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Jul 29 2010
“Inception” in Afghanistan
Among the two or three ideas which the recent American movie “Inception” ponderously expounds is what you might call the increasing speed of consciousness of dreams within dreams.
While only a minute passes in reality, the dreamer experiences hours in a dream, and maybe months in the dream within that dream, and so on until the most embedded dream extends forever, in one heartbeat of the sleeping body which hosts the dreams.
This is exactly the opposite order of so many nightmares within nightmares which compose the American occupation of Afghanistan.
A village which somehow endured for a thousand years is destroyed in one second by American bombers, and at the next level of reality in some miserable refugee camp, opium-addicted mothers pass their addiction along to their children, and at the next level of reality those same children appear in an even more miserable orphanage, “with no doors or windows, and no food,” and at the next level…
Then, just as winter was coming, the government closed the orphanage. By the spring, only 160 kids returned. “They started working as laborers and slaves and couldn’t come back,” said Farid. “This winter the government wanted to send them back to the community, that means nowhere, then they don’t have food or somewhere to stay.” One boy was discovered in the market. He was covered in scabies, sleeping under the stalls, raped repeatedly.
And while those children descended month after month and year after year through so many levels of the infinite misery of ordinary reality in Afghanistan…
Meanwhile the American public snoozed peacefully in its idiotic delusions about the Global War on Terror, and President Obama has recently re-authorized the abject Patriot Act, as if nothing had happened and as if no time had passed since September 11, 2001.
Jul 23 2010
Bad News from Iraq, and More Bad News from Iraq, and…
A rocket attack on Thursday on the Green Zone, the heavily barricaded section of this city that contains the main government buildings and the United States Embassy, killed three foreign contractors who work for the embassy, and wounded 15, including two American citizens.
At least 15 Iraqis were killed Wednesday in a Diyala province car bombing, the third fatal bombing attack this week in the volatile region northeast of Baghdad.
A car bomb parked in the main marketplace in the small town of Qara Teppa, Khanaqeen district, 100 km to the east of Baquba, detonated Tuesday morning, targeting civilians, killing two including a little girl, and injuring 17, some of who were women and children. Toll may rise, said security authorities, because some of the injuries were serious.
A car bomb parked in the car park in front of a roadside diner in Jdaidat al Shat area, 20 km to the southwest of Baquba, exploded targeting Iranian pilgrims on their way to the sacred shrines, killing four pilgrims and injuring another four.
A car bomb parked near a car dealership and a much frequented cafe in New Baquba, central Baquba, detonated, at 9.30 p.m. Monday, killing at least nine civilians and injuring 27 more. Toll may rise, said security authorities, for the severity of some of the injuries.
A suicide bomber has killed at least 43 people and injured 40 more southwest of Baghdad, Iraqi police say.
Two people were killed and three injured in a car bomb blast in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday, police said. The bomb was attached to the car of a Kurdish family, according to a police source told the German Press Agency dpa.
A car bomb parked near an ice-cream parlour in Arbaeen Street, downtown Tikrit, detonated, Thursday, killing six people including three police officers and injuring 11 others, many of whom where women and children.
A roadside bomb targeted civilians in Adil neighbourhood, west Baghdad, at noon, Wednesday, killing two civilians and injuring two others. A roadside bomb targeted the car of Judge Hasen Aziz Abdurahman, of the Investigations’ Court, in Yarmouk neighbourhood, Tuesday, killing the judge.
Gunmen stormed the house of a Sufi Muslim cleric killing four people and wounding at least six others, in a town near Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.
Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when attackers blew up a house used as a headquarters for the army in Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of Baghdad, police said.
Gunmen using weapons equipped with silencers shot dead a university professor, Adnan Makki, at his home in al-Qadissiya district of southwestern Baghdad, police said.
Insurgents wearing military uniforms stormed Iraq’s central bank Sunday during an apparent robbery attempt, battling security forces in a three-hour standoff after bombs exploded nearby in a coordinated daylight attack that left as many as 26 people dead.
And so on.
Jul 20 2010
Secrets and Surprises
From the New York Times, July 14, 2010…
“If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many more thousands have been crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great,” Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, the father of the future vice president, said in March 1968 in a closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee.
And yes indeed, the country had been misled, but there were no consequences for any of the liars who lied us into Vietnam.
At another point, the committee’s chairman, Senator William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas, raised concerns that if the senators did not take a stand on the war, “We are just a useless appendix on the governmental structure.”
And thirty years later, in 2001 and 2003, that same “useless appendix,” the United States Senate, was once again stampeded into endorsing useless wars based on nothing but lies.
Even at the time, there was widespread skepticism about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the North Vietnamese were said to have attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after an earlier clash.
In the end, however, the senators did not further pursue their doubts. As Mr. Church said in one session that was focused on the staff report into the episode, if the committee came up with proof that an attack never occurred, “we have a case that will discredit the military in the United States, and discredit and quite possibly destroy the president.”
“We have a case that will discredit the military of the United States,” said Frank Church, but this was a ridiculous exaggeration.
Would their case have discredited private soldiers on the field of battle, bravely advancing against the enemy?
No!
Would their case have discredited junior officers or even brigade or division commanders?
No!
But their case would have totally discredited the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA, and the President of the United States, and was saving those goddamned liars more important than the 58,000 American soldiers who were killed in Vietnam?
Was saving those goddamned liars more important than the 2,000,000 Vietnamese civilians who perished in that senseless war?
And the answer was yes, for the Washington elite, and even for liberal Democrats like Frank Church and William Fulbright.
But would the American public have been so eager to sacrifice so many lives for nothing, if they had known the truth?
“In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them,” said Senator Frank Church.
“You cannot expect the people to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them.”
And how was the truth concealed?
Jul 19 2010
How Much Coast Can You Cover with 174,000,000 Gallons of Oil?
If we run with the current “high” estimate of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico at about 60,000 barrels per day, and making a generous allowance for BP’s partial containment at about 10,000 barrels per day…
Then a reasonable estimate of the total spill would be about 50,000 barrels per day, about 2,000,000 gallons, and in 87 days that adds up to about 174,000,000 gallons of oil.
A standard authority about the mechanics of oil slicks calculates the “critical” thickness at which a slick still presents a uniform black sheen at about 0.1 millimeter.
Google’s handy calculator of volumes reveals that 174,000,000 gallons is just about 660,000 cubic meters, and since 1 cubic meter of oil will cover 10,000 square meters to a depth of 0.1 millimeter…
We can now calculate that 660,000 cubic meters of oil can produce an oil slick which extends over 6,600,000,000 square meters.
The entire coastline of the United States is about 12,000 miles long, and since 6,600,000,000 square meters is about 2,500 square miles…
We can now calculate that 174,000,000 gallons of oil could cover the entire coastline of the United States for about 1000 feet inland from the tide-line.
And how would that look on a map?
Jul 17 2010
Gucci Cadillac LiLo
Why would a swarm of paparazzi follow this guy…
…who never wears sneakers, and never “designed” anything except a line of $1400 sneakers for Gucci?
Jul 16 2010
Whistleblowers and Warrantless Wiretaps
From Glenn Greenwald…
Most of what the U.S. Government does of any significance — literally — occurs behind a vast wall of secrecy, completely unknown to the citizenry. While a small portion of that is legitimately classified, these whistle blower prosecutions and other disclosure controversies demonstrate that the vast majority of this secrecy is devoted to avoiding embarrassment and accountability. It has nothing to do with “national security” — one of the all-justifying terms (along with Terrorism) for what the Government does. Secrecy is the religion of the political class, and the prime enabler of its corruption. That’s why whistle blowers are among the most hated heretics. They’re one of the very few classes of people able to shed a small amount of light on what actually takes place.
The great irony is that there is a perfect inverse relationship between the secrecy powers of the Government (which rapidly increase) and the privacy rights of citizens (which erode just as rapidly). The citizenry meekly acquiesces to the notion that it must sacrifice more and more privacy to the Government in order to deter and expose criminality, corruption and other dangerous acts of private citizens, yet refuses to apply that same rationale to demand greater transparency from the Government itself. The Government (and its private corporate partners) know more and more about citizens, while citizens know less and less about the actions of the government-corporate axis which governs them.
Glenn Greenwald posted this pearl in the pigpen of American political discourse on Bastille Day, July 14th, and isn’t all the relevant evidence excruciatingly familiar to all of us in the progressive blogosphere, and didn’t we totally overlook the simple and now obvious “inverse relationship between the secrecy powers of the Government and the privacy rights of citizens?”
So let’s take a moment to thank our (not very) lucky stars for bloggers like Glenn Greenwald and Paul Krugman and Dean Baker, and ask ourselves why all of them are blogging, instead of running the show.
Jul 14 2010
A Dingbat at CENTCOM
“Success is a poor teacher,” says General James N. Mattis, who has been nominated to replace David Petraeus as Commander of CENTCOM, in a strange loop-de-loop of Pentagon pecking order.
Petraeus moves down from overall command in Southwest Asia to run our miserable show in Afghanistan, and Mattis, who was previously passed over for Marine Corps Commandant, moves up.
Why?
Could it be his talent for winning hearts and minds?
“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.”
But even if Mattis isn’t exactly a hearts-and-minds kind of guy, maybe he inspires his troops to treat captive populations with sensitivity and respect!
“No better friend, no worse enemy.” The words echoed through 2nd Lieut. Ilario Pantano’s head on the afternoon of April 15, 2004. That was the motto of Lieut. General James Mattis, at the time the commander of the 1st Marine Division in Iraq.
On Feb. 1, the Marine Corps charged Pantano with at least seven violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including two counts of premeditated murder.
Apart from a few bad apples, what kind of operation made Mattis what he is today?
Mattis played a key role in the April 2004 battle of Fallujah, Operation Vigilant Resolve, by negotiating with the insurgent command inside of the city, as well as playing an important part in planning the subsequent Operation Phantom Fury in November.
Power! Fear! Stupidity!
On May 1, 2004, the United States withdrew from Fallujah, as Lieutenant General James Conway announced that he had unilaterally decided to turn over any remaining operations to the newly-formed Fallujah Brigade, which would be armed with US weapons and equipment under the command of former Ba’athist Army General Jasim Mohammed Saleh. Several days later, when it became clear that Saleh had been involved in military actions against Shi’ites under Saddam Hussein, US forces announced that Muhammed Latif would instead lead the brigade. Nevertheless, the group dissolved and had turned over all the US weapons to the insurgency by September, prompting the necessity of the Second Battle of Fallujah in November, which successfully occupied the city.
“Success is a poor teacher!”
So now we were totally ready for the Second Battle of Fallujah, precisely because of the total screaming failure of the First Battle of Fallujah!
And how did that work out for our friends in Iraq?
Before…
Fallujah in December, 2003
And after…
Before…
And after…
“It’s fun to shoot some people. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot.”
Jul 12 2010
Swiss Diss US, Polanski Skates!
Time Magazine was shocked!
Shock: Swiss Block Extradition, Free Roman Polanski
In yet another surprising twist to the 33-year-old case, Swiss officials have rejected a request by the U.S. government to extradite movie director Roman Polanski. Arrested in September, under house arrest since December, Polanski will go to bed Monday night a free man.
The Guardian celebrated!
The prurient hounding of Roman Polanski is over at last
Roman Polanski is a free man, at long last. Justice and reason have finally prevailed after nine months of mass hysteria on both sides of the Atlantic, hysteria and moralistic prejudices.
Twitter exploded with excitement!
Roman Polanski extradition rejection top Twitter trend
Roman Polanski’s still such a hot topic that when the news that his extradition to the United States was denied by the Swiss today, Monday, it was a top Twitter trend and a “hot topic” on Google Trends at the same time.
Worse yet, the best reporting about this mess appeared on Fox News, which was virtually the only venue which bothered to explain why the Swiss refused to extradite Polanski!
The Swiss government said it was denied access to confidential testimony given on Jan. 26 by Roger Gunson, the Los Angeles attorney in charge of the original prosecution against Polanski.
Fox also provided more background than most of the rest of the national media.
The Oscar-winning director of “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Chinatown” and “The Pianist” was accused of plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and part of a Quaalude during a 1977 modeling shoot and raping her. He was initially indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molestation and sodomy, but he pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse.
In exchange, the judge agreed to drop the remaining charges and sentence Polanski to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. However, he was released after 42 days by an evaluator who deemed him mentally sound and unlikely to offend again. The judge responded by saying he was going to send Polanski back to jail for the remainder of the 90 days and that afterward he would ask Polanski to agree to a “voluntary deportation.” Polanski fled the country on the eve of his Feb. 1, 1978, sentencing, and has not returned since.
90 days of “evaluation” for raping a 13-year-old girl!
Completely cured in six weeks!
But that was way back in the permissive Seventies. What kind of sentences do similar offenders get today? According to the Los Angeles Times…
Since 2004, there have been 50 cases in L.A. County that mirror the procedural contours of Polanski’s. In 72% of those cases, the defendant got a sentence of a year or more.
Although comparable statistics are not available for the 1970s, figures cited at the time by Polanski’s attorney indicate that no one convicted of unlawful sex with a minor then went to prison and more than a quarter of defendants didn’t see any time behind bars at all.
So a lot of people have skated on charges of “unlawful sex with a minor” then and now, in the United States of America, where the mandatory minimum sentence for “receiving child pornography” is five years in federal prison, and if you had a picture of Roman Polanski sodomizing a child, you would be guilty of a much more serious crime than Polanski himself.
And possessing those naughty pictures is apparently also a much more serious offense than murdering unarmed civilians from a helicopter, or torturing prisoners, or destroying the American economy, because almost nobody is serving any kind of sentence for any of those crimes in our silly country, much less a mandatory minimum.
Jul 10 2010
325,000 Students Compete (in the Cloud) for $240,000 from Microsoft
From Scientific American…
Compassionate Coding:
Students Compete in Microsoft Competition to Write Humanitarian Apps
With the understanding that emergency, health care and other services’ reliance on software will only grow over time, Microsoft has for the past eight years hosted a global competition that challenges high school and college students to develop applications that address some of the planet’s most urgent needs.
The event’s popularity has expanded rapidly–about 325,000 students from more than 100 countries registered to compete this year. The company’s Eighth Annual Imagine Cup finals wrapped up Thursday in Warsaw, Poland, with 400 students vying for $240,000 in prize money.
As one might suspect, a prerequisite is that all competitors develop their programs using Microsoft products, including software writing tools, databases and the Windows operating system.
325,000 high-school geeks hard at work for Microsoft, for an average “wage” of $0.75.
Jul 08 2010
Obama’s Disgusting Prosecution of Bradley Manning
From Glenn Greenwald…
The U.S. today charged Bradley Manning with a variety of crimes relating to his alleged leaks of classified material to WikiLeaks, most prominently including the Apache attack video that spawned worldwide debate over the American occupation.
The only “weapon” visible in this video is a camera carried by Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, who was 22 years old when he was murdered by the American occupation of Iraq.