Month: August 2005

by W. Patrick Lang

"..Pollack, who was a staffer on President Clinton’s National Security Council, said he didn’t give the AIPAC staffers any classified information. Pollack also said the information that Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former director of foreign policy issues, is accused of passing on to a reporter could not have come from him. “I believe I am USGO-1,” Pollack told JTA on Monday, using a term in the indictment for U.S. Government Official No. 1. A second source, speaking on condition of anonymity, has verified the information. Neither Pollack nor the other unnamed government official — identified by sources as David Satterfield, a former deputy assistant secretary of state — has been charged with a crime. That has raised questions about the government’s case against Rosen, former AIPAC Iran analyst Keith Weissman and Larry Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst accused of passing classified information to the AIPAC staffers." (JTA)

COMMENTARY BELOW:

Intelligence: The Human Factor (Securing Our Nation) By Patrick Lang Editor: Larry C. Johnson

A Federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia has indicted two former foreign policy analysts (Rosen and Weissman) at AIPAC (THE Lobby for Israel in Washington) and a fairly senior civilian staffer in the office of the Secretary of Defense (Franklin) for playing fast and loose with US government secret information. Among other things they are accused of passing it to a foreign country’s diplomats (Israel, of course).  Franklin, the staffer is accused of illegally disclosing the information to Rosen and Weissman.

Satterfield (USGO-2 in the indictment) is now the Deputy Chief of Mission at the embassy in Baghdad.  In other words, he is Khalilzad’s deputy.  Savor that for a moment.  He is cited in the indictment for these three men as having given them US government secrets without authorization.

Pollack (USGO-1) is the author before the war of a famous book which strongly made the case for war with Iraq. the arguments cited by him in his book are largely "exploded" now by exposure to "sunlight" in country wide investigations of Iraq.  He has forthrightly said on TV that much of his argument was nonsense.  He now works for the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute.  Saban is funded with money from Middle Eastern sources.  The director of Saban is Martin Indyk whose meteoric rise to power and ability to land on his feet after "setbacks" are legend in Washington.   His career in Australian, and US Government includes service in the Australian equivalent of the National Security Council, followed by service at the US State Department, NSC, AIPAC, WINEP, as US Ambassador to Israel and now Director of the Saban Center.  Quite a career!

So, why weren’t Satterfield and Pollack indicted as well as the other three?  My conclusion, after talking to a number of people, is that they cooperated early and fully with the FBI in "nailing" the others, and were "immunized."

Nevertheless…..

Who is kidding who here?

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV (PDF)

By an overwhelming vote, the Orange County Democratic Party Central Committee, the Assembly delegates and other authorized officers voted at  7:50PM Pacific to endorse Grassroots candidate Steve Young for the California 48th Congressional District.

Coming from nowhere, Steve Young, a first time candidate, created his own race, nationalized his campaign, attracted the Hackett Campaign staff and now has Orange County’s Democratic endorsement! It is a story that could come only from a Grassroots candidate.

Yesterday his website was officially launched featuring innovative technology seen only once before in a political website at Steve Young for Congress. There you can join the Team that was just endorsed to help win the Primary on October 4th,2005 and prepare for the General election on Decemeber 6, 2005.

Bloggers: Join the Steve Young‘s Bloggers Posse at the Bloggers Corner at Steve Young’s website.
Press/Media: Register at the Steve Young site to get on the press/media distibution list.

Celebrate! This is the first big hurdle towards taking a Red seat and making it Blue! Join the Team. It’s going to take everyone’s effort!

Law and order are breaking down along the path of the Hurricane.
Police have lost their homes too. There is no point in working for a living, as a policeman if the paycheck you receive cannot purchase any goods because there are none
The gravity of the situation is that people could start dying before help arrives. That’s going to make a lot of people angry, bitter and seeking revenge
The government’s response has been slow and indifferent and they are creating a homegrown insurgency of newly homeless people with no other avenue of interest but crime. These people will be angry at any authority, this nation and it’s leadership. They feel betrayed and they are right in my opinion

The rage that people feel and normally contain may start to burn and go out of control soon. I think it will start happening tonight and tomorrow night. . When that happens a Police State will be formed.

In New Orleans the Police have been reported to be “looting ” as well. Police will stop acting, as police and the army will be called in.  Michael Brown head of FEMA said on Aaron Brown that he “hoped”  that the tent cities that they have to open wont be open any longer than necessary. He also said he is negoiating with a cruise line for a cruise ship to hold people. He may announce something tommorrow. But I think this is publlic relations and most of the people will be housed in tent cities and  not on costly cruise ships. I think the Head of Fema was saying he didn’t like tent cities but his superiors do.

FEMA is the same organization that is supposed to respond to this Hurricane with aid.

This is a very big deal.

Crossposted at dailyKos.com

As some of you may recall, University of Michigan Professor and Middle East expert Juan Cole (whose work I have been pimping shamelessly here for the past few months) has agreed to be interviewed by me. Well, now is the time!

I am presently in Ann Arbor and will be interviewing Prof. Cole on campus Thursday. I will not necessarily be able to ask all suggested questions but I encourage you to let me know your thoughts.

I will be posting the interview as a diary sometime this weekend, so please keep a lookout for it!

This joke has been around for awhile, but I thought it needed updating.

How moral are You?

Here’s a dilemma question for you….

Be honest, what would you do? This test only has one question, but it’s a very important one. Please don’t answer it without giving it some serious thought. By giving an honest answer you will be able to test where you stand morally. The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation, where you will have to make a decision one way or the other. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous.

more after the fold . . .

You’re in Mississippi…In New Orleans, to be exact. There’s great chaos going on around you caused by hurricane Katrina and its aftermath of severe floods. There’s turbulent water all around you. You are a AP photographer and you are right in the middle of this great disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You’re trying to shoot very impressive photos. There  are people and debris floating around you, disappearing into the water. Nature is showing all its destructive power and is ripping everything away with it.

Suddenly you see a man in the water, he is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken away by the raw forces of nature. You move closer. Somehow the man looks familiar.

Suddenly you know who it is – it’s George W. Bush!

Your realize, without help, that the raging waters are about to take him away, forever. You have two options. You can save him or you can take the best photo of your life. So, you can save the life of George W. Bush, or you can shoot a Pulitzer prize winning photo, a unique photo displaying the death of one of the world’s most powerful men.

And here’s the question (please give an honest answer):

Would you select the realism and dynamism of color film, or would you rather go with the dramatic simplicity of classic black and white?

Reverend Jim Wallis, who I’m sure many have seen before or perhaps you’ve read God’s Politics, sends out an email known as SojoMail.

Today, he wrote something appropriate, that I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing:

Prayer and action for hurricane victims
by Jim Wallis
During hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, those who have the least to lose are often those who lose the most. Why?

First, the dwellings in which poor people live are not as sturdy, stable, or safe as others. “Shotgun” shacks, mobile homes, and poorly constructed apartment buildings don’t do well in hurricane-force winds and tidal surges.

Second, the places where poor people live are also the most vulnerable. The rich often live at the tops of hills, the poor in the valleys and plains that are the first to flood. The living conditions in these neighborhoods are also usually the most dense and overcrowded.

Third, it is much harder for the poor to evacuate. They don’t own cars, can’t afford to rent them, and often can’t even afford a tank of gas – especially at today’s prices. They can’t afford an airplane, train, or even bus ticket. And, as one low-income person told a New Orleans reporter, they have no place to go. People in poverty can’t afford motel or hotel rooms, and often don’t have friends or family in other places with space to spare. In New Orleans, there were many people who desperately wanted to leave but couldn’t.

Fourth, low-income people are the least likely to have insurance on their homes and belongings, and the least likely to have health insurance. If jobs are lost because of natural disasters, theirs are the first to go. Poverty makes long-term recovery after a disaster more difficult – the communities that are the weakest to begin with usually recover the slowest. The lack of a living family income for most people in those communities leaves no reserve for emergencies.

New Orleans has a poverty rate of 28% – more than twice the national rate. Life is always hard for poor people – living on the edge is insecure and full of risk. Natural disasters make it worse. Yet even in normal times, poverty is hidden and not reported by the media. In times of disaster, there continues to be little coverage of the excessive impact on the poor. Devastated luxury homes and hotels, drifting yachts and battered casinos make far more compelling photographs.

The final irony of New Orleans is that the people who normally fill the Louisiana Superdome are those who can afford the high cost of tickets, parking, and concessions. Now its inhabitants are the poor, especially children, the elderly and the sick – those with nowhere else to go. Those with money are nowhere to be seen.

As the Gulf Coast now faces the long and difficult task of recovery, what can we do?

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared Wednesday a day of prayer: “As we face the devastation wrought by Katrina, as we search for those in need, as we comfort those in pain and as we begin the long task of rebuilding, we turn to God for strength, hope and comfort.” She urged residents in her state to ask “that God give us all the physical and spiritual strength to work through this crisis and rebuild.”

Not much new here, just allowed me some time to reflect on those less fortunate than I — both in fortune and in circumstance.

Rev. Wallis’ organization, Sojourners, is a Christian ministry whose mission is to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.

In response to this call, we offer a vision for faith in public life by:

    * publishing Sojourners magazine, SojoMail and other resources that address issues of faith, politics, and culture from a biblical perspective;
    * preaching, teaching, organizing, and public witness;
    * nurturing community by bringing together people from the various traditions and streams of the church;
    * hosting an annual program of voluntary service for education, ministry, and discipleship.

In our lives and in our work, we seek to be guided by the biblical principles of justice, mercy, and humility.

Media Matters has a disturbing article up about dangerous anti-gay wingnuts from Kansas. Apparently, these gay bashers like to disrupt the funerals of service people that died in Iraq. And, apparently, Sean Hannity wants his listeners to think these homophobes are anti-war leftists:

See? Wingnuts. Not left-wing in the slightest. Left-wing loonies blame BUSH for the Columbia disaster. Right-wing loonies blame gays. Really right-loonies thank God for killing and maiming our soldiers. But Hannity pretends not to know the difference:

No, I can’t believe you have to lie and distort the truth for 3-4 hours a day on television and radio and that you actually get rich doing it. If FOX or you radio syndicate had any integrity they would fire you for making flatly misleading distortions like this.

Cross-posted here at DailyKos, where’s there’s some good discussion and interesting comments by oil-industry types. Also cross-posted here at Phillybits and here at PhillyFuture.

Update [2005-8-31 18:38:42 by Stand Strong]: – Just heard on CNN gas prices in places as high as $6.00/gal.

Hat tip to a Brendan @ Operation Yellow Elephant for forwarding me the email with this site linked in. This site details the devastation upon the oil wells and rigs in the Gulf area.

This is from an oil industry insider I consider quite credible.  She was definitely right about everything in her last post.  If she’s right about this one, we may finally start to get a true picture of what’s going on.

Update [2005-8-31 18:45:27 by Stand Strong]: – Gonna pull this one out of comments and hat-tip to Marcus Junius Brutus for the tip and link.

20 oil rigs missing in Gulf of Mexico: US Coast Guard

WASHINGTON (AFP) – At least 20 oil rigs and platforms are missing in the Gulf of Mexico and a ruptured gas pipeline is on fire after Hurricane Katrina tore through the region, a US Coast Guard official said.

“We have confirmed at least 20 rigs or platforms missing, either sunk or adrift, and one confirmed fire where a rig was,” Petty Officer Robert Reed of the Louisiana Coast Guard told AFP.

Onto the diary…

Newest (and very informative and very scary) report from an anonymous insider

There are MANY production platforms missing (as in not visible from the air). This means they have been totally lost. I am talking about 10’s of platforms, not single digit numbers. Each platform can have from 4 to 100+ wells on it. Most larger ones have 20-30 wells in this area, with numerous caisson wells. They are on their sides, on the bottom of the gulf – they will likely be left as reef material, provided we can get permission. MMS regulations require us to plug each of the wells that were on these platforms – HUGE cost now, as the platforms are gone… Hopefully, MMS will grant `abandon in place’ status for these wiped out structures.

Sounds like an ecological disaster to me.

In short, the Gulf area hit by the storm is basically in about the same shape as Biloxi. The damage numbers you have gotten from the government and analysts are, in my opinion, much too low. We are looking at YEARS to return to the production levels we had prior to the storm. The eastern Gulf of Mexico is primarily oil production…

There’s more to the article but I think what this basically says is that oil production in the Gulf is going to be affected in a much larger way than is being reported, and also for a much longer time.

One political aspect of the whole Hurrican Katrina disaster that I haven’t seen discussed is the involvment and, it seems, the reliance upon charities such as the American Red Cross to respond. Don’t get me wrong, after watching and reading about what’s going on I think the Red Cross seems much better prepared to deal with this situation than the local governments, FEMA and DHS. What I’m wondering is this: Does BushCo and the right-wing mentality behind it expect this to be responded to through charity and not the government?
We’ve seen this several times recently – 9/11 and the Tsunami – where altruism came through with people’s checkbooks to respond to these disasters. I think this is great and all, but my question is just about reliance upon such things when they should be covered by our tax dollars. Don’t we pay the government to respond to such emergencies?

I mean, let’s be honest. The economy still ain’t that great. I’d love to be able to donate some money but can barely get by until payday. This brings up all sorts of issues like where our tax dollars actually go. One of the reasons I’ve been a war tax resister at times is because I’d rather my money went to the Red Cross or a peace group than to the monolithic neocon war machine (and maybe we need to revisit this as a method as the Iraq war muddles on).

But should the government expect its citizens to buck up and financially take care of the rescue and recovery and whatever else the non-profits will be doing with donations? And does this represent a victory already by the right-wing foundations that have been spreading the “ownership society” idea in one guise or another for decades?

Sorry this isn’t a well thought out or written diary, but I wondered if anyone else hadn’t thought about these sorts of issues in regards to this disaster.

AP photo taken onboard Air Force One as reported online at CNN. The link since, has disappeared.

“Dayam! Look out the winder, fellers. Musta been a big storm or somethin’. Lookey at all the water…!”

“I’d like a Happy Meal, Fries and a Coke – Super Sized! Whooo Wheee I’m the President! I’m loving it!”

Air Force One officials, again, looked on in disbelief as The President of the United States of America tried to order a happy meal from 2,700 feet.

Oooh a contest!!!!??? What can we win you ask???

Well, aside from some much needed de-stressing this afternoonie, if there is an actual winner declared, I suppose they can “win” whatever is left in the lint drawer of my dryer or what’s underneath the couch cushion that I’m too afraid to look under.