Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
You Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Here Before?
The flags those protesters are waving represent the Libyan Republic, which was the ruling entity before Gadaffi (or however you spell it) took over 42 years ago. It made me wonder: Where did all those former Libyan flags come from? Were they lying around somewhere in Libya for the last half-century? Then I remembered an article called "The Man Who Sold the War" that ran in Rolling Stone Magazine a few years ago. That article was about a guy named John Rendon, whose PR firm, The Rendon Group, helped market the first Gulf War.
From the article:
After Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, it was Rendon's responsibility to make the victory march look like the flag-waving liberation of France after World War II. "Did you ever stop to wonder," he later remarked, "how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American - and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?" After a pause, he added, "Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then."
How indeed did those Kuwaitis get those flags? And how did the Libyans get theirs? Then as if on cue, Eman al-Obeidi manages to provide this war's humanitarian crisis to Western TeeVee audiences, just like good ol' Nayirah al-Sabah did back in 1990. Of course, we have since learned that Nayirah al-Sabah was the daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, Saud bin Nasir al-Sabah, and that her testimony was written and arranged by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton. So then one wonders which PR firms are responsible for the flags and for al-Obeidi's performance.
UPDATE: Oddly enough, The New York Times spells it all out for us:
WASHINGTON — In 2009, top aides to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi called together 15 executives from global energy companies operating in Libya’s oil fields and issued an extraordinary demand: Shell out the money for his country’s $1.5 billion bill for its role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 and other terrorist attacks.
If the companies did not comply, the Libyan officials warned, there would be “serious consequences” for their oil leases, according to a State Department summary of the meeting.
And Russ Baker has a quiz:
Embattled Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi: Good or bad? How about GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt?
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
So Long, Sucker.
HBGary CEO Aaron Barr resigns amid ‘Anonymous’ scandal
The chief executive at data security firm HBGary Federal has resigned his job following a high-profile hack staged by online protest group "Anonymous."
Aaron Barr, the embattled CEO, made the disclosure yesterday speaking to ThreatPost, an online security blog. (Continue reading.)
Monday, February 14, 2011
Aaron Barr, Asshole
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Thugs Used 'Terror Tools' for Disinfo Scheme Targeting Me, My Family and Other Progressives
And why the Chamber's hired goons are highly likely to get away with it.
by Brad Friedman
As I learned late last Thursday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful Rightwing lobbying group in the country, was revealed to have been working with their law firm and a number of private cyber security and intelligence firms to target progressive organizations, journalists and citizens who they felt were in opposition to their political activism, tactics and points of view. Continue reading.
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Hopefully, this will awaken progressives to the fact that dirty tricks and conspiracy comprise the modus operandi of the business class in America. Despite massive.....evidence.....to the contrary, progressives tend to regard conspiracy theories as strictly the purview of right-wing whack jobs and dope-smoking slactivists. And while there are definitely many conspiracy theories that are straight out of whackaloon territory, one conspiracy theory for which there is insurmountable evidence is the one that asserts that the American business community is hell bent on the notion of turning America -- and the world -- into a corporate feudal state.
More here.
UPDATE: A special message from Anonymous to HB Gary and its clients.
UPDATE II: Aaron Barr, douche.
UPDATE III: Operation Ratfuck interactive map.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut
NOTE: Paul Krassner, for those of you who aren't familiar with him, is the former editor of The Realist and an original member of the "Yippies." He has allowed me to post this excerpt from his book, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut, which chronicles his creative activism and the establishment's (especially the FBI's) reaction to it.
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut is available only at Paul's homepage, where you can watch a 20-minute video of him reading from the book at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival and purchase copies of the Disney Memorial Orgy poster.
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut is also available as an e-book from Amazon Kindle.
Howard Rasmussen was not his real name. Actually, he was an FBI agent working in their New York office. One day in October 1968, he was reading Life magazine. He saw those photos of me – playing basketball in my loft, lying on the floor of an airport – accompanying a rather complimentary profile. Then he sat down at his typewriter, creatively trying to choose every word so carefully that it would reek of credibility, as he composed the following letter to the editor of Life on plain stationery:
Sirs:
Your recent issue (October 4th), which devoted three pages to the aggrandizement of underground editor (?) Paul Krassner, was too, too much. You must be hard up for material. Am I asking the impossible by requesting that Krassner and his ilk be left in the sewers where they belong? That a national magazine of your fine reputation (till now that is) would waste time and effort on the cuckoo editor of an unimportant, smutty little rag is incomprehensible to me. Gentlemen, you must be aware that The Realist is nothing more than blatant obscenity. Your feature editor would do well to read a few back issues of The Realist. Try the article in 1963 [sic] following the assassination of President Kennedy, which describes disgusting necrophilism on the part of LBJ. To classify Krassner as some sort of “social rebel” is far too cute. He's a nut, a raving, unconfined nut. As for any possible intellectual rewards to be gleaned from The Realist – much better prose may be found on lavatory walls. If this article is a portent of things to come in Life, count me out, gentlemen, count me out.
Howard Rasmussen
Brooklyn College
School of General Studies
Before he could be permitted to mail the letter to Life, he was required to send a copy of it to FBI headquarters in Washington, along with this memorandum:
The 10/4/68 issue of Life magazine contained a three page feature on Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist and self-styled “hippie.” Krassner is carried on the RI of the NYO.
Bureau authority is requested to send the following letter to the editors of Life on an anonymous basis. It is noted that the Life article was favorable to Krassner.
Howard Rasmussen was merely doing his job, writing that poison pen letter, but is that how taxpayers' money was supposed to be spent? I had broken no law. The return memo – approved by J. Edgar Hoover's top two assistants, Kartha DeLoach and William Sullivan – was addressed to Mr. Floyd and Mr. Shackelford at the New York office, and stated:
Authority is granted to send a letter, signed with a fictitious name, to the editors of Life magazine. Furnish the Bureau the results of your action.
NOTE: Krassner is the Editor of The Realist and is one of the moving forces behind the Youth International Party, commonly known as the Yippies. Krassner is a spokesman for the New Left. Life magazine recently ran an article favorable to him. New York's proposed letter takes issue with the publishing of this article and points out that the The Realist is obscene and that Krassner is a nut. This letter could, if printed by Life, call attention to the unsavory character of Krassner.
Life magazine never published Howard Rasmussen's letter to the editor. However, they did publish this letter:
Regarding your article on that filthy-mouthed, dope-taking, pinko-anarchist, Pope-baiting Yippie-lover: cancel my subscription immediately!
Paul Krassner
The Realist
There were Howard Rasmussens all over the place. One FBI memo tried to smear Tom Hayden with the worst possible label they could invoke – FBI informer. The FBI distributed a caricature depicting Black Panther leader Huey Newton “as a homosexual,” and ran a fake “Pick the Fag” contest, referring to Dave McReynolds as “Chief White Fag of the lily-white War Resisters League” and “the usual Queer Cats – like Sweet Dave Dellinger and Fruity Rennie Davis.” They always took pains to “Insure mailing material utilized and paper on which leaflet is prepared cannot be traced to the Bureau.” In that context, “Bureau authority was received for New York to prepare and mail anonymously a letter regarding [an individual's] sexual liaison with his step-daughter (Age 13) to educational authorities in New Jersey” where he was a teacher.
In 1969, the FBI's previous attempt to assassinate my character escalated to a slightly more literal approach. This was not included in my own Co-Intel-Pro (counter-intelligence program) files but, rather, discovered elsewhere by Sam Leff. At the Chicago convention, he had erased the line between anthropologist and activist. Later, as a Yippie archivist, he investigated a separate FBI project calculated to cause rifts between the black and Jewish communities. He found this: Julius Lester had allowed a black teacher to read an anti-Semitic poem on his program over WBAI in order to showcase an artistic expression of the outrage behind that point of view. As a result, the station was picketed. The FBI reprinted the poem on a flyer with the photo of a picketer holding a placard reading Do Not Use Jews for Scapegoats. This leaflet was “aimed at individuals of Jewish background active in the New Left and who, until recently, gave open sympathy to Lester's revolutionary ideas.” Then the FBI produced a WANTED poster featuring a large swastika. In the four square spaces of the swastika were photos of Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Mark Rudd of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and myself. Underneath the swastika was this copy:
LAMPSHADES! LAMPSHADES! LAMPSHADES!
New York radio station WBAI recently featured programs under the tutelage of black revolutionary Julius Lester of the Guardian and Leslie R. Campbell, sometime teacher at JHS 271, from which it appeared that the only solution to Negro problems in America would be the elimination of the Jews. May we suggest the following order of elimination? (After all, we've been this way before.)
*All Jews connected with the Establishment.
*All Jews connected with Jews connected with the Establishment.
*All Jews connected with those immediately above.
*All Jews except those in the Movement.
*All Jews in the Movement except those who dye their skins black.
*All Jews (Look out, Jerry, Abbie, Mark and Paul!)
Once again, this flyer was approved by the FBI director's top aides:
Authority is granted to prepare and distribute on an anonymous basis to selected individuals and organizations in the New Left the leaflet submitted. . . . Assure that all necessary precautions are taken to protect the Bureau as the source of these leaflets.
NOTE: NY advised that Julius Lester, a revolutionary Negro writer for the Guardian, had recently featured one Leslie Campbell, a teacher at a Brooklyn high school, during one of his regular broadcasts over radio station WBAI. During the broadcast, Campbell read a poem which contained anti-Semitic statements. This and other broadcasts by Lester have resulted in organized picketing at WBAI and much comment in the press. NY suggested a leaflet be prepared captioned: “Wanted: by Julius Lester” and containing pictures of several New Left leaders who are Jewish. This leaflet would refer to this broadcast and suggests facetiously the elimination of these leaders. Station WBAI is an ultra-liberal organization which has attacked the Bureau, as well as other Government agencies in the past. NY's proposal would lend fire to this controversy surrounding WBAI and also create further ill feeling between the New Left and the black nationalist movement as Lester is a spokesman of this latter group.
And, of course, if some overly militant black had obtained that flyer and “eliminated” one of those “New Left leaders who are Jewish,” the FBI's bureaucratic ass would be covered: “We said it was a facetious suggestion, didn't we?”
Oh, yes, one other thing. It turned out that J. Edgar Hoover himself was a raving, unconfined nut.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Good News! COINTELPRO Is Back!
COINTELPRO (spook speak for Counter Intelligence Program) was a decades-long operation by the FBI to infiltrate and undermine organizations it saw as subversive to the corporate feudal state. During the 40-plus-year operation, the FBI targeted civil rights groups, women's groups, labor organizations, anti-war groups, environmental groups, congressmen, judges, journalists, celebrities and anyone else it deemed dangerous to its skewed concept of liberty.
The program was exposed when a group of leftist radicals burglarized an FBI field office in Pennsylvania and gave classified documents to the press. The program faced further scrutiny during the Church Committee hearings a few years later. The FBI supposedly ended the program in the wake of these revelations, but as recent activities indicate, it appears COINTELPRO is alive and well.
COINTELPRO or some similar program was probably responsible for the bombing of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. And the FBI continued its surveillance of journalist David Halberstam long after the program had supposedly ended, contributing to speculation that the program continues to this day.
And the recent raids on anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago are clearly part of the same kind of operation, especially considering the efforts of Daniela Cardenas and Karen Sullivan.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Robert Newman's History of Oil
As shown on Ch4 and repeated several times on More4, available at IndyBay on the web and many other places, now on Google video (not great video quality) Robert's stand-up act examines the history of the last 100 years or so but putting oil center-stage. Brilliant!
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Birds of a Feather Flock Together
via Raw Story:
Walt Disney, Monsanto discovered among Blackwater’s hidden clients
Also on list: Royal Caribbean, Deutsche Bank, Chevron
Almost three years ago exactly -- Sept. 17, 2007 -- a cadre of guards from the security firm then known as Blackwater shot and killed 17 Iraqis at a public plaza in Baghdad.
The company, long in the public eye, has been known for brutal tactics and as a mercenary for the US State Department in countries where the US has boots on the ground. What hasn't been known, however, is that the same company was handling intelligence ops for publicly-traded US companies.
Atop the list is Monsanto, the biotech giant, who The Nation's Jeremy Scahill revealed Wednesday accepted a proposal through a Blackwater subsidiary which "offer[ed] to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm."
Monsanto doesn't stand alone. Through a network of 30 subsidiaries and shell corporations, Blackwater-linked entities provided "intelligence, training and security services" to a cache of major multinational firms, including: Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents Scahill obtained.
Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince -- who has himself been linked to the CIA -- helped train companies through two other firms he controlled: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center.
Not surprisingly, no one responded to requests for comment.
Monsanto topped the list of firms using Prince's services, Scahill writes.
"According to internal Total Intelligence communications, biotech giant Monsanto—the world's largest supplier of genetically modified seeds—hired the firm in 2008–09," the reporter writes. "The relationship between the two companies appears to have been solidified in January 2008 when Total Intelligence chair Cofer Black traveled to Zurich to meet with... Monsanto's security manager for global issues."
"After the meeting in Zurich, Black sent an e-mail to other Blackwater executives.... saying that Wilson "understands that we can span collection from internet, to reach out, to boots on the ground on legit basis protecting the Monsanto [brand] name.... Ahead of the curve info and insight/heads up is what he is looking for." Black added that Total Intelligence "would develop into acting as intel arm of Monsanto." Black also noted that Monsanto was concerned about animal rights activists and that they discussed how Blackwater "could have our person(s) actually join [activist] group(s) legally." Black wrote that initial payments to Total Intelligence would be paid out of Monsanto's "generous protection budget" but would eventually become a line item in the company's annual budget. He estimated the potential payments to Total Intelligence at between $100,000 and $500,000. According to documents, Monsanto paid Total Intelligence $127,000 in 2008 and $105,000 in 2009.
....In an... e-mail to The Nation, Wilson confirmed he met Black in Zurich and that Monsanto hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and worked with the company until early 2010. He denied that he and Black discussed infiltrating animal rights groups, stating "there was no such discussion." He claimed that Total Intelligence only provided Monsanto "with reports about the activities of groups or individuals that could pose a risk to company personnel or operations around the world which were developed by monitoring local media reports and other publicly available information. The subject matter ranged from information regarding terrorist incidents in Asia or kidnappings in Central America to scanning the content of activist blogs and websites." Wilson asserted that Black told him Total Intelligence was "a completely separate entity from Blackwater."
Walt Disney?
The Walt Disney Company hired Total Intelligence and TRC to do a "threat assessment" for potential film shoot locations in Morocco, with former CIA officials Black and Richer reaching out to their former Moroccan intel counterparts for information. The job provided a "good chance to impress Disney," one company executive wrote. How impressed Disney was is not clear; in 2009 the company paid Total Intelligence just $24,000.
How about Deutsche Bank?
Total Intelligence and TRC also provided intelligence assessments on China to Deutsche Bank. "The Chinese technical counterintelligence threat is one of the highest in the world," a TRC analyst wrote, adding, "Many four and five star hotel rooms and restaurants are live-monitored with both audio and video" by Chinese intelligence. He also said that computers, PDAs and other electronic devices left unattended in hotel rooms could be cloned. Cellphones using the Chinese networks, the analyst wrote, could have their microphones remotely activated, meaning they could operate as permanent listening devices. He concluded that Deutsche Bank reps should "bring no electronic equipment into China." Warning of the use of female Chinese agents, the analyst wrote, "If you don't have women coming onto you all the time at home, then you should be suspicious if they start coming onto you when you arrive in China." For these and other services, the bank paid Total Intelligence $70,000 in 2009.
Prince, now the owner of Blackwater successor Xe Services, now has his eyes on another target: the Democrats.
He's now writing a book alleging that officials in the Clinton and Obama administrations "approved of his most sensitive and controversial operations," according to a report by veteran intel reporter Jeff Stein published in The Washington Post earlier this month.
The Post's Jeff Stein cited two unnamed sources who say Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, is hurrying to sell his company before he can go public with a book that takes aim at the Democratic Party. One of the sources told Stein that Prince and his friends "think this will destroy the Democratic Party in the elections."
The source, who is described as having a "business relationship with Xe," said Prince had "given his people three weeks to complete the sale of the company and the book will be released then," in time for the November elections.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Park 51 Controversy Not What It Seems
From the New York Observer:
Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque
By Mark Ames
September 10, 2010 | 2:36 p.m
So far, the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero has unfolded along predictable lines, with the man at the center of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, drawing attacks from the right painting him as a terrorist sympathizer with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
So far, the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero has unfolded along predictable lines, with the man at the center of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, drawing attacks from the right painting him as a terrorist sympathizer with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
But meanwhile, links between the group behind the controversial mosque, the CIA and U.S. military establishment have gone unacknowledged.
For instance, one of the earliest backers of the nonprofit group, the Cordoba Initiative, that is spearheading the Ground Zero mosque, is a 52-year-old Scarsdale, New York, native named R. Leslie Deak. In addition to serving on the group's board of advisors since its founding in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Deak was its principal funder, donating $98,000 to the nonprofit between 2006 and 2008. This figure appears to represent organization's total operating budget--though, oddly, the group reported receipts of just a third of that total during the same time period.
Deak describes himself as a "Practicing Muslim with background in Christianity and Judaism, [with] in-depth personal and business experiences in the Middle East, living and working six months per year in Egypt." Born into a Christian home, Deak became an Orthodox Jew and married a Jewish woman before converting to Islam when he married his current wife, Moshira Soliman, with whom he now lives in Rye.
Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as "business consultant" for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three "strategic advisers." These include retired four-star General Bryan "Doug" Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed "all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism," and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he "managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget" and "served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001."
Besides Pavitt, Brown and a third advisor, banker Alexander Cappello, the Patriot Defense Group is so secretive it doesn't even name its management team, instead describing its anonymous CEO as a former Special Forces and State Department veteran, the group's managing director as a former CIA officer experienced in counter-terrorism in hostile environments and the group's corporate intelligence head as a "23-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service who worked on the personal security details of former Presidents Bush and Clinton."
Patriot Defense Group's primary business involves leveraging its government connections and know-how. The firm is divided into two divisions: one that "focuses exclusively on the needs of the U.S. military and law enforcement communities as well as the requirements of friendly foreign governments," and a corporate division, which "provides business intelligence and specialized security services to corporate clients and high net-worth family enterprises."
So, to recap: From 2006 to 2008, R. Leslie Deak worked as a "business consultant" to this super-secretive security contractor with ties to the CIA and counterterrorism forces, and in those same three years he also donated nearly $100,000 in seed money to the foundation now advocating the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.
Interestingly, during the same three-year period during which the Deak Family Foundation was financing the Cordoba Initiative, Deak also donated a total of $101,247 to something called the National Defense University Foundation. The National Defense University is a network of war and strategy colleges and research centers (including the National War College) funded by the Pentagon, designed to train specialists in military strategy. The organization recently announced a November 5 dinner gala in honor of Defense Secretary and former CIA chief Robert Gates. Sponsors include Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and...the Patriot Defense Group.
Deak also sits on the NDUF's board of directors, the chairman of which is Mark Treanor, the former general counsel for Wachovia bank from 1998 through its collapse in 2008 and a major bundler of campaign donations for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008. Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo, was recently fined $160 million for laundering "at least $110 million" in Mexican drug money between 2003 and 2008, while Treanor was Wachovia's general counsel, though the figure is likely higher since Wachovia admitted it didn't put any controls on at least $420 billion--that's billion--in cash moved through its network of Mexico currency exchanges.
Which leads to another odd coincidence: Laundering money for drug lords is what brought down Deak & Co., the company run by Leslie Deak's father, Nicholas Deak, years ago. The elder Deak, a former top intelligence commander during World War II for the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA), was the founder of Deak-Perera, which became for a time one of the world's biggest foreign currency and gold dealers. But in 1984, a Presidential Commission on Organized Crime accused the firm of acting as a money laundering operation for Columbia drug cartels, who reportedly brought sacks of cash containing tens of millions of dollars into Deak's Manhattan offices. By the end of 1984, Deak & Co. had declared bankruptcy, and a year later, Nicholas Deak was murdered in the company's headquarters at 29 Broadway by a deranged homeless woman.
After the firm went bankrupt and Leslie Deak was left on his own, the corporation was broken up and sold off in pieces. One company that traces its beginnings to the defunct Deak empire is Goldline International, a business concern well known to fans of Glenn Beck as well as California investigators. Goldline is to Glenn Beck what General Electric was to Ronald Reagan: The company sponsors Beck's TV and radio shows as well as his touring act, and Beck is its public face. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, along with the Santa Monica City Attorney's office, are currently investigating Goldline for defrauding customers by railroading gullible customers into buying their most debased products.
Speaking of Glenn Beck, it has been reported that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company Fox News, which airs Beck's program, is also a major funder of Imam Rauf's projects, as Jon Stewart viewers heard all about last week.
Coincidences happen, of course. (For instance, Pamela Geller, the blogger who's become the leading voice denouncing the mosque project was once, bizarrely enough, associate publisher of The New York Observer.)
But add to this array of unexpected connections the work of Imam Rauf on behalf of the U.S. government—which includes serving as an FBI "consultant" and being recruited as a spokesperson by longtime George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes, who headed up the administration's propaganda efforts in the Muslim world—and a compelling picture begins to emerge. Bush's favorite Imam, with backing from a funder with connections to the CIA, the Pentagon and the currency trading company that now sponsors rightwing firebrand Glenn Beck, proposes to build a mosque around the corner from the site of the most devastating terrorist attack ever visited on America. In the name of "[cultivating] understanding among all religions and cultures," he puts forth a project that offends a majority of Americans and deals a significant setback to the broader acceptance of Muslim-Americans. It's a little like Billy "White Shoes" Johnson claiming the only reason he moonwalks after scoring a touchdown is to lower tensions on the football field and raise the other team's spirits.
Whether the Cordoba Initiative ever gets its way with the Ground Zero Mosque, it may well have a lasting legacy at odds with its stated intention: By damaging the very moderates and progressives who actually view New York, and the nation as a whole, as a tolerant melting pot, and strengthening the position demagogues on both sides, it will almost certainly deal a setback to interfaith relations. It will also help to hobble the Democratic party. Which just might have been the point all along.
Either that, or it's merely a coincidence that this controversy has erupted now, during crucial mid-term elections. In which case we can all go back to what we were doing before—either denouncing the Park51 Mosque as an affront to Americans, or championing it as a symbol of our fundamental rights-playing our accustomed roles in a drama that seems too perfect, somehow, to believe.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
'Climategate' inquiry mostly vindicates scientists
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Writer
LONDON – An independent British report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved, a finding many in the field hope will calm the global uproar dubbed "Climategate."
The inquiry by former U.K. civil servant Muir Russell into the scandal at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit found there was no evidence of dishonesty or corruption in the more than 1,000 e-mails stolen and posted to the Internet late last year. But he did chide the scientists involved for failing to share their data with critics.
"We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt," Russell said. "But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness."
Russell's inquiry into the scandal is the third major investigation into the theft and dissemination of the e-mails, which caused a sensation when they were published online in November, right before the U.N. climate change conference at Copenhagen.
The messages captured researchers speaking in scathing terms about their critics, discussing ways to stonewall skeptics of man-made climate change, and talking about how to freeze opponents out of peer-reviewed journals.
The ensuing scandal energized skeptics and destabilized the Copenhagen talks. The research center's chief, Phil Jones, stepped down while Russell, a former vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, investigated.
While Russell's report said there was no evidence to show Jones or any other scientist had subverted the peer-review process, it did revisit the now infamous e-mail exchange between Jones and a colleague in which the climatologist refers to a a "trick" used to "hide the decline" in a variable used to track global temperatures.
Some skeptics took that as proof that scientists were faking global temperature trends. Russell's report rejected that conclusion, but did say the resulting graph was "misleading" — although not intentionally so.
Russell also criticized the university for being "unhelpful" in dealing with Freedom of Information requests — something Britain's data-protection watchdog has already scolded the university for.
University of East Anglia Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton said the report had "completely exonerated" Jones, who would now return to the Climatic Research Unit as director of research — a new position that Acton said would free him from administrative duties.
Acton also said the university has since overhauled the way it dealt with requests for data.
Russell's report follows a British parliamentary inquiry that largely backed the scientists involved and another independent investigation that gave a clean bill of health to the science itself. Yet both reports have been criticized by skeptics who alleged they were incomplete or biased.
It has been difficult to gauge the impact of the scandal, which played widely in the British and U.S. media. In Britain, there is some evidence that public concern over global warming has been diluted, although not by much.
An Ipsos MORI poll published last month suggested that 78 percent of Britons believed that the world's climate was changing, compared with 91 percent five years earlier. Seventy-one percent of respondents expressed concern about global warming, versus 82 percent in 2005. The pollster surveyed 1,822 people aged 15 and over in interviews between January and March 2010.
Some scientists say the scandal has made it impossible for researchers to hide data from their critics and has pushed those who do believe in the dangers of man-made global warming to be more vocal about their doubts.
"The release of the e-mails was a turning point, a game-changer," Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian newspaper before the Russell report was released. "Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties, for instance."
Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, agreed that openness was the now order of the day.
"There is a need to re-establish trust," he said.
Read the report here: http://www.cce-review.org/
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Limited Release
I've been wondering lately why the Roman Polanski rape is suddenly so important. After all, it happened over 30 years ago, and it didn't seem like such a big deal in 2002 when Polanski won the Best Director Oscar for The Pianist. Then, earlier today, I happened across a clip on HuffPo with George Stephanopoulos interviewing Ewan McGregor about his latest role in Polanski's film, The Ghost Writer. The premise sounded pretty cool, so I looked it up. It's based on the novel The Ghost, by Robert Harris. McGregor plays a ghostwriter who is hired to write the memoir for a recently retired British Prime Minister named Adam Lang. According to critics of the novel, Lang is modeled on Tony Blair, and many of the book's ripped-from-the-headlines details are factually analogous to real life; Robert Harris was a journalist and BBC reporter before he became a novelist. His previous novels have been praised for their historical accuracy.
Well, after reading the synopsis, I decided to see if it was playing nearby. The Stephanopoulos interview indicated it was "out Friday," but there were no showtimes listed locally. I returned to the HuffPo item to see if "out Friday" meant next Friday, but no, it means today. Then I noticed seventeen people rated it on Yahoo Movies for a cumulative rating of B+, so it must be playing somewhere. I returned to the movie listings page of the Tribune to see if maybe I had missed it or misspelled the title in my search or something, but after a thorough search, I still couldn't find a showtime. So then I went to IMDB to find out if it was out yet, and they list today as the release date, but with the word "limited" after the date. Well, Chicago is a big movie town, what with Siskel & Ebert and all, and most "limited" releases include Chicago. So I went to the Chicago Reader because they have a tradition of listing artsy fartsy and controversial releases, but they barely even mention the movie. Then I went to Ebert's page at the Sun-Times. He has had the gloves off as of late, due mainly I guess to his declining health and increasing legacy, but there was mention neither the movie nor of any surrounding controversy.
So I went back around to the various stops in this quest to revisit the synopsis. In the movie and novel, Adam Lang, the Tony Blair character, has been charged in The Hague with war crimes relating to his decision to send several British citizens to the notorious prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, where they are tortured. This transpires as the ghostwriter (McGregor) begins work on the memoir. The McGregor character is apolitical, which is partly why he was chosen to ghostwrite the memoir. But revelations of Prime Minister Lang’s alleged war crimes pique his interest, and he delves more thoroughly into Lang’s past. In doing so, he discovers that there had been a previous ghostwriter assigned to the task who had died mysteriously part-way through the project. This piques his interest even further, and he uncovers the same secrets the previous ghostwriter had uncovered, namely Lang’s involvement with CIA black operations, not to mention clues indicating that the previous ghostwriter had been murdered.
As I mentioned earlier, Harris’s previous novels have met with high praise for their drama and historical accuracy. The Daily Mail called Harris’s Pompeii “a blazing blockbuster.” Esquire calls Harris’s Fatherland (which has been made into an HBO movie), “ingenious…fast-paced and beautifully written.” The Times referred to his novel Enigma as “top-class stuff.” But strangely, The Ghost was universally panned, with critics calling it formulaic and far-fetched. The New York Observer went so far as to call it “The Blair Snitch Project,” while simultaneously admitting, “if it were [true] it would certainly explain pretty much everything about the recent history of Great Britain.”
Well, since I evidently can’t see the movie, I decided to walk down to my neighborhood Borders for the novel. But it wasn’t there. All of Harris’s other books are there, including his non-fiction. Not even the movie tie-in version with Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor on the cover was available.
Hmmm….could this historically-accurate-but-fictionalized portrayal of Tony Blair be the real reason Polanski’s rape case has suddenly taken a front seat? And why else would a popular novelist’s most recent work, and an A-list laden film adaptation, be so hard to come by?
I’ve always admired Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, two of Polanski’s early works. I never saw Tess or The Pianist. I saw Bitter Moon when it came out and I thought it was garbage. Like his work, Polanski’s life is marked by remarkable highs and incredible lows. He just barely escaped the Nazis by changing his name and pretending to be Catholic as a child. His mother died in Auschwitz; his father survived his Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp experience. Later, of course, he became a successful and highly regarded filmmaker and enjoyed the Good Life until his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was killed by the Manson gang. The rape ocurred a few years later. A probation officer recommended probation and psychiatric counseling, but the judge in the case wanted Polanski to serve a prison sentence so Polanski fled to France. In 1993, Polanski settled a civil suit with his rape victim by paying her $500,000. She has since filed a formal request with the court to drop the charges. In 2003, she wrote an op-ed piece saying that Polanski should be allowed to return to the States to collect his Best Director Oscar for the Pianist, and that she “got over [the rape] a long time ago.”
But a crime is a crime, and rape is a serious crime, so it’s hard for me to disagree with those who think he should face justice. However, I have to admit my opinion of Polanski has gone up a bit. In this age of retraction and my-comments-were-taken-out-of-context spinelessness, it’s nice to see someone with the cajones to make a film like The Ghost Writer in the face of obvious peril. I only wish I could see it.
UPDATE: Some reviews are appearing online, but it's still not showing anywhere.
UPDATE 2:
The movie's official site indicates an initial release of New York and Los Angeles, and "select cities" on 2/26, which seems odd for a recent Oscar winner.
UPDATE 3: Polanski wins the Best Director award for The Ghost Writer at the Berlin Film Festival.
UPDATE 4: Ebert likes The Ghost Writer.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Suicide, eh?
Corrupt Politicians: 2 Hookers: 0
Police: Woman believed to be 'D.C. madam' kills herself
A woman police believe to be convicted Washington escort service operator Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed suicide, officials said Thursday.
Police said the body was found in a shed near Palfrey's mother's home Thursday morning. There was a suicide note, but police did not disclose its contents or how she killed herself.
Police said they were trying to confirm the woman's identity, but did not immediately have additional comment when reached by telephone. Palfrey's attorney, Preston Burton, did not return a telephone call and e-mail message.
The District of Columbia U.S. attorney's office, which spent years investigating and prosecuting Palfrey, was aware of the media reports and was awaiting confirmation from law enforcement, said spokeswoman Channing Phillips.
Police did not immediately have additional comment when reached by telephone. Palfrey's attorney, Preston Burton, did not return a telephone call and e-mail message.
Palfrey was convicted April 15 by a federal jury of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington's political elite, including Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican.
She had denied her escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge.
She was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering. Palfrey faced a maximum of 55 years in prison and was free pending her sentencing July 24.
Prosecutors said Palfrey operated the prostitution service for 13 years.
Her trial concluded without revealing many new details about the service or its clients. Vitter was among possible witnesses, but did not take the stand.
Vitter, a first-term senator who is married and has four children, has acknowledged being involved with Palfrey's escort service and has apologized for what he called a "very serious sin." But he avoided commenting further.
One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial. [Emphasis mine]
Last year, Palfrey said she, too, was humiliated by her prostitution charges, but said: "I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton wasn't made of."
A woman police believe to be convicted Washington escort service operator Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed suicide, officials said Thursday.
Police said the body was found in a shed near Palfrey's mother's home Thursday morning. There was a suicide note, but police did not disclose its contents or how she killed herself.
Police said they were trying to confirm the woman's identity, but did not immediately have additional comment when reached by telephone. Palfrey's attorney, Preston Burton, did not return a telephone call and e-mail message.
The District of Columbia U.S. attorney's office, which spent years investigating and prosecuting Palfrey, was aware of the media reports and was awaiting confirmation from law enforcement, said spokeswoman Channing Phillips.
Police did not immediately have additional comment when reached by telephone. Palfrey's attorney, Preston Burton, did not return a telephone call and e-mail message.
Palfrey was convicted April 15 by a federal jury of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington's political elite, including Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican.
She had denied her escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge.
She was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes and racketeering. Palfrey faced a maximum of 55 years in prison and was free pending her sentencing July 24.
Prosecutors said Palfrey operated the prostitution service for 13 years.
Her trial concluded without revealing many new details about the service or its clients. Vitter was among possible witnesses, but did not take the stand.
Vitter, a first-term senator who is married and has four children, has acknowledged being involved with Palfrey's escort service and has apologized for what he called a "very serious sin." But he avoided commenting further.
One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial. [Emphasis mine]
Last year, Palfrey said she, too, was humiliated by her prostitution charges, but said: "I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton wasn't made of."
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Of Hookers & Hypocrites
from Global Research:
Hallmarks of a "hit job" ordered from the very top: Forget Spitzer, fire Bernanke
by Chan Akya
Global Research, March 14, 2008
Asia Times Online
There must be something about men achieving power that exposes them to frequent misuses of authority. In particular, infidelity seems a particular curse for the powerful across the world. This week's events involving the governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, may however have helped to hide a more egregious misuse of authority, namely that of Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and his central banking cohorts around the world. In another one of those nice coincidences that seem to happen whenever Wall Street is down and out, the unpopular governor of New York was found consorting with prostitutes through a Federal investigation that has all the hallmarks of a "hit job" ordered from the very top. Spitzer was deeply unpopular in the corridors of power, and especially with the current Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, for daring to take various Wall Street firms down a few notches earlier this decade.
After also hitting other sacred cows such as large insurance companies, Spitzer was readying ammunition to strike at the heart of the current subprime crisis by attacking the monoline insurers and rating agencies. It is almost too convenient that the disclosures of his extracurricular activities came this week. Still, let us take everything said at face value and not attempt to conjecture any conspiracy behind all this. People in Europe and Asia always find curious the preoccupation of Americans with sex, especially as the country appears to look askance at acts of immeasurable violence. This has been the formula for Hollywood - nary a nipple in sight but more than a few torsos getting blown to smithereens. Be that as it may, the focus of the Spitzer case on two separate legal areas, namely using a prostitute and secondly for potential money laundering, both appear strangely exaggerated in the rest of the world. So the guy was having sex with a hooker; that's essentially a problem between the married couple rather than being subject of intense public debate. Spitzer is said to have been neither crooked nor incompetent. If anything, his personal use of prostitutes may have contradicted his public crusade against brothels and pimps. In essence, Spitzer had to resign because he was a hypocrite. Reading that line, perhaps a few of you would wonder as I did about the implications of other politicians around the world being asked to resign for being hypocritical. Nope, I couldn't think of anyone who'd survive that either. Sleight of handThe sorry story of the governor and his extramarital affair though helped to achieve something much more important, namely to hide a brewing problem in the securities industry. On Monday, when the Federal Reserve announced a new facility to help banks finance themselves by posting previously unacceptable collateral, stock and credit markets jumped for joy. That is, until someone started asking slightly cute questions on the lines of just who was in so much trouble that the Fed had to rush through an ill-prepared intervention. As with the Sherlock Holmes dictum of "who benefits from the crime", it is clear that this week's moves were intended to help beleaguered brokers. While it is perhaps impossible to speculate just which company is in most trouble because of poor disclosure and the use of opaque valuation techniques, the most important brokers whose failure would have systemic implications include the likes of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. Coming as it does so close to the expected announcement of first-quarter earnings (most brokers close their financial year in November, hence their first quarter ends February), the fear being expressed on the street was that it had to be one of the bigger firms as otherwise the Fed would not have bothered. Brokers hold billions of dollars in the very securities that are suddenly eligible for refinancing with the Fed, such as mortgages and other securities that have proven well nigh impossible to sell to investors for the past few months. This has spilt over into the rest of the financial system, hurting various cities and towns across the US as they try to refinance themselves. That in turn must have gotten the government and its central bank all hot under the collar. At this stage perhaps readers will be wondering why I implied a crime had taken place on Wall Street when all that seems to have happened is that a central banker has tried to quietly save one of the large financial firms in its backyard. The answer is a little more complicated than that, and touches upon the curiously ignored principles of central banking. Walter Bagehot, the patron saint of central bankers, suggested the following basic principles for central banks to help the banks under their supervision to avoid liquidity runs. A. Only lend against good collateral to avoid losses for taxpayers at a later date.B. Lend at extremely high interest rates to avoid the facility being used willy-nilly by greedy bankers.C. Make public the availability of such facilities, so as to prevent doubts and suspicions in the minds of depositors and other creditors. This week's announcement by the Fed violates EVERY one of those principles. Firstly, the collateral being accepted by the Fed is tainted as the market’s complete lack of appetite (at any price) for the securities shows. By providing the ability to liquefy these securities, the Fed has effectively signaled that it would accept just about any junk. Secondly, the cost of borrowing is not punitive; indeed it is agreeably low for anyone who cares to fill out a couple of forms. Thirdly, this facility was not used previously; therefore the market has been in some doubt about really how useful it could be. In essence, this is a US$200 billion facility that is being misapplied to rescue a specific part of the financial system at a preferential rate, and without any disclosure required on usage. Given all this, it is impossible for anyone to expect that the ultimate cost of this facility will not be borne by US taxpayers. In my last article on Europe (Euro-trash, Asia Times Online, March 11, 2008) I pointed to the failures of the European Central Bank, which similarly violated the Bagehot principles when widening the range of acceptable collateral and lowering the discount rate made available to banks at the refinancing window. The Fed has entered into an arrangement that is eerily similar to that of the European Central Bank, whose actions have resulted in parts of the European financial system essentially becoming "zombie" companies, ie dead but still walking around. From where I sit, it appears that Bernanke has opened a whole new can of worms in his efforts at maintaining the structural integrity of the US financial system. The financial means used are clearly at odds with what Americans have preached to the rest of the world, including Asia following its 1997 crisis. To that extent, it is clear that Bernanke suffers from a similar complex to Spitzer, ie that rules do not apply to them because of magical exclusions that are self-derived. Once we decide that both have committed acts that are essentially illegal, it then becomes a question of gauging just who committed the worse crime. Spitzer through his actions hurt his family and a small band of friends very badly. That however pales in comparison to the wide-ranging systemic damage being wrought by Bernanke through his ill-considered actions. The wrong government official resigned this week.
Big Daddy says: You can't take on these guys & these guys & these guys & expect no retaliation. Spitzer should've known he had a target on his back & kept his tool in his trousers. I mean, duh.
UPDATE: Greg Palast has more.
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