Nov 11 2007

Iglesia ………………Episode 8

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(last weeks episode)

The Center had gotten the tip about the train 16 hours ago. The techs downloaded the Sat imagery along the full length of the tracks selected the best locations for intercept, they narrowed it down to a canyon in Arizona and selected the premium approach. He and his partner had studied both the computer simulations and the polymer topographical 3D model of the site as they prepped and on the plane. They knew the territory as well as was possible without having been there. He had selected the fucking bush he would sit in from the photos while they were still three hundred miles away. They had HALO’d in 9 hours before the train was due. In case the opposition had scouts coming or were laying sensors before hand. The latest Sat imagery had shown nothing that could possibly be a sensor in place when they dropped. The Sat techs would tell them if any scouts were in the area as the intercept time approached.

After eight hours sitting in a fucking bush it felt good to break in to a jog as they headed for the canyon. In spite of the vast array of weapons, tech, food, water and miscellania that were contained in the 74 different pockets and packs of their Chameleon Camo suits, they didn’t make a sound as they ran. Their suits were tuned to keep their infrared signatures to a minimum, but the camo was good enough that they weren’t using the camera powered ‘invisibility’ features. Their feet landed in the precise posture indicated by the thorough studies that had been undertaken at The Center on foot shape and velocity and the interaction with various forms of dirt and dust….they raised no dust cloud as they ran.

As they neared the canyon he unfolded, shaped and activated what looked like a large paper airplane and launched it into the air, it was actually made of graphitish material and consisted of wings a propeller a battery and a camera. He controlled it with his tongue on the inside of his helmet and monitored its input on his heads up display, the visor of which was switched to infrared mode and also displayed the view from the camera on the back of his helmet. He kept watch while his partner drilled and snapped in a piton in an outcropping on the canyon rim and they belayed the eighty feet to the canyon floor in two hops.

It was cool and dark at the bottom of the smoothly textured, tan sandstone walls. His optics self adjusted on the canyon floor. The bottom of the canyon had plenty of cactus and scrub along the shallow curve of the track, the sandstone on the far side  consisted of huge chunks of stone forming a cliff that was pockmarked with deep cracks and caves. He turned control of the flying drone over to his partner and unloaded the stand and the laser level from his suit. Its legs were spaced perfectly for the train tracks and in just a few seconds it was up, level, and shining two little red dots onto either side of the narrowest section of canyon. As soon as the red dot appeared his partner had the drill biting into the soft rock. He took out a micro-piton as his partner finished and moved over to the other side of the canyon to drill the other hole. The piton was camouflaged and had been drilled precisely deep enough to release at a specified pressure.

The line he attached to the piton and began to stretch across the canyon was only a few molecules wide. He looked like a mime handling an invisible rope. He secured it to the second piton. When he was done, a transparent trip line was strung five feet off the ground across the canyon. He snapped another length of the same line to the piton from a spool on his harness, at precisely the same time his partner snapped his harness to the first piton. They both pulled out long cylinders from yet another pocket. The cylinders telescopically lengthened into a shaft and from the end of the shaft the tines of a rake emerged. They dragged the rakes after them as they moved down the tracks to their pre-selected places of concealment. When they reached their respective hiding places on either side of the canyon they both looked back to check their work. They saw nothing.

He bent down and put a hand on the steel track and felt a slight but steadily increasing vibration, he checked the Sat transmission and his mission clock, the train was 38 seconds behind schedule. He checked his line by feel, switched his suit to full concealment and settled back into a deep dark crack in the sandstone. It smelled like snake.

But hey, at least it wasn’t fucking bush.

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To be continued Tuesday!

Nov 11 2007

Frank Rich Says the Four Letter Word: COUP

Short and sweet:  Rich finally says it once and for all.  Bush and Cheney executed a silent coup.

Read it all – every word, cut it out, email it, but make like Revere and ride that pony!

This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s.

More Machiavellian still, Mr. Bush has constantly told the world he’s championing democracy even as he strangles it. Mr. Bush repeated the word “freedom” 27 times in roughly 20 minutes at his 2005 inauguration, and even presided over a “Celebration of Freedom” concert on the Ellipse hosted by Ryan Seacrest. It was an Orwellian exercise in branding, nothing more. The sole point was to give cover to our habitual practice of cozying up to despots (especially those who control the oil spigots) and to our own government’s embrace of warrantless wiretapping and torture, among other policies that invert our values.

Even if Mr. Bush had the guts to condemn General Musharraf, there is no longer any moral high ground left for him to stand on. Quite the contrary. Rather than set a democratic example, our president has instead served as a model of unconstitutional behavior, eagerly emulated by his Pakistani acolyte.

Take the Musharraf assault on human-rights lawyers. Our president would not be so unsubtle as to jail them en masse. But earlier this year a senior Pentagon official, since departed, threatened America’s major white-shoe law firms by implying that corporate clients should fire any firm whose partners volunteer to defend detainees in Guantánamo and elsewhere. For its part, Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department did not round up independent-minded United States attorneys and toss them in prison. It merely purged them without cause to serve Karl Rove’s political agenda.

Tipping his hat in appreciation of Mr. Bush’s example, General Musharraf justified his dismantling of Pakistan’s Supreme Court with language mimicking the president’s diatribes against activist judges. The Pakistani leader further echoed Mr. Bush by expressing a kinship with Abraham Lincoln, citing Lincoln’s Civil War suspension of a prisoner’s fundamental legal right to a hearing in court, habeas corpus, as a precedent for his own excesses. (That’s like praising F.D.R. for setting up internment camps.) Actually, the Bush administration has outdone both Lincoln and Musharraf on this score: Last January, Mr. Gonzales testified before Congress that “there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.

This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights. The front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, boasts a proven record in extralegal executive power grabs, Musharraf-style: After 9/11 he tried to mount a coup, floating the idea that he stay on as mayor in defiance of New York’s term-limits law.

What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on.

In a Times OpEd article justifying his reluctant vote to confirm a man Dick Cheney promised would make “an outstanding attorney general,” Mr. Schumer observed that waterboarding is already “illegal under current laws and conventions.” But then he vowed to support a new bill “explicitly” making waterboarding illegal because Mr. Mukasey pledged to enforce it. Whatever. Even if Congress were to pass such legislation, Mr. Bush would veto it, and even if the veto were by some miracle overturned, Mr. Bush would void the law with a “signing statement.” That’s what he effectively did in 2005 when he signed a bill that its authors thought outlawed the torture of detainees.

That Mr. Schumer is willing to employ blatant Catch-22 illogic to pretend that Mr. Mukasey’s pledge on waterboarding has any force shows what pathetic crumbs the Democrats will settle for after all these years of being beaten down. The judges and lawyers challenging General Musharraf have more fight left in them than this.

Last weekend a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that the Democratic-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush are both roundly despised throughout the land, and that only 24 percent of Americans believe their country is on the right track. That’s almost as low as the United States’ rock-bottom approval ratings in the latest Pew surveys of Pakistan (15 percent) and Turkey (9 percent).

Wrong track is a euphemism. We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon.

Nov 11 2007

What are we here for?

First let me apologize for my attitude last night.  I should have walked away when I grew to tired to respond with more civility.  The main reason why I became frustrated however still remains. Are we to be an echo chamber of other blogs simply posting and cross-posting the same things?  This leads to fewer voices and perspectives being shared and makes us less interesting and less important.

Are we going to waste half a month figuring out what to call our first project?  How many soldiers died during that time?  If we can’t organize ourselves what is the hope of organizing a movement?  I’m still trying to be excellent to everyone, I really am.  But how do we justify spending so much time on creating a name when people are dying every day?

At this rate we will get the troops home by the end of the century which is just what Cheney was planning on all along.  Are we going to be Cheney enablers?  Or are we going to pull our shit together and put out a frickin’ doctrine already so that we can begin the good work?

Remember it is only one doctrine that can easily be replaced by a better one should you propose it at some later date, fully developed and ready to go.  Everything on the wiki is subject to change at some time in the future, that is the beauty of it.  It will shape shift as our needs and projects grow.

I don’t want to piss anyone off, I just want us to get off the bench and into the game.  

Tonight I added more info to the Admin section of the Wiki, started developing the “Future” section and added more research resources.  Adding something to the wiki is as easy as clicking edit on the page you’d like to add to, typing your text, then clicking save.  I’d appreciate if someone could please start adding info.   Because right now it feels like I am working on something no one else seems to want.

Nov 11 2007

Glenn Greenwald- The Most Important Thing Liberal Blogs Can Be Doing

(11 pm – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Here is the main article, which is about Dianne Feinstein and how she is going to support TelCo Amnesty, her position as W‘s key ally in the Senate, and oh by the way all that money her husband is coining from Defense contracts, but what struck my eye was these two paragraphs in the Update at the end-

While Feinstein is not up for re-election, there are many Bush-enabling Democrats who are. And as this rather good Washington Post article this morning details, liberal blogs are doing what is, in my view, the most important thing they can be doing — targeting for defeat those incumbent Democrats who deserve it by supporting and funding primary challengers.

The article details the highly successful campaign by bloggers such as Jane Hamsher, Matt Stoller, Duncan Black, Digby and others to counteract fundraising efforts by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic establishment for any Democratic incumbents — including those who continuously support the Bush agenda — by raising equal amounts (and, in many cases, more) for the primary challengers. The article documents how bloggers raised more than $100,000 over the last week for Donna Edwards, the primary challenger to the pro-war, pro-Bush Democratic Rep. Al Wynn (and you can aid their effort by donating to Edwards here). That is exactly what is needed — incumbent Democrats knowing that they will be targeted and will face credible primary challenges for following in Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein’s Bush-enabling footsteps.

Nov 11 2007

about controlled demolition

so one said

One bugaboo I have with the forbidden “conspiracy theory” diaries is that the landlord of WTC7 – one of those subjects forbidden as conspiracy theory – flat out said on a documentary that they “decided to pull it.”  No ifs ands or buts, he said the NYC fire department decided to perform controlled demolition.

One of the degrees I ended up forfeiting was architecture, but I did tool around Boston Architecture Center in classes, plus a lot of autodidactic reading, enough to understand that it takes months to prepare a building for a controlled demolition which will allow a building to “fall in its footprint.”  I saw this done to a Boston building, and also read on the primary family who does this procedure as to their techniques.  People don’t realize what an art there is to making this happen.

WTC7 fell in around six and a half seconds into its footprint.  42 stories tall, that is just about exactly the amount of time it would take a dropped object from the top of the building to hit the ground.

Like Silverstein said – it was brought down by controlled demolition.  He admitted it for crying out loud.  The only thing is that most of the public don’t know enough about controlled demolition to realize that it would take MONTHS (not days, not weeks) to properly prepare for such a successful controlled demolition.  That, and as you say, it was not hit by a plane.  No dispute exists on that question.

Another problem is that there are no extant orders on record for the fire department to do that work.  Which either means they did it in secret – for months – or someone else did the work.

This is not to advance any theory of who did what or why – only to say that 1) we have not heard the full proper story of what happened, ever, and 2) no technical investigation of any of the demolition was ever performed.  Period.

It is very counterintuitive of the public to just accept the MSM account of things without question.  We should demand a technical investigation.  

and another said:

give the blueprints to an elite military demolition specialist. Give him 2 days to prepare the gear. Building comes down in less than 45 mintues from the time you let him drive the truck into the basement garage.

to which the first answered:  

because I spent quite a bit of time reading about the work of the Loizeaux family, and it did take roughly a couple months to prepare larger buildings, as with the one I observed while studying architecture in Boston.  It was not a quick job, although as you say it can be done with a basement detonation – but basement detonations will not cause a building to neatly “fall in its footprint.”  In exceptionally tall buildings work is done on multiple floors, not just from a basement.  That is why the sloppy basement demolition did not work on the first WTC attack in 93, which btw I barely escaped (and I used to work in the north tower, never could contact old friends from my temp agency which had gone under by 2001.  (link  http://www.controlled-demoliti…

Also it was the report in the controversy about the twin towers, that workers sealed off various floors from access for several months preceding the attacks – workers unknown to the usual personnel of the towers.  Elevators would forbid access to various floors for periods of time, which went on for months.  The plumes of smoke were evident in photos issuing from corners of about every 6 stories, as I recall, which of course are disputed by skeptics as manipulated photos.  So it goes.  But what was rendered in private photography/videos of the towers was consistent with the techniques employed by experts such as the Loizeaux family.

And first later added:

With the press of a button at 5:47 PM on October 24, 1998, Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer dropped the J.L. Hudson Department Store from his city’s skyline and into the history books and record books.

Hudson’s was the tallest department store in the country and was second in square footage only to Macy’s anchor Store in New York. It dominated the retail market in the city through the 1970’s before closing its doors in 1983.

The store was built in 12 separate stages, the first in 1911 and the last in 1946. The complex had two retail basements and 23 above grade retail floors, including mezzanines. Two additional basements and six upper stories in a tower, provided storage and mechanical support for the 2.2 million square foot building. In all there were 33 levels in the structure.

In the fall of 1997, the Downtown Development Authority of Detroit (DDA), retained a joint venture of Walbridge Aldinger and Jenkins Construction of Detroit to manage the project. Walbridge/Jenkins took bids for asbestos abatement of the structure and the contract, which took three months to complete, was performed by Loyalty Environmental of Chicago.

The demolition contract went to a joint venture between Detroit based Homrich, Inc. and Boston based North American Site Development. They, in turn, retained Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) and the Loizeaux Family of Phoenix, Maryland to design and perform the tricky implosion of the Detroit landmark.

No structural drawings of the facility were available, making structural analysis and implosion design a considerable task for CDI. The interdependency of the 12 different construction stages, with differing construction and variable column flange directions and bay widths created what CDI calls differential natural failure modes in each section of the structure which CDI’s demolition program had to cope with. These factors created an implosion design, preparation and dynamic control challenge for the 2nd and 3rd generation of a family recognized as the international founders of the commercial implosion industry (see ENR cover story October 1972).

Hudson’s was bordered on four sides by streets filled with critical infrastructure and flanked on 3 sides by poorly maintained, turn-of-the-century structures with huge sand-cast glass windows that occasionally broke in high winds. Lastly, Detroit’s elevated “People Mover” paralleled the east face of the 439 ft. tall structure just 15 ft away.

Mark Loizeaux, President of CDI, called Hudson’s the greatest dynamic structural control challenge the company had ever faced. CDI had to sever the steel in the columns and create a delay system which could simultaneously control the failure of the building’s 12 different structural configurations, while trying to keep the hundreds of thousands of tons of debris within the 420 ft by 220 ft footprint of the structure.CDI needed structural data to complete its design.  Under CDI direction, Homrich/NASDI’s 21 man crew needed three months to investigate the complex and four months to complete preparations for CDI’s implosion design. During that period, the lower two basements of the structure were filled with engineered fill and the perimeter basement walls bermed to 1st basement level with soil to support perimeter walls which would surely have failed under soil and hydrostatic loads once the horizontal support of the Hudson’s internal structure was removed by the implosion.

Double column rows installed in the structure between vertical construction phases, internal brick shear walls, x-bracing, 70 elevators and 10 stairwells created an extremely stiff frame. Columns weighing over 500 lb/ft, having up to 7.25 inch thick laminated steel flanges and 6 inch thick webs, defied commercially available shaped charge technology. CDI analyzed each column, determined the actual load it carried and then used cutting torches to scarf-off steel plates in order to use smaller shaped charges to cut the remaining steel. CDI wanted to keep the charges as small as possible to reduce air over pressure that could break windows in adjacent properties.

CDI’s 12 person loading crew took twenty four days to place 4,118 separate charges in 1,100 locations on columns on nine levels of the complex. Over 36,000 ft of detonating cord and 4,512 non-electric delay elements were installed in CDI’s implosion initiation system, some to create the 36 primary implosion sequence and another 216 micro-delays to keep down the detonation overpressure from the 2,728 lb of explosives which would be detonated during the demolition.

Even with all the precautions to control overpressure, the age, existing cracks, and poor condition of glazing windows in vacant structures on the north, east and west sides of the J.L. Hudson complex, window breakage was a concern. CDI had seven glass company crews on standby to handle any problems. Although Homrich/NASDI has placed over 2,000 yards of soil over utilities in the four adjacent streets, emergency utility crews were also standby “just in case.”

When the button was pressed at 5:47 PM, assembled officials, contractors, former Hudson patrons and an estimated crowd of 20,000 watched the store begin to pivot at its southwest corner. The controlled collapse moved north and east through the structure, folding the walls inward.  ( http://www.controlled-demoliti… )

Repeat, for the sake of public awareness  

three months to investigate the complex and four months to complete preparations for CDI’s implosion design

The demise of building seven is almost unknown to the US public

Which may be related to some text, somewhere on some blog, which reads:

It is forbidden to write diaries that:

…refer to claims that the airplanes that crashed into the WTC and Pentagon were not the cause of the damage to those buildings or their subsequent collapse.

Authoring or recommending these diaries may result in banning…

elsewhere:

Diaries advancing ‘Conspiracy Theories’ are subject to ridicule and derision from the community at the very least. Repeat offenders can and will be banned. Yes, this does include ‘controlled demolition’ of WTC 7.

Nov 11 2007

The 2007 Joe Lieberman’s Boggy Cecum Award

Mukasey Confirmed

by emptywheel

From which we can take the following lessons:

It’s unclear that our political system has the fortitude to save itself anymore.

Rather than continue the quote with the additional lessons, let’s just stop right there and think about that.

It’s unclear that our political system has the fortitude to save itself anymore.

Anyone familiar with TheNextHurrah knows well that emptywheel, while sometimes explicitly conjectural, is neither hyperbolic nor shrill in her musings, but rather has an almost prophetic command of facts.

Our system of laws, due processes, and checks and balances is now nearly hopelessly corrupt.  The main counterweight to the depraved Republicans and Unitary Executive was once thought to be the Democrats.  Prior to 2006, lodging complaints against the Democrats for inaction elicited a hail of arrows in counterattack.  

The Democrats aren’t in the majority.

They don’t control legislation.

Democrats don’t have subpoena power.

They can’t risk a filibuster.

Now we know that that “majority” argument is pure hogwash.  That hypothesis has been disproved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Democrats have now been unmasked as the opposition poseurs that many suspected them to be.  Now that they have controlled majorities in both houses, they have openly exposed themselves as Bush enablers, not opposition leaders.  Like Joe Lieberman, they are fakes, phonies, and liars.  The Democratic party is thoroughly “Lieberman-ized.”  And if Joe Lieberman represents the rotting corpse of the body politic, then Diane Feinstein surely plays the role of his boggy cecum, Chuck Schumer his greasy rectum, and Nancy Pelosi his sputtering anus.  With every succeeding act or omission, they illuminate our Constitution with their legislative skidmarks that we instantly recognize as George Bush’s finger-painting, a true work of shit, that even Rudy Giuliani would have once declared an obscenity unfit for public viewing.

Now, it appears our only recourse for obtaining lawful government is through a stacked, corrupted, and politicized judicial system, where the most important tools for making a case are instantly vaporized by simply not investigating or enforcing subpoenas, having critical evidence declared a state secret, or simply declaring that grossly illegal behavior is no longer criminal.  Thank you, Diane Feinstein, I formally nominate you for the 2007 Joe Lieberman’s Boggy Cecum Award.

So, what can YOU do about it?  Here is an example of what I would definitely NOT do:

It is long past time to lead with actions and not high minded and empty rhetoric.  The time for action is now.  For today’s and tomorrow’s (or even next year’s) leaders, this is your audition.  So far, I’d give a grade of D or if I was feeling generous a D+.  And you pretty much have my vote anyway.

DON’T GIVE THEM YOUR VOTE FOR FREE.  THIS IS AN AUDITION.  IF THEY PATENTLY SUCK (WHICH THEY DO) DO NOT HIRE THEM FOR THE JOB!

Why even have the audition if the outcome is pre-ordained?  This makes no sense whatsoever.

Pelosi is up for re-election in 2008.  She can’t tap dance for shit, and the only achievement on her resume is the Sputtering Anus nomination (mine, ; D). Thank god for primary challengers, but even if Nancy wins the primary, I’d rather vote Republican, and here’s why.

First, never reward betrayal.  Rewarding betrayal never elicits cooperation.  It only puts scumbag back-stabbers on your payroll.  Democrats need a time-out to reconsider the merits of cooperation.  Putting Democratic Congressionals into the minority will hurt them badly and memorably.  Although I can’t act directly on Feinstein for years, maybe I can help put her into the minority, where her conflicts of interest will be less powerful and damaging to the Democratic party and the Constitution.  Disable her and let her decay with age into oblivion.  

Second, reward the cooperators.  They should definitely be on your payroll.  We need more Feingolds.

Again, here are basic rules for building cooperative behavior:

1. Never be the first to defect.

2. If someone else defects, punish them at the first opportunity.  (You have some latitude in determining what constitutes a “defection,” to avoid instigating tit-for-tat death spirals based on errors, but otherwise, failing to punish will essentially reward defections, and cooperative structure will break down.)

3. After you mete out punishment, forget about it.  Start anew.

Some will argue that they are still afraid of Republicans.  What if this strategy allows Republicans to re-take one or both Houses?  What about the Supreme Court?  Let’s make sure we get a reliable Democratic President to act as a firewall on the Supreme Court.  Otherwise, Republicans don’t scare me much more than Democrats anymore.  Besides, you know that Republicans will indeed act as a check on the newly minted Democratic Unitary Executive, which should have salutary effects on checks and balances in general.  Heck, with a Democrat in the Oval Office, a Republican Congress might even have the gumption to repeal some of the worst abuses allowed by previous Congresses.  Imagine that.

The Bottom Line:  It’s not worth controlling Congress with the second worst Congress ever, one that is actively seeking to frustrate your will.  Don’t vote for them, fuck them!  Vote against Democratic defectors; Vote for all cooperators (Democrat or Republican); vote for a Democratic President.  Don’t rely on Congress to fix things.  They will not.  Rely on yourself.

Nov 11 2007

DOD authorization and you: What the hell is Congress up to? w/poll