It has become totally legal for rich people to run politicians the same way they might run horses or greyhounds

the above title is taken from a common dreams post by jennifer browdy de hernandez...

As in Germany before the Kristallnacht, none of us here in the U.S. wants to believe that anything could happen to destroy our cherished freedoms, our vaunted “American way of life.” We don’t want to admit, even to ourselves, the extent to which our freedoms are already being encroached upon, day by day.

Just last week, for example, there was an outrageous episode in Arizona, where the government declared a whole long list of books to be unsuitable for school use, and went so far as to direct the school librarians and teachers to pull them from the shelves, box them up and put them into deep storage.

Among the authors banned are some of my favorite writers—Gloria Anzaldua, Elizabeth Martinez, Paulo Freire.

Yes, that Paulo Freire, the famous Brazilian educator and free thinker who wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a brilliant analysis of the way that traditional education indoctrinates students into conformity and submission to authority.

Freire proposed that instead of a banking style of education, where knowledge is deposited into students, who are then required to spit it back upon demand, education worth its salt should empower students to think for themselves.

Such a simple idea, but so powerful, too. Education should teach people to think for themselves, and to work with each other to come to consensus on issues of importance to the larger society.

Isn’t that just what the Occupy movements have been trying to do? If Freire were alive, he would be out there in the thick of the Occupy action, inspiring the young to shake off the false animation of Zombieland, and insist on dancing to their own authentic beat.

isn't it totally bizarre that education that empowers people to think for themselves should be so threatening...? of course, taken in the context of the super-rich elites who are so desperate to maintain their hold on money and power, i suppose it makes sense to keep people dumb, docile and locked in a fear-based mindset...

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The dynamics of endless wars

glenn walks us through the fear-mongering and specious rationalizations behind our national dedication to endless wars...

What Endless War looks like

The key trick of Endless War is to permanently maintain two contradictory official premises: (1) we’re on the verge of Victory!; and (2) the threat is grave and we cannot let up. Without both of those premises, the citizenry will wonder why endless war is necessary or wise. That’s been the dual-track propaganda that has sustained the Drug War for four decades and counting (yes, we’ve been waging this war for 40 years, but we’re making real progress, but the threat is still so severe that the war must continue into the foreseeable future), and it has been and continues to be the core propaganda that fuels the Terror War. Hence, (1) we have made Al Qaeda “operationally ineffective” and (2) they “will remain a major security threat for years.”

so, here we are, throwing multi-trillions of dollars at the profiteers who are the ones who reap whatever "benefits" arise from these never-ending battles while our country goes to hell in a hand-basket...

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Funny how the IAEA made a u-turn after Mohamed ElBaradei

it took 'em almost 24 months to move the iaea from a respected, objective watchdog to a shill for u.s. propaganda...

see jim white at emptywheel...

Two Years After ElBaradei’s Departure, IAEA Joins Anti-Iran Drumbeat

and, sure enough...

U.N. Finds Signs of Work by Iran Toward Nuclear Device

United Nations weapons inspectors released a trove of new evidence on Tuesday that they say makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” and that the project may still be under way.

The long-awaited report relies on evidence whose scope and depth is far greater than any the agency has made public before, and represents the harshest judgment that the International Atomic Energy Agency has ever issued in its decade-long struggle to pierce the secrecy surrounding the Iranian program. The findings have already rekindled a debate among the Western allies and Israel about whether increased diplomatic pressure, sanctions, sabotage or military action could stop Iran’s program.

robert parry offers a rapid response as well as some context on the bogus "authority" behind this equally bogus return bout of u.s. and media hyperventilation on iran, the same guy who sold us a bill of goods on iraq's non-existent wmd...

An Iraq-WMD Replay on Iran?

The American public is about to be inundated with another flood of “expert analysis” about a dangerous Middle Eastern country presumably hiding a secret nuclear weapons program that may require a military strike, although this time it is Iran, not Iraq.

In the near future, you will be seeing more satellite photos of non-descript buildings that experts will say are housing elements of a nuclear bomb factory. There will be more diagrams of supposed nuclear devices. Some of the same talking heads will reappear to interpret this new “evidence.”

You might even recognize some of those familiar faces from the more innocent days of 2002-2003 when they explained, with unnerving confidence, how Iraq’s Saddam Hussein surely had chemical and biological weapons and likely a nuclear weapons program, too.

For instance, back then, former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright was all over the news channels, reinforcing the alarmist claims about Iraq’s WMD that were coming from President George W. Bush and his neocon-dominated administration.

Today, Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) is issuing a flurry of alarmist reports about Iran’s nuclear bomb progress, often accompanied by the same kind of satellite photos and diagrams that helped persuade many Americans that Iraq must possess unconventional weapons that turned out to be fictitious.

imho, this is nothing more and nothing less than another fabricated diversion to get us to stop focusing on real issues and keep us cowering under the bed in fear of yet another boogeyman... (pay no attention to ows... look over here at what iran's doing...!)

what's particularly disturbing about this turn of events isn't the patently propagandistic nature of the breathless revelations, it's the leaking scuttlebutt about israel's plans for attacking iran which would be ever so much worse than iran actually having the bomb...

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Marcy says what needs to be said about the Very Scarey Iran Plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador

amazingly, there has not yet been a case submitted to a grand jury...

marcy - emptywheel - wheeler...

Our government has had eleven business days now to subject its amended case to the scrutiny of a grand jury, it had two and a half months to subject its original case to the scrutiny of a grand jury, and it hasn’t yet bothered to do so. We’re sharing our case with the rest of the world before we’re subjecting it to the most basic level of oversight enshrined in our Constitution. Instead of using the legal process laid out in our founding document, we’ve gotten the signature of a Magistrate Judge and run off with it to the rest of the world. And while I have no doubt of the competence of Magistrate Judge Michael Dolinger, the judge who signed the complaint in this case, that’s simply not the way our judicial system is supposed to work. Average citizens are supposed to review the work of the government when it makes legal cases, not just Magistrates.

All of which ought to raise real questions why our government has decided to share these details with the rest of the world, but bypassed the step where they’re supposed to share them with its own citizens.

how interesting that it takes a lone blogger to make the kind of substantial point that should have been a glaring omission to even the least perceptive of our so-called professional news media... if the case was worth the paper it's printed on, a grand jury indictment should have been a slam dunk and certainly something our fear-mongering leaders would have wanted to have had in hand before trying to put that horribly scarey country, iran, back on the front burner...

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Everybody's a suspect...

truthout...

The recent dramatic expansion of intelligence collection at the federal, state and local level raises profound civil liberties concerns regarding freedoms and protections we have long taken for granted. If people generally appear unaware of "change in the air," a large part of the reason is the unparalleled resort to secrecy used by the government to keep its actions from public scrutiny. According to the new American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report, "Drastic Measures Required," under President Obama (who had vowed to create "an unprecedented level of openness in Government" when he first took office), there were no fewer than 76,795,945 decisions made to classify information in 2010 - eight times the number made in 2001.

There are layers of secrecy that cannot even be penetrated by most members of Congress. In the recent debate over the re-authorization of three sections of the USA Patriot Act with sunset provisions, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), who is a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, declared in the Senate in May 2011 that there was a secret interpretation of Patriot Act powers that he could not even tell them about without disclosing classified information. [2] "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry," said Wyden. The determination of the Obama administration to imitate its predecessor and maintain a wall of secrecy around anything that could be connected (however tenuously) with "national security" is evident in the zeal with which it has pursued whistleblowers and its use of the state secrets privilege in judicial proceedings, including in the recent court challenge to the FBI use of the informant Craig Monteilh to spy on mosques in Orange County, California.

During a decade of relentless fearmongering about the terrorist threat, most Americans appear to have accommodated themselves to the visible signs of change without questioning their broad implications. If searches on the subway, body scans at the airport and a Special Operations military drill targeting a Boston neighborhood are presented as necessary to keep the nation safe, they are for them.

But what would they make of the largely invisible architecture of surveillance that treats everyone as a potential suspect? Anyone who has a bank account and makes a financial transaction, or uses a phone or a computer to send emails or browse web sites, or visits a library, books a rental car, or purchases a airline ticket is within the surveillance net.

i've said repeatedly, anyone who uses any digital network, from an atm to swiping a supermarket affinity card, is opening themselves to surveillance...

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Forced relocations for terrorism "suspects" in the UK

UN-frickingly-believable... and, mind you, no due process, rules of evidence, indictment or conviction anywhere in sight...

note the highlighted last paragraph...

from the guardian...

The government is planning emergency powers to forcibly relocate terror suspects, months after pledging to scrap the existing measure.

Launching the terrorism prevention and investigation measures (Tpim) bill in May, the Home Office said "relocation to another part of the country without consent will be scrapped". But it has now brought back the powers, reserving them for "exceptional circumstances".

The emergency legislation would enable the home secretary to specify more stringent restrictions on suspected terrorists in exceptional circumstances, the Home Office said.

These would include the power to relocate the individual without their consent to a different part of the country and tighter restrictions on association and communications, it said.

The enhanced Tpim bill will be put before parliament should exceptional circumstances arise. Under the measures, the home secretary "may impose restrictions on the individual leaving a specified area or travelling outside that area", the draft bill said. A suspect under such an order may also be forced to hand in their passport.

The home secretary could also impose restrictions on the individual's possession or use of electronic communication devices, including both computers and telephones. Further restrictions could also be imposed to limit who the suspect communicates or associates with, where the suspect works or what he or she studies. The restrictions imposed under the Tpim were an "imperfect but necessary step", the Home Office said.

It also rejected a recommendation from the joint committee on human rights that an alternative system of restrictions linked to an ongoing criminal investigation, such as that proposed by the former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald, was appropriate.

"Tpim notices, like the control orders they will replace, are intended to be used in such cases – where there is no realistic prospect of a prosecution, and there is no imminent prospect that further investigation will yield evidence that could be used to prosecute," the Home Office said.

as convinced as i am that the united states is out of its collective mind with the ever-growing and completely fear-based national security and surveillance state, this latest development in the uk is so over the top as to leave me speechless...

so, what's next...? repeat after me... d.e.t.e.n.t.i.o.n. c.e.n.t.e.r.s., known in an earlier era as "war relocation camps" (japanese internment camps) in the u.s. and by another, much more emotionally loaded term in germany (which i don't need to mention here)...

p.s. don't think for one minute that this diabolical plan isn't on the drawing board right here in the u.s...

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Level 5 headed to Level 7...? Hmmm... Let's bury the bastard...

another morning and more increasingly bad news from fukushima...

Japan's nuclear safety agency raised the severity rating of the country's nuclear crisis Friday from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale, putting it on par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.

Ryohei Shiomi, a spokesman for the nuclear safety agency, said Friday that the agency raised the rating of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear crisis on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The scale defines a Level 4 incident as having local consequences and a Level 5 incident as having wider consequences.

The hallmarks of a Level 5 emergency are severe damage to a reactor core, release of large quantities of radiation with a high probability of "significant" public exposure or several deaths from radiation.

A partial meltdown at Three Mile Island also was ranked a Level 5. The Chernobyl accident of 1986, which killed at least 31 people with radiation sickness, raised long-term cancer rates, and spewed radiation for hundreds of miles (kilometers), was ranked a Level 7.

France's Nuclear Safety Authority has been saying since Tuesday that the crisis in northeastern Japan should be ranked Level 6 on the scale.

so, if it's only a level 5, why are they now considering the desperate, last-ditch strategy used for chernobyl...?

Japan weighs need to bury nuclear plant

Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear plant in sand and concrete may be a last resort to prevent a catastrophic radiation release, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986.

mmm-hmmmm... but, not to worry, everything's still "fine," dontcha know...

Radiation levels recorded in areas near the plant did not pose an immediate risk to human health, said Michael O'Leary, the World Health Organisation's representative in China.

"At this point, there is still no evidence that there's been significant radiation spread beyond the immediate zone of the reactors themselves," O'Leary told reporters in Beijing.

Japan's nuclear disaster has triggered global alarm and reviews of safety at atomic power plants around the world.

President Barack Obama, who stressed the United States did not expect harmful radiation to reach its shores, said he had ordered a comprehensive review of domestic nuclear plants and pledged Washington's support for Japan.

[all emphases added]

i don't know about you, but i feel SO much better now...!

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Japan nuclear crisis worsens

every morning i get up and find the situation is getting worse...

The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a far bleaker appraisal on Wednesday of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government had offered. He said American officials believed that the damage to at least one crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo had acknowledged, and he advised Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities.

The announcement opened a new and ominous chapter in the five-day-long effort by Japanese engineers to bring the six side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and a tsunami last Friday.

there's a part of this situation as it's being treated by our super-rich, elite bought-and-paid-for media that's pure fear-mongering... i'm not buying into that part but what i am feeling most strongly is concern for the people affected, not only by the nuclear crisis but the tsunami and the earthquake, fercryinoutloud... my heart goes out...

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Crossing the "fear barrier"

listening to rania, a human rights activist, speaking to al jazeera from the 6th of october bridge in cairo... she says that once the egyptian people crossed the "fear barrier," there was no stopping them...

i've said all along that fear is the principal tool used by our overlords to keep us in our place... if you look at just how much fear gets stoked on a daily basis - terrorists, swine flu, home foreclosure, crime, even losing one's job - we are mercilessly manipulated on a daily basis...

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Secrecy is the biggest danger to democratic society

rt...

Cryptome.org was publishing classified and secret documents long before WikiLeaks made headlines. Cryptome co-founder John Young told RT such sites are allowed to stay online so that spy services might keep an eye on their visitors. There is no secrecy on the Internet, John Young warned.

so what to do...?

cryptome...

Foster the understanding that secrecy is the greatest danger to democracy not its protector. A few counters to anti-democratic beneficiaries of secrecy around the globe:

The first step is to set funding according to how few secrets are kept. The more secrets, the less funding, the fewer secrets the more funding. Thus openness will be rewarded rather than penalized. Now it works the opposite way: secret funding promotes greater secrecy.

This should apply to all secret keepers who claim to serve the public not just governments.

Second step is to set up public overseers of secrecy who have no stake in keeping secrets. This will exclude congress members, high officials and those who classify information and protect the archives against public access. Do not expect honest oversight by those who are "cleared for access to secrets" -- getting cleared is entrapment by a self-serving system.

Third step is to set severe penalties for whoever advocates greater secrecy for any reason.

Fourth step is to penalize anyone who benefits from secrecy.

Fifth step is to keep the door open to debate on new ways to combat insidious secrecy and to guard against its reinstitutionalization by crises, lying, deception and rigged threats. Disbelieve claims secrecy is needed to combat those out to steal secrets.

Merely a beginning to cure a long-lasting disease spread by secretkeepers fearful of true democracy.

one of the key points in the video clip is that the biggest conspiracy theorists work for the national security state, manufacturing the overblown fears and the "enemies" that go with them...

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My biggest concern with the Arizona shooting - the internet

yes, violence targeting anybody, be they ordinary u.s. citizens, elected officials of our or any other government, or innocent civilians in the endless "war on terror," is something to be condemned and, by all means, prevented... but, as glenn points out, we should be hyper-attentive to our fear-mongering government using the excuse of any and all such horrific events - as well as the non-horrific ones, e.g. wikileaks - to further advance the national security state...

There has been much talk over the last several days, in the wake of the Arizona shooting, about attempts by some citizens to instill physical fear in elected officials. That's a worthwhile and necessary topic, but the fear that government officials are attempting to instill in law-abiding, dissenting citizens is far more substantial and sustained, and deserves much more attention than it has received.

why do i raise the specter of the national security state in connection with the arizona shooting...? here's our esteemed fbi director, robert mueller, speaking in tucson...

“The ubiquitous nature of the Internet means that not only threats but also hate speech and other inciteful speech is much more readily available to individuals than quite clearly it was 8 or 10 or 15 years ago,” Mr. Mueller said. “That absolutely presents a challenge for us, particularly when it results in what would be lone wolves or lone offenders undertaking attacks.”

fueled by wikileaks, obama's proposed internet id for everybody and now this, i predict a crackdown on internet freedom like nothing we've yet seen...

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Glenn doesn't claim that Biden was told to change his tune but I'm going to

before...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

after...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

glenn...

In one day, Biden went from giddily declaring that "I don't think there's any damage" to gravely warning that "it has done damage." I have no idea whether Biden was told that his Thursday no-damage admission would severely harm the Government's efforts to prosecute Assange, but what is clear is that he was perfectly willing to march into Meet the Press the following day and say things that he knew were false in order to depict the WikiLeaks diplomatic cable disclosures as harming U.S. national security.

and why in the world would biden so quickly change his tune...? maybe he got out there in front of the press before he'd been briefed on the correct talking points...? just sayin'...

more glenn...

It's really not an overstatement to say that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are the new Iraqi WMDs because the government and establishment media are jointly manufacturing and disseminating an endless stream of fear-mongering falsehoods designed to depict them as scary villains threatening the security of The American People and who must therefore be stopped at any cost.

i'm still grappling with the fact that, with all the fuss generated by the hackers who went after companies that dropped wikileaks, there's been virtually nothing whatsoever in the media about going after those who perpetrated the ddos attacks on wikileaks... oh, well... i guess it doesn't make any sense to "grapple" with what i already know to be the flat-out hypocrisy of our handlers...

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You've got to be carefully taught

i was listening to npr's morning edition with scott simon this morning... and, yes, i confess, listening to npr in buenos aires does somewhat defeat the purpose of being out of the country... anywayz... i don't remember the context in which it was played, but scott played some of the opening stanzas from a song that had made a big impact on me as a child that i hadn't heard in many years... hearing it again, i understand better than i could have imagined just how strong a message it carries...

from the 1949 rodgers and hammerstein musical, south pacific...

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

this seems to be a particularly appropriate post given the "be afraid, be very afraid" news about our latest terrorist threat that emerged yesterday...

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Our handlers seem particularly determined to keep us cowering under our sheets

be afwaid, be vewy afwaid...

The U.S. State Department issued an alert on Sunday urging Americans traveling to Europe to be vigilant about possible terrorist attacks in a statement that specifically cites the potential involvement of Al Qaida. The British government, meanwhile, raised the threat of terrorism to "high" from "general" for Britons in France and Germany.

[...]

The U.S. travel alert urges extra caution and does not discourage Americans from visiting Europe. An American official who confirmed the warning on Saturday, who did not want to be identified speaking about internal government deliberations, said a stronger “travel warning” that might advise Americans not to visit Europe was not under consideration. European officials have been concerned about the impact on tourism and student travel from any official guidance to American travelers.

i'm starting to get that old feeling left over from the bush years that i should constantly be checking under my bed for terrorists...

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Remember, the fear must be sustained if the resources are to flow

i signed off the previous post with my own solid advice - "don't give in to the fearmongers"... not more than an hour later, i'm faced with former intelligence director, currently a booz allen defense contractor vp and ace fear-monger mike mcconnell shoveling it out as fast as he can...

Speaking at the Washington Ideas Forum at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., former Director of National Intelligence and Director of the National Security Agency Mike McConnell said that the U.S. is unprepared for a cyberattack and must overhaul its defenses.

"The warnings are over. It could happen tomorrow," he said of a large-scale cyberattack against the U.S., which could impact the global economy "an order of magnitude surpassing" the attacks of September 11. McConnell, in a panel with Bush administration Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend and Washingtonian reporter Shane Harris, called cybersecurity "the wolf at the door."

McConnell and Townsend both argued that the U.S. should overhaul how it defends against cyberattacks. Townsend warned that U.S. intelligence and security agencies lack the organizational ability and authorization to prevent and respond to cybersecurity threats.

never mind that mcconnell and booz have gazillions of dollars at stake based on how much fear they can stoke in the administration, congress and the american public... never mind that the atlantic can't be bothered to identify mcconnell in his current role as a senior vp at booz allen... the message is all about fear...

could a sophisticated cyber weapon like the stuxnet worm be developed, directed at the u.s. internet infrastructure and possibly shut it down...? why, sure... i don't doubt that it's a possibility... but, fercryinoutloud, is it necessary for someone like mcconnell to pop up every six months with his patented chicken little routine, particularly when our esteemed news media aren't even interested in giving us the rest of the story...?

fortunately, a commenter writing in the uk guardian hasn't taken leave of his senses...

There is now an extensive police and industrial lobby in Britain dependent for its resources on maintaining a high level of public fear. The lobby thrives on its own failures. The incidents in America on 9/11 (2001) and in London on 7/7 (2005) saw the greatest ever peacetime growth in spending on security. Unlike most forms of public spending, this one could by its nature demand cash with menaces and with no account of value for money.

The fear must be sustained if the resources are to flow.

as in britain, as in the us - as always, follow the money...

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A terrorist is tried in NYC... Say what...?

marcy - emptywheel - wheeler...

[A]s Bob Schacht pointed out, not that anybody would know it, but there has been a terror trial going on all week in a real live Article III courtroom in the heart of Manhattan. Exactly like all the Republicans with vapors and trembling Democrats said could not be safely done.

from human rights first...

Despite repeated warnings that trying Guantanamo detainees in New York would result in chaos, mayhem, kidnappings, astronomical security costs, a police take-over of Lower Manhattan, snarled traffic, street closures, and “utter, unmitigated disaster,” New Yorkers interviewed by Human Rights First are going about their daily business within blocks of the federal terrorism trial of a former Guantanamo detainee.

In an exclusive video released today, the group reveals that many New Yorkers are not only failing to fear, they do not even realize that accused terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani’s trial is underway. Some, despite the urgent warnings from those trying to “Keep America Safe,” even expressed pride that the prosecution was happening in New York City.

“We have trials like that here all of the time,” one woman observed as Human Rights First correspondent Reagan Kuhn interviewed her near the federal courthouse in Foley Square.

Despite the best efforts of Liz Cheney, Deborah Burlingame, Rudy Guiliani, and Karl Rove to spread panic, many naïve New Yorkers seemed completely uninformed about the chaos that was supposed to reign. Some even observed that “everything seems pretty normal,” “I haven’t noticed anything,” and “I’m sure everybody knows what they are doing.”.

all of the cravenly manipulative exhortations demanding that we live in endless, paralyzing fear are clearly aimed at one thing and one thing only - allowing those in power to exert more control over our minds and our lives... marcy offers a nice closing paragraph...

They have been holding terrorism trials of the highest order for years in New York City. SDNY is where the Blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman was tried for the first World Trade Center Attack. There is not a better secured and more appropriate place in america to try the 9/11 terrorism suspects. That is what we do in America, and what we do as Americans. Giving in to the fear and bed wetting of the Cheneys, Rudy Guiliani, Lindsey Graham, Lieberman and others of their ilk is giving up on our principles and giving in to the terrorists themselves. Besides, NYC is always a target of terrorists and would be even if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other four 9/11 suspects were tried in Gitmo.

Put the trials where the crimes happened and deal with it.

don't give in to the fearmongers...

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Oh, shit...! Major bummer...! [UPDATE: be VEWY AFWAID]

just what we need... another terrorist scare to keep us all cowering in our barcaloungers while we hand over more of our freedoms to our courageous leaders whose only desire is to keep us safe... yeah, right... what a load of bollocks...

The failed car bombing in Times Square increasingly appears to have been coordinated by several people in a plot with international links, Obama administration officials said Tuesday.

The disclosure, while tentative, came as the White House intensified its focus on the Saturday incident in New York City, in which explosives inside a Nissan Pathfinder were set ablaze but failed to detonate at the tourist-crowded corner of Broadway and 45th Street.

Emerging from a series of briefings, several officials said it was premature to rule out any motive but said the sweeping, multi-state investigation was turning up new clues.

Separately, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs also characterized the incident for the first time as an attempted act of terrorism. "I would say that was intended to terrorize, and I would say that whomever did that would be categorized as a terrorist," Gibbs said, sharpening the administration's tone.

Another U.S. official, recounting a conversation with intelligence officials, said, "Don't be surprised if you find a foreign nexus. . . . They're looking at some tell-tale signs and they're saying it's pointing in that direction."

i was in chicago yesterday doing something that i've been wanting to do for a long time - giving a talk on afghanistan... there's nothing i think is more worthwhile than taking the fear and mystery out of that country and getting people to think a little more deeply about all the propagandized bullshit we're fed constantly through our so-called "news" outlets... by sharing my personal experiences and highlighting some of the wonderful afghan friends i've made, if i succeeded in removing just a teeny bit of people's fear, i will consider my time well spent...

but it seems our government is hell-bent on keeping us groveling in fear... without any degree of certainty, our leaders are already hinting that dark, evil, foreign terrorist forces are now at work in our midst and we must be afraid, very, very afraid... why can't they just keep their fucking mouths shut until they have incontrovertible proof rather than dribbling out all this shit about "appears to have been coordinated," "attempted acts," "turning up new clues," "intended to terrorize," and "pointing in that direction"... what they're really saying is that, at this point, it's all conjecture... maybe they have some solid clues and maybe they don't but, ferchrissake, stop dangling that shit out there... the only purpose it serves is to feed our society's sick, voyeuristic need to collectively gasp, shudder, remain glued to our tv sets and sit back while those who have the most to gain from such a situation continue to "do what's best for us"...

[UPDATE]

ooooooooo... more tewwowism...

An FBI-led terrorism task force has taken over the investigation of the failed car bombing in Times Square because of indications it was connected to international terrorism, a senior law enforcement source said Monday.

i don't mean to make light of this but, fercryinoutloud, stop hypin' it, will ya, at least until the facts are in...

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The Booz Allen Executive VP, former Admiral and former intelligence chief, fear-mongers for his company

all in the name of national security, of cuss, of cuss...

Mike McConnell on how to win the cyber-war we're losing

The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing. It's that simple. As the most wired nation on Earth, we offer the most targets of significance, yet our cyber-defenses are woefully lacking.

o-o-o-oook... so, check the next paragraph...

The problem is not one of resources; even in our current fiscal straits, we can afford to upgrade our defenses. The problem is that we lack a cohesive strategy to meet this challenge.

translation: we need to increase defense spending even MORE, and, oh, btw, my company is a prime defense contractor... we also need to develop a national strategy, and, oh, btw, my company can do that too...

and what does this dinosaur put forth as the model for protecting against this high-tech challenge...? why, the cold war, the boogieman that made so many of these old farts and their companies rich beyond measure...

During the Cold War, deterrence was based on a few key elements: attribution (understanding who attacked us), location (knowing where a strike came from), response (being able to respond, even if attacked first) and transparency (the enemy's knowledge of our capability and intent to counter with massive force).

Against the Soviets, we dealt with the attribution and location challenges by developing human intelligence behind the Iron Curtain and by fielding early-warning radar systems, reconnaissance satellites and undersea listening posts to monitor threats. We invested heavily in our response capabilities with intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines and long-range bombers, as well as command-and-control systems and specialized staffs to run them. The resources available were commensurate with the challenge at hand -- as must be the case in cyberspace.

Just as important was the softer side of our national security strategy: the policies, treaties and diplomatic efforts that underpinned containment and deterrence. Our alliances, such as NATO, made clear that a strike on one would be a strike on all and would be met with massive retaliation. This unambiguous intent, together with our ability to monitor and respond, provided a credible nuclear deterrent that served us well.

it seems obvious that we're being prepped for the next great enemy... first, it was the soviet union and the threat of nuclear annihilation... then, it was terrorism and the fear of someone wearing a suicide vest under every bed... now, we need to quake in terror of an electronically savvy enemy penetrating the very networks that makes our interconnected life possible...

ask yourself... who stands to lose the most if mcconnell's vision of the horrors of cyber war comes true...? would it be you and me...? probably not... would it be the super-rich elites whose billions and billions of dollars/euros/pounds/yen/renminbi electronically circle the globe thousands of times every day looking for a place to land where it can make them yet more...? yes... that's who would suffer... poor babies... ain't buyin' it...

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Using fear-mongering to generate support for more "enhanced" detention and interrogation techniques

ya gotta love the euphemism they use - "flexible"... what does "flexible" tell you...? i don't know about you, but "flexible" says to me they want to be able to "bend"... "bend" what, you may ask...? "bend" what's already in place would be my response and what's already in place has been shown time and again to circumvent due process, constitutional rights and the u.n. convention against torture... the next question would be HOW "flexible"...? what exactly is the "flexibility" they're asking for...? i'm not sure i want to know... oh, hell... of COURSE i want to know... we - all of us - NEED to know...

Intelligence officials say al-Qaeda will try to attack U.S. in next 6 months

The Obama administration's top intelligence officials on Tuesday described it as "certain" that al-Qaeda or its allies will try to attack the United States in the next six months, and they called for new flexibility in how U.S. officials detain and question terrorist suspects.

needless to say, in the typical context-free, head-in-the-sand journalism we've come to expect from our news media, the rest of the wapo article completely ignores the flashing red light sitting on top of the call for "new flexibility in how U.S. officials detain and question terrorist suspects"...

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You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father . . . could never have imagined

i've posted this before but somehow, today, reading it again at information clearing house, it seems pertinent once again...

"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . .and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated . . . by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. . .

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.

You don't want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. . . .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father. . . could never have imagined." :

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

i'm not posting this because it's how i see the whole of our current reality... i think the direction mayer describes is very much the world our handlers are trying very hard to create, but i also think there's a countervailing trend that, bit by bit, is banishing such darkness, and it's that trend that i choose to spend my active energy on... that doesn't mean, however, that we should adopt a pollyanna viewpoint or put our heads in the sand, but it does mean that, in continuing to be aware of the dark, we don't spend our time reinforcing it by succumbing to fear and hate...

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