selection process, Palin had said the process would be fair and without government pre-conditions, but then she set some conditions on the bidding that cut out the gas producers and most other companies. It turns out that those conditions actually favored only one company — TransCanada, the company that was awarded the contract.

Palin had also promised not to talk with any of the bidding companies, but broke that promise by having phone conversations and meetings with several companies, including TransCanada. But then, how can you rig a process for something you don’t understand without talking to the bidders?

In addition, a former executive of TransCanada served as a consultant to the pipeline team put together by Palin. A member of that pipeline team was a woman who had done some lobbying for a subsidiary of TransCanada, and her former partner in the lobbying firm was TransCanada’s lead lobbyist on the pipeline deal.

And it looks like Palin’s pipeline plan is a really sweet deal for TransCanada. Four years earlier, the company had said it would build the pipeline without a government subsidy. But the Palin plan will give the company up to $500 million in subsidies.

Palin has been telling the American public that she is a maverick — a different kind of Republican that wants to clean up government and make it fairer. It looks like she was lying. This deal smells like the same old Republican policy of enriching their friends at the expense of American citizens.

It’s time to stop listening to Republican lies and boot them out of office.

Source / jobsanger

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Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood : Taking Politics Seriously

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Vote. But don’t stop there!

Looking beyond the election and beyond elections
by Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood

We have nothing against voting. We plan to vote in the upcoming election. Some of our best friends are voters.

But we also believe that we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that the most important political moment in our lives comes in the voting booth. Instead, people should take politics seriously, which means asking considerably more of ourselves than the typical fixation with electoral politics.

First, we won’t be coy about this election. Each of us voted for Obama in the Texas primary and will vote for him in November. We are leftists who are consistently disgusted by the center-right political positions of the leadership of the Democratic Party, and we have no illusions that Obama is secretly more progressive than his statements in public and choice of advisers indicate. But there is slightly more than a dime’s worth of policy differences between Obama and McCain, and those differences are important in this election. The reckless quality of the McCain campaign and its policy proposals are scary, as is the cult of ignorance that has grown up around Palin.

Just as important, the people of this white-supremacist nation have a chance to vote for an African-American candidate. Four decades after the end of formal apartheid in the United States, in the context of ongoing overt and covert racism that is normalized in many sectors of society, there’s a possibility that a black person might be elected president. Even though Obama doesn’t claim the radical roots of the anti-apartheid struggles of recent U.S. history, the symbolic value of this election is not a trivial consideration. This isn’t tokenism, but a sign of real progress, albeit limited.

But even though we make that argument, we will vote knowing that the outcome of the election is not all that important, for a simple reason: The multiple crises facing this country, and the world, cannot be adequately addressed within the conventional political, economic, or social systems. This is reflected in the fact that neither candidate is even acknowledging the crises. The conventional political wisdom — Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative — is deeply rooted in the denial of the severity of these crises and hostility to acknowledging the need for radical change. Such a politics of delusion won’t generate solutions but instead will lead us to the end of the road, the edge of the cliff, the brick wall — pick your preferred metaphor, but when the chickens of denial come home to roost, it’s never pretty.

These crises are not difficult to identify; the evidence is all around us.

Economics: We aren’t facing a temporary downturn caused by this particular burst bubble but instead are moving into a new phase in the permanent decline of a system that has never met the human needs of most people and never will. It is long past the time to recognize the urgent need to start imagining and building an economics based on production and distribution for real human needs, rejecting the corrosive greed that underlies not only the obscene profits hoarded by the few but also the orgiastic consumption pursued by the many. We can’t know whether McCain or Obama recognizes these things, but it’s clear that both candidates — along with their parties and the interests they represent — are not interested in facing these realities.

Empire: The way in which First-World nations have pursued global empires over the past 500 years to grab for themselves a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth has never been morally justifiable. The recent phase of U.S. domination in that project is particularly offensive, given U.S. political leaders’ cynical rhetoric about democracy. But whatever one’s evaluation of the ideology behind the U.S. attempt to run the world through violence and coercion, the project is falling apart. The invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq are not just moral failures but pragmatic disasters. While McCain and Obama have slightly different strategies for dealing with these disasters, neither is willing to face the depravity of the imperial endeavor and neither argues for abandoning the imperial project.

Ecology: It’s no longer helpful to speak about “environmental issues,” as if we face discrete problems that have clear solutions. Without major changes to the way humans live, we face the collapse of the ecosystem’s ability to sustain human life as we know it. Every basic indicator of the health of the ecosystem is cause for concern — inadequate and dwindling supplies of clean water, chemical contamination in every part of the life cycle, continuing topsoil loss, toxic waste build-up, species loss and reduced biodiversity, and climate change. Unless one adopts an irrational technological fundamentalism — the faith-based assumption that new gadgets will magically rescue us — this means we have to downsize and scale back our lives dramatically, learning to live with less. Yet conventional politicians continue to promise to deliver a lifestyle that constitutes a form of collective planetary suicide.

So, we live in a predatory corporate capitalist economy in a world structured by the profound injustice produced by an imperial system that is steadily drawing down the ecological capital of the planet. The domination/subordination dynamic at the heart of this world is rooted in the ideologies of male domination and white domination. This belief in the inevitability of hierarchy grows out of thousands of years of patriarchy, reinforced by hundreds of years of white supremacy. Any meaningful progressive politics also must address not just the worst behaviors that come out of these systems — the overt sexism and racism that continue to plague society — but also the underlying worldview that normalizes inequality. Yes, Obama is black, and McCain selected a female running mate, but neither candidate ever speaks of patriarchy and white supremacy.

There are two common responses to the analysis offered here. The first is to condemn it as crazy, which is the response of the majority of Americans. The second, from people who don’t find such claims crazy and share the basic analysis, is that we have to be realistic and tone down our arguments, precisely because most Americans won’t take seriously anyone who speaks so radically.

But if being realistic has something to do with facing reality, then arguments for radical change are the most realistic. When problems are the predictable consequence of existing systems and no solutions are plausible within them, then arguing for continued capitulation to those systems isn’t realistic. It’s literally insane.

We live in a country that is, in fact, growing increasingly insane. Fashioning a strategy for political organizing in such a country, and shaping rhetoric to advance that organizing, is indeed difficult. But it must start with a realistic description of the problems we face, a realistic evaluation of the nature of the systems that gave rise to those problems, and a realistic assessment of the degree of change necessary to imagine solutions.

Taking politics seriously in the United States today means recognizing the limits of electoral politics. Voting matters, but it’s not the most important act in our political lives. Traditional grassroots political organizing to advance progressive policies on issues is more important. And even more crucial today is the long-term project of preparing for the dramatically different world that is on the horizon — a world in which an already unconscionable inequality will have expanded; a world with less energy to deal with the ecological collapse; a world in which existing institutions likely will prove useless in helping us restructure our lives; a world in which we will need to reclaim and develop basic skills for sustaining ourselves and our communities.

These challenges are daunting but also exciting, presenting us with tasks for which the energy and creativity of every one of us will be needed. Can we find a way to talk about that excitement which could encourage others to explore these ideas? Can we develop projects to put those ideas into action, even if only on a small scale? When we have tried to articulate this worldview in plain language in recent political lectures and discussions, we have found that a growing number of people not only will listen but are hungry for such honesty.

We don’t pretend that number is large right now — certainly not a majority, and not anywhere near the number needed for a mass movement — but one wouldn’t expect that in this affluent society in which many people are still insulated from the worst consequences of these systems. But that’s changing. As more and more people, from many sectors of society, face these realities, they join the search for a community in which to confront this together. Our political work should focus on connecting with people on common ground, articulating a realistically radical analysis, and working from there to construct a just and sustainable society.

So, we will vote on Nov. 4, without hesitation. But more importantly, on Nov. 5 we will be realistic and continue talking about the radical change necessary to build a different world.

Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Pat Youngblood, a social studies teacher at McCallum High School in Austin, are members of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, www.thirdcoastactivist.org. Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and Youngblood can be reached at pat@thirdcoastactivist.org. A version of this article appeared in the Community Alliance newspaper in Fresno, CA.

Source / CommonDreams / Published Oct. 23, 2008

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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CodePink Austin Gives Cornyn the (Pink) Slip

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Photo by Deborah Vanko / The Rag Blog

‘Rather than giving the Senator another term to “move to the center,” we think he should keep following the Bush administration right out the door.‘
By Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / October 27, 2008

Say, was that a giant pink slip displayed across the street from US Senator John Cornyn’s office on Friday morning? I believe it was!

At about the same time the pink slip was flying downtown, the Austin American Statesman was running a Cornyn ad on its home page.

Strangely, the AAS editorial board endorses the senator, even while admitting that he has been “little more than an agent of the Bush administration.”

Rather than giving the Senator another term to “move to the center,” we think he should keep following the Bush administration right out the door.

The CodePink delivery service reported that the message was well received among morning commuters, even though parking garage security were soon on the case, ordering the slip team to roll it up and threatening to “cut it down with a knife.” Notta lotta drama in the parking garage most of the time, I’m guessin.

After being kicked out, the pink slippers decided to walk the banner to another garage and unfurl it again. All together, the pink slip flew for about an hour.

I wonder how much the Cornyn campaign pays to run a Statesman ad. The parking garage cost $4 — and a little strategery.

[Susan Van Haitsma also blogs as makingpeace at Statesman.com and at makingpeace.]

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Some Straight Talk on Socialism and Bullshit

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

The late great American socialist Norman Thomas. Photo courtesy of The Bancroft Library / University of California, Berkeley.

‘The Republican vocabulary has always involved mindless terminology, word choices that cause apprehension and fear in the uninformed, such as “socialism.”’
By Dr. S. R. Keister / The Rag Blog / October 27, 2008

In listening to the McCain/Palin campaigns, within tolerance, I recall a most wonderful pocket sized book by Harry G. Frankfurt, professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. The title is aptly “On Bullshit”. The absurd dialectic of our Republic and friends regarding “Socialism” and “Spreading The Wealth” certainly requires further analysis of the terminology suggested by Dr. Frankfurt. For those of us who consider the term “bullshit” impolite one might consider a synonym such as humbug, balderdash, claptrap, hokum, drivel, buncombe, or quackery.

The Republican vocabulary has always involved mindless terminology, word choices that cause apprehension and fear in the uninformed, such as “death tax,” “partial birth abortion,” “terrorist,” “socialism.” The propagandist creates non-events, or non-persons, to control the thinking of the unsophisticated , undereducated, or the undeniably bigoted. “Mind control” or “brainwashing” might be the appropriate terms.

But to the subject of “socialism.” I was first introduced to a ”socialist” at the tender age of 11. My father, a Harvard Law School graduate, Unitarian, small town attorney, an admirer of Eugene Debs and Clarence Darrow, was in 1932 running for congress on the Socialist ticket. He of course did not win. Norman Thomas, perennial candidate for President on the Socialist ticket throughout the 20s and 30s was the guest speaker at a rally. Thomas was a soft spoken man, a Presbyterian minister, who believed that wealth should not be concentrated in the hands of a few, but should be distributed among those who were willing to work for same.

He was a pacifist who had opposed U.S. involvement in the first World War. He believed in cooperative endeavor such as was illustrated at one time by the Amana settlements in the American mid-west or the Israeli kibbutz. My memories of Mr. Thomas now are vague but I recall he was kindly, admired my mother’s rock-garden, and at the rally dumbfounded the audience by paraphrasing the Bible, i.e. “The world is the LANDLORDS and the fullness therein.”

One problem one faced throughout near all of the 20th century was ”Russian socialism.” Of course there was no such thing. Karl Marks, a political philosopher, in das Capital never promulgated a regime such as that in the Soviet Union. “Communist Russia” was the creation of Lenin and Trotsky. Trotsky believed in a republic where the worker was represented in all affairs of state. Trotsky was assassinated as an exile in Mexico for his thinking. Instead Lenin, and later Stalin, created an autocracy, the antithesis of true socialism, with a dictator dominating the working class and reducing them to near medieval vassalage.

The term “National Socialist” appeared in Germany in 1932. Again this was a complete misnomer as the Nazis were Fascists. Fascism had no use for the worker, as it was a union of an autocratic, right wing regimen, with big business and the military. Sounds vaguely familiar?

Mr. McCain, and his vice-presidential candidate, a follower of The New Apostolic Reformation want the ill informed public to be confused regarding the meaning of socialism. As with all propaganda they endeavor to turn something functional into something evil. Where can we find “socialism” in the world today. The best current functional examples are in the Scandinavian nations, i.e. Denmark, Norway, Sweden. In general, though there are some variations from country to country, these folks have a good standard of living throughout the population. These are elected parliamentary governments. They have private enterprise, with mutually agreeable unionization between the employers and the employees.

The average person has a very nice, but not elaborate, house or apartment, a decent automobile, and first class public transportation. Taxes are a shade higher than the combined taxes of the American taxpayer (income tax, social security tax, sales taxes, transfer taxes, etc) but they receive first class free medical care, and free education through college and university when qualified, as well as first class unemployment and retirement benefits. The worker, as well as the executive, receives decent vacation time. They are not burdened with health insurance premiums, either as employer or individual, with the profits going to the CEOs and insurance company stockholders as in the United States.

The current Spanish government, though the titular ruler is the King, Juan Carlos, is run by a socialist prime minister and interestingly with the financial control of the Spanish banks the current USA/ European banking crises has not involved the Spanish banking system, thanks to its government oversight, to the extent we are experiencing in the United States. The Spanish Democracy has come far in the past half century from the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco with its militaristic, two class society. The Socialist government of Francois Mitterand made great progress in the French Republic after the De Gaulle years.

A few final thoughts regarding Norman Thomas. When FDR was elected President in 1932 he incorporated many of Thomas’s thoughts into The New Deal, such as Social Security (which McCain would privatize), public works programs, which Obama espouses at present, a modicum of control on the banks and stock exchange (done away with by the current neo-liberal economic thinkers starting with President Reagan), educational subsidies, and the idea of giving the working man the fruits of his labor (wealth redistribution) rather than 98% of the countries wealth going to three per cent of the population. Did the Lord create the USA just for three per cent of its citizens?

I realize that the readers of The Rag Blog are the better educated, more public spirited folks hereabouts, but in someway in the next week we must get the truth out to the general public. The real bigots, the true believers, will not be swayed; however, with luck, we will force a few folks to face the truth. The truth about socialism and no more bullshit.

[S. R. Keister, a retired physician, is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.}

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Sarah Palin : Queen for a Day (Or Two)

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘In Obama’s absence, the McCain-Palin campaign continued to self-implode.’
By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / October 26, 2008

Less than a dozen days till the presidential election. A fiction writer couldn’t have come up with the political plot changes of the past two months. I will be glad when something else dominates the news but for now the down-to-the-wire dynamics of this presidential race still offer a smorgasbord of story possibilities. For instance, imagine a U.S. presidential candidate calling a break from campaigning a dozen days before election day. Barack Obama left the campaign trail for two days and flew to visit his critically ill grandmother in Hawaii. It was a last visit with the beloved woman who guided his early life. He then jetted back to the mainland to resume campaigning.

In Obama’s absence, the McCain-Palin campaign continued to self-implode. Headlines focus not upon their constantly changing message, but upon details of fleshed-out GOP campaign financial filings with the Federal Election Commission. The Republican National Committee has already lavished $150,000 for luxury shopping sprees to clothe America’s Hockey Mom and her tag-along family. RNC campaign cash for Mrs. Palin still gushes forth. The New York Times reports a dazzling new GOP tab and it’s a beauty. The top salary paid in the first half of October was not to a McCain campaign strategy Guru, but to a makeup artist.

The two week stipend for the haute blush-dauber was $22,800 just to dandy up the Hockey Mom’s face for the bright lights of arena halls and news photogs. Queen Nefertiti should have looked so good. Her hairdo was a bargain basement deal with the Cindy-McCain-recommended California salon stylist being paid only ten grand, reported by the RNC as “Communication Consulting” for those two weeks. The GOP is making up Sarah Palin but The NY Times is not making up anything. And America is getting the message.

The faithful right wing voter base still overlooks McCain’s increasingly frequent senior moment gaffes, but his VP choice has gone beyond the Pale in the minds of huge numbers of the faithful. Coughing up that much donated cash to doll up a dud with more than lipstick has struck a nerve with decided as well as undecided voters.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Trick or Treat : Sarah Palin in 2012

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Sarah Palin on Halloween: Now THAT’S scary.

If conservatives keep jumping Repug ship, then Palin’s the one.
By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / October 26, 2008

McCain can have only two hopes left in 2008: the Bradley Effect is stronger than anybody imagines or Osama bin Laden does him a favor just before the election by hitting the US in some manner.

Barring one of those happenings, that’s it for McCain. He will have been destroyed twice by Karl Rove politics, from the outside in 2000 and from the inside in 2008. But we have not seen the last of Palin.

Prediction: Palin will be a contender for the Repug presidential nomination in 2012.

Whether she will get it depends on what the conservatives do after this election. By this I mean the textbook economic/foreign affairs conservatives who have never been comfortable with the bedroom police.

Right now, the conservatives are either jumping ship to Obama or staying home on election day.

If they return to the Repugs, they will have to contest with the evangelicals for the soul of the GOP.

If they do not return, Palin will get the nomination. The only one who can contest her is Huckabee, and he’s too good-natured for that crowd. Anger beats good nature every time in that demographic.

That begs this question: if thinking conservatives do not return to the GOP, where do they go? I expect a few high profile ones will have jobs in the Obama administration but they will not be running things, so I don’t know if the Dems can hold them. But the evangelicals don’t trust them. So do they form a new Whig party or something?

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Rice University : A Beer That Fights Cancer and Heart Disease!

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Genetic engineering could give Joe Six Pack anti-aging and cancer-fighting benefits
By Sharon Gaudin / October 21, 2008

Have you ever picked up a cold, frosty beer on a hot summer’s day and thought that it simply couldn’t get any better?

Well, you may have to think again.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin in June had called resveratrol, which is a natural component of grapes, pomegranates and red wine, a key reason for the so-called French Paradox — the observation that French people have lower rates of heart disease despite a cuisine known for its cream sauces and decadent cheeses, all loaded with heart-clogging saturated fats.

The Wisconsin researchers had noted that adding small doses of resveratrol to the diet of middle-aged mice significantly slows their aging and keeps their hearts healthy. And they added that giving high doses to invertebrates extends their life spans, and high doses also stave off premature death in mice fed a high-fat diet.

Stevenson said that the Rice research group, most of the members of which aren’t old enough to legally drink alcoholic beverages, came up with the idea of adding resveratrol to beer during a casual conversation about potential projects to undertake. “The idea is that it may have greater effects [in beer than in wine],” he added. “The amount of red wine you’d need to drink to get the same results they get with rats in labs is about half a bottle a day.”

He explained that the amount of resveratrol in wine varies from bottle to bottle, since it depends on growing conditions for the grapes and other variables. The researchers felt they could design a beer with higher and more consistent concentrations of the cancer-fighting chemical.

The students, using their own Dell, Lenovo ThinkPad and Gateway laptops, are now in the process of developing a genetically modified strain of yeast that will ferment beer and produce resveratrol at the same time. Stevenson said that as the research advances, the team will need to use one of Rice University’s computer grids to run compute-heavy genetic models.

The Rice effort is the latest in a series of projects that use technology to find cures to major health concerns like cancer and heart disease.

In August, scientists at Stanford University announced that they have found a way to use nanotechnology to have chemotherapy drugs target only cancer cells, keeping healthy tissue safe from the treatment’s toxic effects.

And in July, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, reported that they had discovered a way to use nanotechnology-based “smart bombs” to streamline lower doses of chemotherapy treatments to cancerous tumors, cutting down on the cancer’s ability to spread throughout the body.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin announced in May that they had developed a silicon chip that they say can more quickly and accurately diagnose heart attacks.

Stevenson noted that the lab strains of yeast the team used initially certainly wouldn’t produce a tasty beer. The taste issue is why the team this summer turned to the Saint Arnold Brewing Co., a craft brewery in Houston, for some good beer-making yeast to use. In general, the addition of the resveratrol shouldn’t affect the taste of the beer, since the chemical is odorless and tasteless, he said.

“We’re now putting these genes into the yeast,” he added. “We’re fairly confident that it will work because all the components have worked separately.”

Stevenson said the modified yeast strain could one day be sold to breweries where beverage companies could make their own disease-fighting beer. He noted that the research and development phase of the effort could take five years.

The research team is looking to enter their so-called BioBeer in the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine competition next month in Cambridge, Mass.

Source / Computerworld

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Don’t Write Off That Attack on Iran Quite Yet

Posted on October 26, 2008 by RagBlog


Waiting for the Curtain to Rise
By Alexander Cockburn / October 24, 2008

So what happened to the Bush/Cheney pre-election attack on Iran? It’s like everything else. You think you have months. You put it on one side, in the “things to be done tomorrow” pile. Suddenly it’s a matter of weeks, then days. Then the moment just slips away. The father of one of my neighbors here in Petrolia had been a captain in the Wehrmacht and fought at Stalingrad. He’s dead now but a few years ago my brother Andrew once asked him, “Captain, what happened at Stalingrad?” “Vell, Andrew, the Fuehrer wanted to avoid casualties. Und then the equipment was running out. A tank here, a tank there. Und then..then it was too late!”

I guess Bush and Cheney are too busy working on the pardons to have time for anything else like an attack on Iran. . But don’t fret. Joe Biden hints that he and Obama are working on it, though they may declare war on Russia first. Or Venezuela. So much to do in those first 100 days. An empire in October will still be an Empire next January. We’ll have continuity.

“Mark my words,” Biden said solemnly at a Seattle fundraiser last Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden went on. He mentioned the Middle East and Russia. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

What exactly is Biden hinting at in that last sentence? From the context of that whole paragraph it’s clear enough to me he’s suggesting that despite hopes that post-Bush/Cheney America might backpeddle from hasty military confrontations, President Obama will stand tall and lose no time in going eyeball to eyeball with those who would test his resolve.

When JFK was worried that his mettle was being tested and he might look like a wimp, we got the Berlin crisis of July, 1961. We got right to the brink of World War Three.

So don’t write off that attack on Iran quite yet. On Iran Obama is more hawkish than McCain; on Afghanistan and Pakistan too.

A Ha’aretz story for July 28 of this year reported that in their meeting of July 24 “Obama reportedly told Olmert that he is interested in meeting the Iranians in order to issue clear ultimatums. “If after that, they still show no willingness to change their nuclear policy, then any action against them would be legitimate,” an Israeli source quoted him as saying.”

As CounterPuncher Marc Schuler, who sent me the quote, remarks, “To me, Obama is saying he’ll ‘fix’ the negotiations just like the intel on Iraq was ‘fixed’. This sounds very much like Bush-style negotiations. Deliver an ultimatum, then if the other side doesn’t just surrender and comply, start the military attacks.”

“I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know,” Biden says. It’s probably true. In the US Congress the bar is set very low. I remember in the debate with Sarah Palin Biden was praised in the press for his effortless mastery of detail. Jonah Goldberg wrote a funny piece in the Los Angeles Times about this chorus of approval for Biden’s knowledgeable aplomb:

Biden was at ease; he easily rattled off a string of falsehoods and gasbaggeries.

According to the master senator, the U.S. and France “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.” Afterward, according to Biden, “I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.’ ” Perhaps Biden meant to say the U.S. and France kicked Syria out of Lebanon. But even this is woefully glib. Syria never fully abandoned Lebanon. And there was no “vacuum” for Hezbollah to fill. The terrorist group was already firmly in control of southern Lebanon and part of the government. No one remembers Biden and Obama fighting for the stupidly impossible NATO move either….

The constitutional law professor scornfully mocked Dick Cheney because the vice president “doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president. That’s the executive branch.” Wrong. Article I defines the Legislature, Article II the executive branch. Both define the role of the VP.

The scrapper from Scranton boasted about bonding with the common folks at a restaurant that’s been closed for two decades.

Biden’s lucky in having an opponent for the vice presidential slot who’s now drawing about 95 per cent of the press coverage for the entire campaign. There’s no space for nasty questions about his very special relationship to MBNA, the largest independent credit card company in the world, or for the immense favors he did for the credit card industry as a whole with the bankruptcy bill that even Bill Clinton vetoed before Bush finally signed it. But did anything ever so clearly indicate the truly incredible stupidity of McCain’s team of strategists, handlers and consultants than the disaster the Palin candidacy has become?

I thought the original choice of Palin wasn’t a bad one, from the point of view of the McCain campaign.. Most people would certainly rather look at the governor of Alaska on TV than, say, the governor of Massachusetts and, after some judicious voice coaching for which we haven’t yet seen the price tag, even rather listen to her too. On the general principle that state troopers are the scum of the law-enforcement pond, I was all for the Palins’ efforts to fire the Taser-happy former in brother-in-law. She was a fresh gust in the rank, stale air of Campaign 008. So instead in buying Palin a couple of new outfits in slightly upgraded sync with her unpretentious Alaska wardrobe the handlers went hog wild in Nieman Marcus and unleashed $150,000. Then they dropped $24,000 in two weeks on her hair stylist. So much for the spokeswoman for the ordinary folk. The only encouraging aspect of the $24,000 was that it was twice what McCain’s economic and foreign policy advisers were paid, showing a correct sense of priorities. Mind you, the economist should be off the payroll altogether, since he destroyed McCain’s only shot at the White House by not advising him to oppose the bailout. The foreign policy man presumably has his subsidies from the Georgian president to fall back on.

Sarah Palin’s job was to firm up the evangelical base, which has never trusted McCain. She’s done that. But then the handlers send her into a metrosexual, ultraliberal sinkhole like Saturday Night Live where she gets made a fool of. A Christian evangelical friend of mine called mournfully the next mourning to tell me than he’d previously rated Palin at 100 per cent, but after seeing her consorting on SNL with the likes of Alec Baldwin he’d dropped his approval to 75 per cent and would never think about her in the quite the same way again. (Mind you, he told me a few days later he wasn’t bothered about the wardrobe and hair expenses and said Palin fans in his part of the country thought it was one more sign of the bias of the liberal media. “She’s a star now, Alex. You can’t blame her for wanting to look pretty.”)

All the same, a real instinct for populism, right or left, means going to Muncie, Indiana and sounding as though you cared that half the city is out of work, not chirping about Alaska’s god-given resources. You would have thought that even Palin would have realized that. The way things are going for the Palin-Wurzelbacher ticket, she’ll have plenty of time for post-mortems and if-onlys back in Alaska. At least McCain has remembered to come out for parents’ choice on infant vaccination.

So far as the progressives and the left are concerned, Palin’s useful function has been to detain them from misgivings about the Democratic ticket which 98 per cent of them are going to vote for. From the vantage point of 2008 I wouldn’t blame Al Gore or John Kerry from feeling that maybe there’s been a double standard at work here, between the rough treatment they got from the left and from radical environmentalists, as compared to the well-mannered silence about Obama’s call for a 90,000 increase in the Armed Forces, his endorsement of nuclear power, “clean coal”, warrantless wire-tapping, tort reform, real ID, groveling to the bankers and the Israel lobby and so forth. K St loves Obama. So do the defense contractors. They love Biden too. Just to refresh your memories of what a progressive platform actually looks like, take a look at the website of the Nader campaign. Like the U.S. senators’ knowledge of foreign policy, the bar these days for what the left finds bearable is awfully low. The more the left holds its tongue, the lower the bar will go.

Alexander Cockburn can be reached at: alexandercockburn@asis.com.

Source / CounterPunch

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Guantanamo Irregularities Yield Military Probe

Posted on October 26, 2008 by RagBlog

Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, in a June 4, 2008 file photo. Photo: Brennan Linsley/Reuters.

U.S. general target of Guantanamo probe
By Danica Coto / October 26, 2008

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The U.S. air force is investigating a senior Pentagon official who was reassigned last month amid accusations of misconduct while overseeing the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals, according to a former chief prosecutor.

An investigation against air force Brig.-Gen. Thomas Hartmann was recently opened following a complaint from a military defence lawyer, air force Col. Morris Davis told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Davis said air force Brig.-Gen. Steven Lepper first called him two weeks ago to interview him about the complaints against Hartmann. The questions focused on Hartmann’s influence on the prosecution of cases, Davis said.

“I’m optimistic that this current round of investigations will lead to something productive,” said Davis, who quit as chief prosecutor in October 2007 after clashing with Hartmann.

Defence lawyers and human rights groups have accused Hartmann, who supervised the prosecution of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, of lacking neutrality and pushing for prosecutions that would captivate the public for political gain, even before the detainees were ready to be charged.

The Los Angeles Times first reported the investigations of Hartmann on Saturday.

It said both the air force and the Department of Defence’s Office of the Inspector General have launched separate investigations into Hartmann’s conduct.

Joseph DellaVedova, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, said it was an air force investigation and declined further comment.

“It’s an ongoing investigation and inappropriate to say anything until it is complete,” he wrote in an email.

The investigation shows that serious questions remain about the fairness of the commissions, said Jennifer Daskal, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch.

“The Department of Defence has absolutely refused to clean house,” she said. “This may be the final straw. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Hartmann was appointed director of operations, planning and development for military commissions in September after serving as the commissions’ legal adviser. The move took him away from direct supervision of the prosecution.

Two judges had previously barred him from acting as legal adviser for a lack of impartiality, and military colleagues have said he was abusive and unprofessional.

Among the cases he was barred from acting on was that of Canadian Omar Khadr, with a judge ruling last month that Hartmann had created the appearance that he would be “unable to remain neutral and impartial.”

Khadr, 22, has been held for six years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He is accused of throwing a hand grenade that killed an American medic after a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15.

His trial is set for January.

Daniel Dell’Orto, the Defence Department’s acting general counsel, has previously credited Hartmann for his effort and dedication in driving the commissions process forward.

Davis said the new investigation was opened following complaints from defence lawyer air force Maj. David Frakt.

Source / Toronto Star

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Canada: Where Torture Is Condemned

Posted on October 26, 2008 by RagBlog

Former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci found that Canadian security services probably contributed indirectly to the torture in Syria of three Arab Canadians suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. Photo: Chris Wattie/Reuters

Prejudice in a post-9/11 world
By Haroon Siddiqui / October 26, 2008

It bears repeating that all Canadians, born or naturalized, are entitled to equal treatment

The mere mention of Muslims, especially in the context of terrorism, brings out the worst in some people. The bigotry is not restricted to the United States but present in Canada as well, albeit on a much smaller scale.

I had a phone message Thursday in response to my last column, Disturbing complicity on torture, about former justice Frank Iacobucci’s report on the detention and mistreatment of three Arab Canadians abroad.

“More Muslims faking it,” hissed the man. “Are you actually suggesting that each of these three guys get another $10 million like we wasted on Arar? You f—— Muslims!

“These are not Canadians. They are not born in this country …

“No one gives a s— about this 544-page report. What that cost the Canadian taxpayers? More money wasted on f——, bad immigrants.

“Why don’t you go back to the hole-in-the-wall country that you came from and take all these other fake people, claiming to have been tortured, that no Canadian citizen gives a f— about.”

Crude words, clearly unrepresentative of Canadians. But the sentiment, not all that isolated in the post-9/11 world, must be addressed, as also related concerns that are not racist. We have all heard versions of the following arguments:

* The four Arab Canadians in question must have done something wrong to attract the attention of the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, whose job it is to protect all of us.
* The four were tortured in Syria and Egypt; why is Canada culpable?
* Why don’t they – indeed, all Arab/Muslim Canadians – condemn the many wrongs in the Muslim world, rather than whine about our infinitesimally smaller problems?

The answers bear repeating.

All Canadians, born or naturalized, are entitled to equal treatment. Those breaking the law must be charged, not tortured – here, there or anywhere – with Canadian complicity. They should not have their lives ruined by false allegations, especially by officials on the taxpayers’ payroll.

Canadians live in Canada under Canadian norms, not Syrian, Egyptian or American. We do not do Guantanamo Bay.

Nor do we believe in tarring Canadians here with the crimes of faraway kith or kin, real or assumed. If we did, we would have held Serb Canadians responsible for the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

The issue of torture is not just about these four Canadians, though they alone were the victims of it. It is about Canada and Canadian values. Do our democratic foundational principles matter?

They do.

Justice Dennis O’Connor exonerated Maher Arar and Ottawa provided redress.

Now Iacobucci, a former Supreme Court judge, has demonstrated how Canadian officials were complicit in the torture of Abdullah Almalki, held 22 months in a Damascus dungeon; Ahmad El Maati, held there for two months and for 24 months in Egypt; and Muayyed Nureddin, held 33 days in the same Syrian cell.

Unlike O’Connor, Iacobucci was not asked to pass judgment on the guilt or innocence of the three men. He has anyway, having interviewed 44 witnesses under oath, examined more than 40,000 documents and consulted torture experts.

He found the allegations against the three (that they were potential terrorists and a danger to society) to be variously “inaccurate or imprecise,” “misleading,” “inflammatory and lacking interrogative foundation.”

Unlike O’Connor, Iacobucci was not asked to make recommendations. He did anyway, implicitly, by listing a whole catalogue of “deficiencies” in the security services and foreign affairs that clearly need fixing.

The officials implicated are lucky that Iacobucci let them off the hook. He said they were not acting out of malice. But his findings about the three Canadians are as chilling as O’Connor’s were about Arar. (You can read it, by Googling Iacobucci and Internal Inquiry.)

As he writes, we must “do everything possible to protect our country,” but must do so “by means that are governed by the rule of law,” maintaining “genuine respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadian citizens.”

That’s what’s at stake here: the integrity of Canada.

Typically, the Stephen Harper government tried to minimize the impact of the report – not giving the media or the three victims and their advocates enough time to digest it, and then quickly grafting its own spin on it, saying that all the needed reforms are already underway.

We do not know that to be so.

When the new Parliament meets, its relevant committees (public safety, justice, foreign affairs) should pursue all the Iacobucci and O’Connor recommendations.

There’s another guilty party in all this. The media were also complicit in destroying the lives of these four Canadians. Reporters and editors who recycled tainted information supplied by unnamed sources should be publicly recanting and debating how not to repeat such mistakes ever again.

Groups such as Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, the Canadian Journalism Foundation, PEN Canada, the Ontario Press Council , as well as schools of journalism should be organizing public debates.

Media credibility was no less tattered by these episodes than that of the security establishment and other federal bureaucracies.

The latter were put under the microscope by two eminent judges, commissioned by the government under public pressure. Only the media continue to escape detailed public scrutiny.

Not all is gloom and doom.

Lest we forget, Canada is the only country in the world to have the moral compass, and the self-confidence, to have had two judicial reviews of post-9/11 wrongs.

We are all the better for it.

Source / Toronto Star

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Twitter: Diabolical Terrorist Tool?

Posted on October 26, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Army surveillance photo of Twitter terrorist conspiring with comrades.

Army report: ‘Twitter was recently used as a countersurveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention.’
By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / October 26, 2008

A report by the Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion has identified a potential threat to National security in the seemingly innocuous and ubiquitous Twitter application. It’s seems this social networking (socnet) site has more disturbing uses than mere microblogging of current personal activities and favorite websites. One of the examples given of the nefarious possibilities that such applications provide is quoted here.

“Twitter was recently used as a countersurveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention,” the report notes.”The activists would Tweet each other and their Twitter pages to add information on what was happening with Law Enforcement near real time.”

Disturbing as that news may be, there are apparently more frightening uses of Twitter that could even now be posing threats to our homeland security. According to the report, Twitter in combination with cell phone cameras and GPS features could be used for anything from infiltrating our borders (evidently so well-protected that advanced technologies are required) to the planting of a wide range terrorists devices.

Even though the real threat posed by this use of this popular microblogging media is minimal (judging by the ease of identifying all Twitter posts that refer to the 2008 election and displaying them on the Twitter “Election 08” site), I hope we will all take this warning seriously and report any suspicious characters or activity to our local Homeland Security authorities.

I guess the real message we can take from this is that any tool that enhances unfiltered communication among citizens can be viewed with suspicion. This report reminds us how surreal our world has become.

Spy Fears: Twitter Terrorists, Cell Phone Jihadists
By Noah Shachtman / October 24, 2008

Could Twitter become terrorists’ newest killer app? A draft Army intelligence report, making its way through spy circles, thinks the miniature messaging software could be used as an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks.

For years, American analysts have been concerned that militants would take advantage of commercial hardware and software to help plan and carry out their strikes. Everything from online games to remote-controlled toys to social network sites to garage door openers has been fingered as possible tools for mayhem.

This recent presentation — put together on the Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and found on the Federation of the American Scientists website — focuses on some of the newer applications for mobile phones: digital maps, GPS locators, photo swappers, and Twitter mash-ups of it all.

The report is roughly divided into two halves. The first is based mostly on chatter from Al-Qaeda-affiliated online forums. One Islamic extremist site discusses, for example, the benefits of “using a mobile phone camera to monitor the enemy and its mechanisms.” Another focuses on the benefits of the Nokia 6210 Navigator, and how its GPS utilities could be used for “marksmanship, border crossings, and in concealment of supplies.” Such software could allow jihadists to pick their way across multiple routes, identifying terrain features as they go. A third extremist forum recommends the installation of voice-modification software to conceal one’s identity when making calls. Excerpts from a fourth site show cell phone wallpapers that wannabe jihadists can use to express their affinity for radicalism:

Click on image to enlarge.

Then the presentation launches into an even-more theoretical discussion of how militants might pair some of these mobile applications with Twitter, to magnify their impact. After all, “Twitter was recently used as a countersurveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention,” the report notes.”The activists would Tweet each other and their Twitter pages to add information on what was happening with Law Enforcement near real time.”

Terrorists haven’t done anything similar, the Army report concedes – although it does note that there are “multiple pro and anti Hezbollah Tweets.” Instead, the presentation lays out three possible scenarios in which Twitter could become a militant’s friend:

Scenario 1: Terrorist operative “A” uses Twitter with… a cell phone camera/video function to send back messages, and to receive messages, from the rest of his [group]… Other members of his [group] receive near real time updates (similar to the movement updates that were sent by activists at the RNC) on how, where, and the number of troops that are moving in order to conduct an ambush.

Scenario 2: Terrorist operative “A” has a mobile phone for Tweet messaging and for taking images. Operative “A” also has a separate mobile phone that is actually an explosive device and/or a suicide vest for remote detonation. Terrorist operative “B” has the detonator and a mobile to view “A’s” Tweets and images. This may allow ”B” to select the precise moment of remote detonation based on near real time movement and imagery that is being sent by “A.”

Scenario 3: Cyber Terrorist operative “A” finds U.S. [soldier] Smith’s Twitter account. Operative “A” joins Smith’s Tweets and begins to elicit information from Smith. This information is then used for… identity theft, hacking, and/or physical [attacks]. This scenario… has already been discussed for other social networking sites, such as My Space and/or Face Book.
Steven Aftergood, a veteran intelligence analyst at the Federation of the American Scientists, doesn’t dismiss the Army presentation out of hand. But nor does he think it’s tackling a terribly seriously threat. “Red-teaming exercises to anticipate adversary operations are fundamental. But they need to be informed by a sense of what’s realistic and important and what’s not,” he tells Danger Room. “If we have time to worry about ‘Twitter threats’ then we’re in good shape. I mean, it’s important to keep some sense of proportion.”
Source / Wired

Go here for the presentation produced by the Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and found on the Federation of the American Scientists website.

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Trouble in Paradise : ‘Diva’ Palin ‘Goes Rogue’

Posted on October 26, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign’s already-tense internal dynamics.
….
“She’s lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,” said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to “go rogue” in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

“I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said.

Ben Smith / Politico / Oct. 26, 2008

Palin a Diva? Ruffled Feathers in McCain Camp
October 26, 2008

ABC News’ Kate Snow and Imtiyaz Delawala report: While Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin often speaks on the campaign trail of having “ruffled feathers” during her time as governor of Alaska, the Republican vice presidential nominee appears to have ruffled feathers within the McCain camp.

Aides to Sen. John McCain anonymously attacked Palin in several reports today, criticizing the Alaska governor for diverting from the McCain campaign’s message, suggesting Palin was unhappy with certain campaign aides and accusing her of thinking more about her political future than about the success of the McCain-Palin ticket.

In an interview with CNN today, one McCain adviser anonymously called Palin “a diva” and said “she is playing for her own future” political prospects.

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” the advisor told CNN. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: divas trust only unto themselves as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

Another McCain aide anonymously told The Politico that Palin has been “going rogue” by criticizing strategic decisions by the McCain campaign, such as their use of robocalls against Sen. Barack Obama in recent weeks, and the decision to pull out of the state of Michigan in early October.

The report in Politico cited tensions between the Palin and McCain camps, saying that Palin had become frustrated with McCain top advisors Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace. The two aides were key in formulating the early media strategy for Palin, limiting her to two major interviews with network news anchors Charles Gibson and Katie Couric –- both of which were widely criticized.

Schmidt and Wallace do not regularly travel with Palin, although they have during critical moments, including when she returned to Alaska for her first network interview with ABC’s Gibson, and during her week of secluded debate preparation at McCain’s ranch in Sedona, Arizona.

Wallace told ABC News today, “If folks want to lay this at my feet and throw me under the bus, my belief is that the graceful thing to do is to lie there.”

Since the early limiting of Palin’s exposure to the media, Palin has now become far more accessible, answering questions from the traveling press twice last weekend, as well as conducting regular interviews with local television stations, conservative media outlets, and national news organizations with greater frequency in recent weeks.

Last Sunday, Palin took part in an impromptu media availability with traveling press on the tarmac of the Colorado Springs, Colo., airport — without giving advance notice to her own advisers.

When Palin walked off the plane in Colorado Springs, the Alaska governor headed towards local television cameras on her own to answer questions, where she was quickly swarmed by national media.

One high-level McCain aide defended the decision to hold back on more exposure of Palin to the press in the early weeks after the Republican National Convention.

“I don’t regret the campaign making those decisions,” the aide told ABC News, saying nothing would have changed if Palin had given a press conference in the early stages of the campaign.

“Sarah Palin is treated the way Sarah Palin is treated,” the aide said of media criticism of the Alaska governor.

The McCain aide also disputed the notion that Palin has been freelancing for the benefit of her own political fortunes, saying she has been a “team player” through the general election. The aide also defended the decisions that have been made in the Palin campaign, and says the criticism being tossed at the vice presidential nominee now are what happens as the campaign faces potentially losing the election.

Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt responded to the Politico report Saturday morning, telling reporters aboard the Palin campaign plane in Sioux City, Iowa, that “unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from Governor Palin down, we have one agenda, and that’s to win on Election Day.”

Another Palin aide said late today that the governor was aware of the reports of infighting on her staff and comments about her but had shrugged it off.

“She saw it and laughed and said, ‘OK now where’s our next rally?'” the aide said. The aide said Palin is focused on the next nine days and has shown no sign of preparing for a political future beyond the prospect of being vice president.

Source / Political Radar / ABC News

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