Russia's foreign minister said Monday a deal to help enrich uranium for Iran is in the works but has yet to be finalized, a development that could help resolve the latest concerns over Iran's nuclear program.
( That's much more diplomatic than saying 'Defuse the Bullshit' )
Vitamin D May Help Prevent Falls
http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20091002/vitamin-d-may-help-prevent-falls?src=RSS_PUBLIC
Studies Show Taking Vitamin D Supplements May Cut Fall Risk After Age 65, if Dose Is High Enough
Why Medical Malpractice Is Off Limits
A few thousand trial lawyers have a lock on Democrats, who refuse to consider any legal reform.
The American Economy Is Not Coming Back
By Dave Lindorff
President Barack Obama and his economic team are being careful to couch all their talk about economic stimulus programs and bank bailout programs in warnings that the economic downturn is serious and that it will take considerable time to bounce back.
I’m reminded of an experience I had with Chinese medicine when I was living in Shanghai back in 1992. I had come down with a nasty case of the flu while teaching journalism at Fudan University on a Fulbright Scholar program. A Chinese colleague suggested I go to the university clinic. When I told him there wasn’t much point since doctors couldn’t do much for the flu besides recommend fluids and bed rest, he said, “That’s Western doctors. You could go to the Chinese medicine doctors at the clinic. They can help you.” I figured, what the hell, and we went. The doctor inquired into the lurid details of my illness—how my bowel movements looked, the color of the mucus in my nose, etc. He didn’t really examine me physically. Then he prescribed an incredible number of pills and teas and sent me home with a huge bag of stuff, and instructions on the regimen for taking them through the course of each day. I followed the directions dutifully, and my colleague came by each day to check on my progress. By the fifth day, when I was still running a fever and feeling terrible, I told him I didn’t think the Chinese medicine was working. He replied confidently, “Chinese medicine takes a long time to work.”
I laughed at this. “Sure,” I said. “But the flu only lasts a week or so, and now, when I get better, you’ll say it was the Chinese medicine, right?”
He smiled and agreed. “Yes. You are right.”...
years in an unreal economy, propped up by easy credit which inflated the value of real estate to incredible levels, and which led people to spend way beyond their means. Ordinary middle-class working people have been encouraged to buy obscenely oversized homes at 5% down, or even no down payment. They have been lured into buying cars the size of trucks, one for each driving-aged member of the family (in our town, so many high school kids drive to school that the school ran out of parking spaces and the yellow school buses, largely empty on their runs, are referred to by the students as the “shame train,” an embarrassment to be seen riding). They’ve installed individual back-yard swimming pools, unwilling to share the water with their neighbors in community pools. Boring faux ethnic restaurant franchises of all kinds have befouled the landscape, filling up with families too stressed out to cook, and willing to endure over-salted, over-priced and tasteless cuisine and tacky plastic décor night after night.
Now this is all crashing down. Property values are in free-fall. Car sales have fallen off a cliff. Joblessness is soaring (At present, it’s approaching an official rate of 8%, but if the methodology used in 1980, before the Reagan administration changed it to hide the depth of that era’s deep recession, were applied, it would be 17% today, or one in seven workers).
Eventually, the economic slide will hit bottom and begin its slow climb back, as all recessions do, but there will be no return to the days of $500,000 McMansion developments, three-car garages and a new car every two or three years for both parents plus a car for each highschooler. Not only will banks no longer be able to offer such credit to clients. People, having been burned, will not be willing to borrow so much. Company health care benefits, pension programs or 401(k) matching programs that were slashed during this downturn will not be restored when the economy picks up again.
Over the last 20 years, America has degenerated into a nation of consumers, with 72 percent of Gross Domestic Product (sic) now being accounted for by consumer spending—most of it going for things that are produced overseas and shipped here.
That is not an economic model that is sustainable, and it is a model that has just suffered what is certainly a mortal blow.
High Tech Airships Making a Comeback
US Army is planning to deploy an unmanned airship called the LEMV which can spend up to 3 weeks at an altitude of 20,000 feet (6,100 m) with a 2,500 pound (1,134 kg) payload of surveilance equipment by the middle of 2011.
This Can't Be Happening!
It's Congress: Don't Forget to Wash Your Hands After Hearings
Wed, 09/30/2009 - 14:56 — dlindorff
Some years ago, my wife and I, together with our young daughter, took a circuitous summer train trip through France, Italy, Austria and Germany. The last leg was an overnight express from Berlin that deposited us at the Gare du Nord in Paris just at sunrise. Feeling washed out from the ride, we made our separate ways to the facilities. I was standing at the urinal with a bunch of other men, relieving myself, when I heard this awful groaning coming from a stall. The groaning grew louder and more painful sounding. Some guy was obviously having a terrible time with his bowels.
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Look Out Below! They Call this Season 'Fall' for a Reason
Mon, 09/28/2009 - 14:46 — dlindorff
So now it turns out that the whole Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was a flop or more likely a scam. Remember Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson telling us last September that credit markets had locked up, and then, after half of the $750 billion that he extorted out of Congress was handed out to Wall Street firms, new President Barack Obama justifying the spending of the second half of the money because we needed to “get the banks lending again”?
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The Best Health 'Reform' Money Can Buy
Thu, 09/24/2009 - 18:21 — dlindorff
When the White House or Democrats in Congress talk about health care reform, and about wanting to preserve the central role of the private insurance industry in health care, it pays to look at just what it is that they they’re so anxious to preserve.
According to the Health and Human Service’s department’s National Health Expenditures report, private insurers will pay out $854 billion in medical claims for health insurance policyholders this year. That represents about one-third of the nation’s estimated $2.5-trillion medical care bill for this year. But that’s not the whole story. The premiums paid for those claims payments will total $1.2 trillion, which includes $179 billion in “administrative” costs (21% or over $1 out of every $5 dollars spent on health care) and another 150 billion in profits (a tidy 15% return). That is money that was paid out in premiums by individuals and by employers (who every year are shifting more of the cost of health coverage onto employees).
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The New York Times Trashes Single-Payer Health Reform
Mon, 09/21/2009 - 20:48 — dlindorff
In an article in the Sunday New York Times, headlined “Medicare for All? ‘Crazy,’ ‘Socialized’ and Unlikely,”reporter Katherine Q. Seelye did her best to damn the idea of government insurance for all with faint praise.
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Thoughts on Saving an Old Barn
Wed, 09/16/2009 - 20:00 — dlindorff
Corporations have no more place in a democracy than carpenter ants and mold have in the beams of an old barn
For the last two weeks, I’ve been contemplating the mysteries of a post-and-beam barn, trying to work out how to rescue the long-ignored structure from the fate of many barns of its vintage (probably about 150 years old), which is total collapse.
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In Praise of Joe Wilson: What's Wrong with Calling Out Liars in Congress?
Fri, 09/11/2009 - 15:51 — dlindorff
Liberals are acting all righteous and offended that a member of the Republican opposition, Rep. “Joe” Wilson of South Carolina, would deign to besmirch the “dignity of the presidency” by calling out “Liar!” in the middle of President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening.
But what’s wrong with that? Whatever the veracity of Obama’s claim that his proposed health care “reform” would not pay for the health care of illegal immigrants residing in the US (and one can only hope that statement was fatuous, because at a minimum we would certainly want the government to pay for the care of an illegal immigrant in childbirth, or of an illegal immigrant who came down with a contagious disease), and even if Rep. Wilson is a racist bozo who wrongly thinks or wants to imply that Obama's plan would be out there enrolling undocumented workers in the millions at taxpayer expense, why shouldn’t members of Congress call out a president if they think he’s lying to them from the podium?
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Censorship American Style: Hide the US War Dead from the American People
Wed, 09/09/2009 - 18:28 — dlindorff
The Obama administration's freak out, as expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, over the Associated Press Agency's belated circulation of a photograph of a dying US soldier in Afghanistan, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, is the latest of example of the hypocrisy of US authorities who claim to be concerned about the feelings of American military families, while really simply desiring to censor the war's horrors from the eyes of the American people.
Lance Cpl. Josua Bernard, fatally wounded in Afghanistan
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10 Questions: How Many Democrats Does It Take to...
Mon, 09/07/2009 - 20:25 — dlindorff
Question: How many Democrats does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: In Theory, one. But to hear the Democrats tell it, at least 60, because they claim that even 59 of them aren't enough to keep 40 Republicans from pushing them off the stepladder (although for the prior eight years, far fewer than 60 Republicans always seemed to be able to manage the job).
Question: How may Democrats does it take to kill a good idea?
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'My Fellow Americans...': The Speech President Obama Should Give to Congress Next Week
I stand before you a chastened president. I made a mistake. Two mistakes really. (wild applause from Republican side)
I thought that Congress could do its job and through the deliberative process, produce a health care reform plan that would win broad support across the aisle and among all of you. But I’m afraid that I was wrong. Health care is an enormous industry—maybe the biggest and most powerful industry in the country—and it has far too much power in this capital. Literally thousands of lobbyists, carrying tens of billions of dollars in campaign contributions—have invaded these halls (and my house!) (relieved laughter)and distorted the process, and in the end have stymied reform. (some hissing)....I told the American Medical Association that while single-payer medical plans, where the government is the insurer, might work well in other countries, the idea of government running health care was not part of our American tradition. In fact, it is, and has been since 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Medicare program. Medicare is a classic example of an excellent single-payer program--one of the largest in the world--and polls and surveys show it is enormously popular with older and disabled Americans. Medicare has relieved our parents and grandparents from the fear that they will not get medical care when they stop working, and it has lifted the enormous burden and worry off of younger Americans over how to pay for the care of their elders, and it has done this with enormous efficiency, all while allowing recipients to choose their own doctors and hospitals.
This week marks eight years since the launching of the war in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, it was reported that Canadian troops killed two teenagers in the Panjwai district.
October 5, 2009
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Greg Macdougall
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This is the second part of an interview with Ben Powless, in which he discusses First Nations communities and young people's role in the urgently needed transition to a green economy.
October 5, 2009
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It seems highly likely that Tim Hortons would have opted to reorganize as a Canadian corporation even had Canada simply kept its corporate tax rates at U.S. levels.
October 5, 2009
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Twenty-eight countries have now been affected by contamination from genetically modified flax in Canadian exports since contamination was first reported on Sept. 8.
October 2, 2009
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Webcast: As the 2010 Olympics approach, the possibility of civil liberties violations have been cited by a number of community organizations in Vancouver as a major concern.
October 5, 2009
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Despite everything, the Catholic Church, the world's oldest and largest institution with 2,797 dioceses and more than a billion members worldwide, could be said to be doing well enough. Just not here.
October 5, 2009
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Unbeknownst to most Canadians, cable companies and local community groups have been wrestling for control over community channel assets.
October 2, 2009
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Why do people seek joie de vivre in local politicians? Because cities are where most of us live. A local pol shouldn't just talk the place up -- she or he should enjoy it.
Netted News
- Bullet: Hand-Washing Is Not Enough: Fighting the Spread of H1N1
- Iran protests: spreading amongst 'working-class lads'
- Asylum in the UK: Destitution, detention, deportation?
- What's New: Neoliberalism As Water Balloon
- One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
- Arctic Fox
- Bullet: Against Concessions: CAW - UAW Rank and File Solidarity
- What's New - Alert Radio (#127): interviews Ingo Schmidt about the German elections
- Toronto Friday Oct 2nd - forum: Organizing Working Class Communities
- Here comes the sun
- It’s Friday – and your chance to win the Green Guide!
- Bullet: The German Federal Elections: Centre-Right Wins Majority, Social Democracy Suffers Crushing Defeat, The Left Receives a Boost
- Calling photographers!
- September in Review, Part II
- “Denying the history of colonialism in Canada is like denying the holocaust.” (Ghislain Picard)
Active Discussions on babble
commented on by
janfromthebruce
Recently published podcasts
I Read The News Today, Oh Boy!
Stark Raven: Prison Justice
Stark Raven: Prison Justice
Needs No Introduction
The rabble blogs
The fake 2010 Winter Olympics
October 5, 2009
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Word of the Rings
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It appears that the "fake" factor is alive and well when it comes to preparing for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
October 5, 2009
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johnbon
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Last Wednesday, the Recession Relief Coalition held a soup line rally outside the Finance Minister's regional office in Toronto demanding reforms to EI and social assistance.
October 4, 2009
| By
Dave.Markland
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Canadian forces shot two teenagers while a Dutch jet killed a family.
October 4, 2009
| By
Dave.Markland
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Canada's General Vance again finds himself lashing out at Afghan children who don't show sufficient respect for Canadian forces.
Newswire: Top Headlines Elsewhere
- Ottawa giving up millions in gun registry fees
- Tiger injures man at Calgary Zoo
- 30,000 tests by N.B. radiologist probed
- Random breathalyzer tests considered for Canada
- Writers call for probe into human rights commission
- Pressure mounts on Abbas to quit
- Trailer full of toys for needy children stolen
- RCMP actions 'gratuitous, 'violent,' lawyer tells inquiry
- Plea over private education stigma
Dear American Neighbours:
Canadians have been watching and reading about your national debate over how to reform your health care system. Normally, of course, we would not attempt to intervene or influence you. But Canadians are shocked that their health-care system -- called Medicare -- has been used to frighten Americans. Some of what has been said about our Medicare system are outright falsehoods -- like the claim that we can't choose our own doctors or that government "bureaucrats" can deny us needed treatment.
We want you to know the truth so that when you make up your mind it will be on the basis of facts, not falsehoods. This page has testimonials from ordinary Canadians, from health professionals, links to websites explaining our Medicare and links to campaigns in your own country fighting for reform.
A new vision for community media
Unbeknownst to most Canadians, cable companies and local community groups have been wrestling for control over community channel assets: the community groups want space on the TV dial and production resources; the cable companies want to call the shots, control the programming, and move their community channels in the direction of commercial television. Approximately $80 million collected annually from Canadians and earmarked for community programming, is at stake.Meanwhile, the digital revolution is transforming citizens into media producers and every home computer into a virtual television station. In such a radically altered media environment, the question remains: what will community TV be in the 21st century?
Community media 2.0
Community television is a throwback to a time when cable technology was new and the web was not yet born. It allowed anyone to create a program that could be seen on cable. Community television was the YouTube of its day; but things have changed. Downloading and streaming have precipitated a complicated restructuring of the television industry, brought on in part by new viewing habits. Traditional TV now seems to be on the wane.
But there are some things that are harder for the Internet to replace. Most television takes more than one person to make. The Internet cannot replace the studio space, hands-on training and possibilities for in-person collaboration and mentorship that community television allowed for. And it won't replace the sense of place provided by a community production studio; a space where people can gather, work, learn and create together. ( More )
color theory
A heaping helping of eye candy for the sugar-needy. This community is a mecca for photographers eager to share and get feedback on their original work. It's also a great place to go sight-seeing when you’re weary of shades of gray. If you love vivid, evocative photos bathed in rich, atmospheric hues, you're in for a visual re/treat.
truthdig
Celebrating Slaughter: War and Collective Amnesia
By Chris Hedges — War memorials and museums sanitize the savage instruments of death that turn young soldiers into killers, and small villages in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq into hellish bonfires.
By Eugene Robinson — How to proceed in Afghanistan will be among the most difficult and fateful decisions that President Obama ever makes. But he’s the one who has to
War Kills Off Great Reform Movements
By E.J. Dionne — The hawks urging President Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan have no interest in his domestic policy. The 20th century is a graveyard of good ideas that lost out to war.
Pox Americana: The Real Cost of Bailing Out Wall Street
By Matt Bivens, TomDispatch — In the 20th century, smallpox killed more people than all of that bloody century’s wars combined. It cost $300 million to eradicate the disease. What might have been achieved with the $4 trillion we gave Wall Street?
By Joe Conason — Listening closely to the politicians with the most clout in the debate over health care, it is startling to discover how little they actually seem to know about the subject.
Immigration Is a Win-Win-Win
An independent report commissioned by the U.N. has found that immigration is simply good economics for everyone involved. The world’s billion migrants actually boost employment in their destination communities while improving conditions back home.
Top Psychologists Analyze Themselves
Psychologists are people too, and they’re prone to having quirks and neuroses despite their extensive training on the various facets of the human psyche. The British Psychological Society prodded 23 top psychologists to ‘fess up to their own blind spots and inconsistencies on the organization’s blog. Analyze away.
The New York Philharmonic was all set to fly into Cuba and jam, until the Treasury Department decided the patrons footing the bill couldn’t go. That’s pretty insulting to Cuba, considering that the same posse of musicians and rich people was cleared for a trip to North Korea.
Carbon Market Begs to Be Robbed
The U.N. is pioneering a carbon market that would allow rich countries to pay poor countries not to cut down forests. It’s just the kind of feel good program that could save the planet—or make loggers and organized criminals filthy rich.
Drinking Liberally in New Milford
John Stewart on Healthcare
Score One For The Working Families Party in NYC
A Connection Between Sleep and Alzheimer's?
Senator Chris Dodd on Obama's Afghanistan Strategy
General Petraeus re-wrote the doctrine for dealing with counterinsurgencies:
The first chapter of Petraeus's manual calls for a "force ratio" of 25 counterinsurgents (here meaning US, allied, and Iraqi soldiers and police) per 1,000 residents. In Baghdad that would require a total force of 120,000. But even with the additional 17,500 US troops President Bush has called for, and a reallocation of Iraqi troops from the North to Baghdad, the total force will be approximately 80,000, a full third less than what the manual prescribes.
I was shooting from the hip and based on my faulty memory, but the numbers I was talking about were sufficiently close to make the point. Thinking in terms of the situation in Afghanistan a quick look at the math tells you what you need to know.
The population of Afghanistan is 28,150,000 according to wikipedia - And the math based on 25 soldiers per thousand residents?
703,750
By Genral Petraeus' own standard that is how many soldiers would be needed to effectively stabelize Afghanistan. Accounting for US, UN and even the Afghanistan soldiers that have been trained up to provide security there are nowhere near enough. And there will never be anywhere near enough without a draft. That is an 800 pound guerilla that nobody will address.
Little wonder why Obama may be suffering from buyer's remorse on campaign statements and early decisions after he was sworn in.
Gaza War Some Unpublished Photos from Israel's Holocaust in Gaza
Israel to kill in U.S., allied nations
"Dead Dogmas of the Past" Richard Sale
Sic Semper Tyrannis
"Death Piled Hard" Now Available.
My second novel in the "Devereux" series is now available for purchase at; iUniverse, Barnes and Noble and Amazon. The cover painting, "The Fifes and Drums" is by Keith Rocco. pl
A Plague of Crooks and Fools - FB Ali
For the sins of its rulers Egypt was cha stised with ten different plagues, b ut the United States b enefit and that of their paymasters, b oth domestic and foreign (in simpler times this latter used to b e called treason, b ut everyone is so sophisticated now). To help them in their work the Crooks need Fools, and there is no shortage of these, b oth high and low, b ig and small.
The Crooks of Wall Street recently rob ed the country b lind with the help of the Fool they had installed, the Delphic oracle G reenspan (he is prob ab ly stupid enough to still b elieve he is a financial wizard). The Crooks who own the mass media, and the hacks who serve them, have reduced the general population into a collective of mindless Fools, so that they don’t have a clue what is b eing done to them or their country. But the b iggest Crooks are the ones in Washington b tells of the Summer Fool and the Winter Fool; Bush was ob viously a Summer one, b ut it is looking increasingly likely that Ob ama is going to turn out to b e a Winter Fool.
The battle at Wanat
"Brostrom's battalion commander, Lt. Col. William Ostlund, had concluded months before Kahler's death that keeping troops at the Bella outpost no longer made sense. Enemy fighters coming from Pakistan had long ago learned to maneuver around the base.
But Ostlund wasn't ready to give up the surrounding Waygal Valley, which was home to a largely illiterate and deeply religious population. The isolated valley offered an ideal haven for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "It was a population I really had a hard time understanding and did not respect," Ostlund said. "But I really did believe that they needed to be connected to the central government and that would be the first step to making them better people, less of a threat to themselves and Afghanistan." Washpost
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Yesterday we had a couple more combat outposts shot up and assaulted in Nuristan with eight men killed. Nuristan is a part of Afghanistan that is wild even for Afghanistan and largely uncontrolled by other than its inhabitants. Nuristan was called "Kaffiristan" (land of the heathen) until the late 19th Century when the people there were forcibly converted to Islam. Now the "Nuristanis" are among the most fanatic and ignorant of all the border peoples of the Pakistan/Afghanistan region.
Last year in July a rifle platoon was badly hurt at a village called Wanat in Nuristan. According to the story in today's Washington Post, the incident has been much investigated and continues to be investigated.
The account of the planning and execution of the placement of the outpost at Wanat raises a number of key issues bearing on the army's conduct of the war in the mountain country of east Afghanistan.
- The Taliban (Nuristani) enemy's capabilities were badly underestimated by higher headquarters before the decision was made to place this outpost at Wanat. This happened even though another combat outpost at Bella a few mile away in the same valley system had been repeatedly attacked by forces which showed real planning ability and which displayed numbers superior to those of the Bella outpost. In spite of this the same battalion decided to establish the small Wanat outpost with a 40 man platoon under a young officer who would be completely on his own out in this unfriendly place. In the event of the Wanat attack, the enemy numbered over 200 and opened their assault by attacks by fire from dominant terrain that eliminated much of the platoon's available local fire support. Either combat intelligence analysis failed badly or the command just ignored analysis that it did not want to hear.
- The Wanat outpost appears (from the Washpost drawing) to be badly situated. It was overlooked by higher ground and surrounded by buildings taller than anything that the platoon had to shelter within. The outpost appears to have been situated with priority given to the importance to locating it within the village so that there would be a maximum interaction with the local population rather than priority having been given to defense of the post. This is a very basic mistake that bespeaks a lack of focus on the need to survive in combat as opposed to devotion to a theory that demands maximum exposure to the local population. If counterinsurgency theory demands that kind of interaction, then the interaction must take place in a situation of enough physical security to enable the counterinsurgents to survive. That did not happen at Wanat.
- The battalion commander's remarks about his lack of respect for the Nuristanis is probably revealing. In the event they seem to have proven that they deserved a greater degree of respect as fighters than he had given them. This officer further remarked to the reporter that he had decided that the resistance of the Nuristanis to his battalion's efforts was a challenge to "his will" and that this was a factor in his decision to create the Wanat outpost. That is disturbing.
- Wanat was attacked 4 days after construction began. Under normal circumstances, and in my experience, such an outpost would have been sized larger, situated on defensible ground, provided with dependable fire support and built by engineer troops protected by a sizable security force before being handed over to this unfortunate young lieutenant and his 40 men. There are basic issues of competence involved in the planning and execution of the Wanat venture.
It will be interesting to learn if anything was learned at Wanat and applied to yesterday's action. pl
"A General's Public Pressure" - Ackerman
"In a speech in London on Thursday, Gen. Stanley McChrystal publicly intervened in the debate over Afghanistan. Vice President Biden has suggested that we focus on fighting al-Qaeda and refrain from using our troops to prop up the government of President Hamid Karzai. But when this strategic option was raised at his presentation, McChrystal said it was a formula for "Chaos-istan." When asked whether he would support it, he said, "The short answer is: No."
As commanding general in Afghanistan, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements. Under law, he doesn't have the right to attend the National Security Council as it decides our strategy. To the contrary, the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 explicitly names the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the National Security Council's exclusive military adviser. If the president wanted McChrystal's advice, he was perfectly free to ask him to accompany Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, when the council held its first meeting on Afghanistan this week.
But Obama did not extend the invitation, even though McChrystal was leaving Kabul and could have gone to Washington easily. Instead, Obama asked the general to report to the council via a brief teleconference." Bruce Ackerman------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will make a prediction. If McChrystal does not learn to subordinate himself to something other than his vision of what is right and true, he is going to get fired.
MacArthur was a lot smarter man than McChrystal and yet he suffered the ignominy of relief for cause even though he had not "gone public" against national policy. There should be a lesson in that.
IQ2 Debate Broadcast Schedule
The AfPak debate will be airing on Bloomberg on the following days:
October 14,15,16 at 9pm (EDT)
Sat October 17 at 8am, 2pm, 7pm, 11pm
Sun October 18 at 2am, 7am, 5pm
pl
Not their kind of town, Chicago!
"In making his pitch, the president had said that a nation shaped by the people of the world "wants a chance to inspire it once more." Never before had a U.S. president made such an in-person appeal, and Obama's critics will doubtlessly see the vote as a sign of his political shortcomings.
"I urge you to choose Chicago," Obama told members of the International Olympics Committee, many of whom he later mingled with as some snapped photos of him on their cell phones.
"And if you do — if we walk this path together — then I promise you this: The city of Chicago and the United States of America will make the world proud," the president said." Yahoonews.
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$50 million dollars in costs sunk seeking the games and a great deal of private money to be made if they had the games. Those were the stakes. For that possible gain, the prestige of an already diminished president was wagered, and lost.
What we have learned from this is that the president is not his own man. His first inclination was to send his wife to appeal for the prize. That would have been wise.
Now we know that the Chicago money that drove his campaign is still very much in the driver's seat.
That is bad news. pl
Wikipedia as a tool of political warfare
"Who's Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?" Giraldi
EDMONDS: $14,000
GIRALDI: What kind of information was Grossman giving to foreign countries? Did he give assistance to foreign individuals penetrating U.S. government labs and defense installations as has been reported? It’s also been reported that he was the conduit to a group of congressmen who become, in a sense, the targets to be recruited as “agents of influence.”
EDMONDS: Yes, that’s correct. Grossman assisted his Turkish and Israeli contacts directly, and he also facilitated access to members of Congress who might be inclined to help for reasons of their own or could be bribed into cooperation. The top person obtaining classified information was Congressman Tom Lantos. A Lantos associate, Alan Makovsky worked very closely with Dr. Sabri Sayari in Georgetown University, who is widely believed to be a Turkish spy. Lantos would give Makovsky highly classified policy-related documents obtained during defense briefings for passage to Israel because Makovsky was also working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
GIRALDI: Makovsky is now working for the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, a pro-Israeli think tank." Giraldi
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A remarkable interview. Giraldi is a very respected retired CIA field man.
What emerges from the article is a picture of the Washington of the "K Street Project," the revolving door, consultants sold out to foreign governments, foreign national intelligence agencies doing their duty in seeking to learn American government secrets, foreign connected lobbies working hard to suborn the US Congress. Hanging over the whole thing is a miasma of endless, meaningless, boring symposia, conferences, power lunches, etc. I think it was probably ever thus.
I am disappointed to think that Scowcroft is really like this.
I always wondered what lay behind Grossman's supercilious arrogance. There usually is something, something. pl
"The Stability of MAD" Habakkuk
Iran's Intentions
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Some will say that justice demands that Iran have the same right to ballistic missiles of various ranges and to nuclear weapons as anyone else. They would be right but that would be irrelevant and dangerous thinking. As I have tried to point out, justice has nothing to do with outcomes in international relations. Only perceived interests and brute strength, whether economic or military matter in the end, perhaps literally the end for someone.
The Iranians are clearly intent on achieving the possession of a variety of ballistic missiles. Such weapons are inherently inaccurate to within a few hundred yards at range. Because of this, they are of no real military value with other than nuclear warheads. The Israelis were afraid of Iraqi SCUDS. Well, I guess that is understandable if one might land in your courtyard, but I was in Baghdad during the "War of the Cities" and I will say again that such weapons have no real military value (other than to frighten civilians) without nuclear warheads.
At the same time, it is now revealed that the Iranians are building a second uranium enrichment plant, one that could be used to further enrich the product of the Natanz plant to a level usable in a fission weapon. They claim that it, too, is to support their nuclear electric program.
How gullible do they think we are?
This place, near Qom, was concealed, is hardened, not reported to the IAEA, is built within an IRGC base, and is too small to be useful for producing fuel for an electric program.
Following "Lang's Rules of Analysis," - The Duck Rule, - The Sherlock Rule or - Occam's Razor one must be led to the conclusion that the Iranians intend to produce nuclear warheads and probably for their missiles.
How long will that take? It will take quite a long time. The engineering and industrial obstacles to be overcome are considerable, but the evidence points to an intention to achieve a "force de frappe" capability that will change the strategic balance by holding foreign cities at risk.
Do the Iranians not understand that they are creating a situation in which it is likely that they will be attacked before they achieve that capability? Do they really not understand that bellicose statements like the one attributed to* Salami above only hasten the day? pl
Chain for Peace in the World
Sunday, 4. October 2009, 08:35:55
citizen, peace, people, world ...
I always wanted to do something for Peace on Earth, and today I found a way thanks to that blog and the artists I know who already did, for example, a song for peace
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