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I get what this Foreign Policy article is trying to say, despite some legitimate concerns about Malala's father.  But really, couldn't have they researched this just a little better?

The simple statement, "Malala Yousafzai, an innocent schoolgirl," has become increasingly contested through a counter-narrative that labels her a "CIA agent." What use the CIA would have had for a 14 year-old girl in Swat is of course a complete mystery.

Yes, the idea of US intelligence recruiting a child agent is utterly ridiculous:

At the time of the meeting, the boy didn't know that the United States had decided to kill a man named Adnan al-Qadhi, and had turned to its allies in Yemen for assistance. Now the Yemeni government needed the child's help. The Republican Guard officers told him what they wanted him to do: plant tiny electronic chips on the man he had come to think of as a surrogate father. The boy knew and trusted the officers; they were his biological father's friends. He told them he would try. He would be their spy.

He was 8 at the time.

Like I said, I get what FP are geting at.  But maybe the reason conspiracy theories are so prevalent in that part of the world is that they are often the target of conspiracies.  Instead of infantalizing foreigners and treating them as simpletons who cannot appreciate sophisticated western political discourse, maybe we could try and see things from their point of view for once?  Crazy talk, I know.

11 years since No Child Left Behind!

You are a college professor.

I have just retired as a high school teacher.

I have some bad news for you. In case you do not already see what is happening, I want to warn you of what to expect from the students who will be arriving in your classroom, even if you teach in a highly selective institution.

No Child Left Behind went into effect for the 2002–03 academic year, which means that America's public schools have been operating under the pressures and constrictions imposed by that law for a decade. Since the testing requirements were imposed beginning in third grade, the students arriving in your institution have been subject to the full extent of the law's requirements. While it is true that the U.S. Department of Education is now issuing waivers on some of the provisions of the law to certain states, those states must agree to other provisions that will have as deleterious an effect on real student learning as did No Child Left Behind—we have already seen that in public schools, most notably in high schools.

Even during those times when I could assign work that required proper writing, I was limited in how much work I could do on their writing. I had too many students. In my final year, with four sections of Advanced Placement, I had 129 AP students (as well as an additional forty-six students in my other two classes). A teacher cannot possibly give that many students the individualized attention they need to improve their writing. Do the math. Imagine that I assign all my students a written exercise. Let's assume that 160 actually turn it in. Let's further assume that I am a fast reader, and I can read and correct papers at a rate of one every three minutes. That's eight hours—for one assignment. If it takes a more realistic five minutes per paper, the total is more than thirteen hours.

Further, the AP course required that a huge amount of content be covered, meaning that too much effort is spent on learning information and perhaps insufficient time on wrestling with the material at a deeper level. I learned to balance these seemingly contradictory requirements. For much of the content I would give students summary information, sufficient to answer multiple-choice questions and to get some of the points on rubrics for the free response questions. That allowed me more time for class discussions and for relating events in the news to what we learned in class, making the class more engaging for the students and resulting in deeper learning because the discussions were relevant to their lives.

From what I saw from the free response questions I read, too many students in AP courses were not getting depth in their learning and lacked both the content knowledge and the ability to use what content knowledge they had.

The structure of testing has led to students arriving at our school without what previously would have been considered requisite background knowledge in social studies, but the problem is not limited to this field. Students often do not get exposure to art or music or other nontested subjects. In high-need schools, resources not directly related to testing are eliminated: at the time of the teachers' strike last fall, 160 Chicago public schools had no libraries. Class sizes exceeded forty students—in elementary school.

Now you are seeing the results in the students arriving at your institutions. They may be very bright. But we have not been able to prepare them for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them. It is for this that I apologize, even as I know in my heart that there was little more I could have done. Which is one reason I am no longer in the classroom.

This is why, fuck you.

As most of you know, it was revealed in the last couple of weeks that the government was sending vans into areas of London heavily populated by ethnic minorities, telling illegal immigrants to "go home", in a somewhat distasteful way that is reminiscent of the National Front's tactics (indeed, "go home" is one of their favourite things to chant at any non-white person).

However, we have another tactic now, and that is sending in police officers to stand at Tube stations and arrest anyone they think might be an illegal immigrant.

Mark Harper, the Immigration Minister, insists that this program is intelligence-led and in no way involves racial profiling.  Apparently, the police did not get this memo, since at at least one station in North London, we have footage of police officers exclusively targeting black and Asian men. 

Government advisors have said this plan is not a good one, that it involves making a spectacle of illegal immigration and the supposed methods to tackle it.  Which is, I think, rather the point.

The Tories know that the biggest potential threat to their vote in the next election will be UKIP, whose attitudes on immigration are even harder than their own.  By moving to the right and making a big show of "dealing" with immigration, they are hoping to steal away potential UKIP votes.  And since most ethnic minorities don't vote Tory in the first place...well, fuck them too.

So, the Pope, much in keeping with his chosen name, has made what is seen as a very positive comment in regard to homosexuality, by the standards of the Catholic Church:

Pope Francis has said gay people should not be judged or marginalised.

Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil, he said: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?"

Which is all well and good.  But then he says this:

But he condemned what he described as lobbying by gay people.

"The problem is not having this orientation," he said. "We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem."

Somehow, I don't think he's talking generally here.

Gay lobbies and Masonic lobbies?  That's curiously specific.  There have been constant rumours of both lobbies having a large amount of sway in the Vatican, rumours which Pope Francis himself confirmed last month:

According to the report, the Pope was extremely open as he discussed problems at the Vatican.

He is said to have told the Latin American delegation that there were good, holy men in the administration, but that there was also corruption.

The Vatican would have to "see what we can do" about the "gay lobby" operating in the bureaucracy, he said. "It is true, it is there," the report quotes him as saying.

In the days leading up to Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in February, the Italian media carried many un-sourced reports that gay Vatican clergymen had been working together to advance their personal interests, leaving the Holy See vulnerable to blackmail.

There were even suggestions that the situation had influenced Benedict's decision to resign.

One of these alleged "gay lobby" members is Monsignor Battista Ricca, who was up until six days ago, the Prelate of the Vatican Bank.  And of course, the Vatican Bank has been a hotbed of scandals for generations.  Mafia financiers, dead bankers killed in bizarre parodies of Masonic symbolism, collusion with the Ustaša, profiting from the Holocaust and money laundering.

Obviously, given the general view of homosexuality in the Vatican, the existence of a network of gay priests would leave those priests very vulnerable to blackmail and extortion.  By this "Masonic" lobby, maybe?

When one thinks of "Masonic" lobbies in Italy, especially to do with the Vatican, one immediately thinks of Propaganda Due, the criminal secret society described as some by a shadow Italian government, with its high ranking members from the world of politics, the military, intelligence, high finance and the aristocracy.

Just so happens one of the key points of contact between the Vatican and Propaganda Due is the Vatican Bank.  Specifically, the existence of P2 was uncovered during the investigation of Michele Sindona, who was a member of P2 and a friend of Pope Paul VI (while managing the Gambino family's heroin profits on the side).  Banco Ambrosiano was another key point of contact - the bank was run by Roberto Calvi, who was another member of P2.  The principal shareholder in said bank?  The Vatican Bank.

Calvi is most infamous for the manner of his death - found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge on the edge of the financial district of London. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with bricks, and he was carrying around $15,000 worth of cash in three different currencies.  That P2 referred to their members as "Black Friars" is, of course, just coincidence.

P2 was dissolved in the wake of the Parliamentary investigation into it in Italy, though that doesn't mean it is necessary dead.  "In July 2010, the Roman political establishment was rocked by the exposure of a new parallel state basement society, instantly christened P3 in a logical numerical sequence. P3 specialized in graft to influence a number of judges sitting on contentious cases, or swing lucrative government contracts the right way."

And then there was P4.  P4 "operated as an underworld clique connected to the highest quarters of the state including the police, the military and powerful state corporations. The new Licio Gelli was named Luigi Bisignani, whose pedigree could be traced to the great political corruption mani pulite ('clean hands') scandals of the 1990's. He was said to have been a P2 member."  According to the Italy Chronicles, "The list [of members] seems to be without end and includes businessmen, high ranking politicians, policemen, secret service agents, a general, and the ex-director general of Italy's RAI state television."

Propaganda Due is one of those ideas which seems to refuse to die.

And it is worth noting that when Italian police raided the apartment of Pope Benedict's butler, Paolo Gabriele, in May 2012, they found "strange 007-style archive" which contained "letters from politicians, correspondence between cardinals and the Pope, and documents on freemasonry and secret services."  Also found were papers from the Pope's private desk marked, in German, "destroy", and 82 crates worth of files written by Gabriele himself.

Italian journalist Giacomo Galeazzi was told by the Vatican police that the files related to "'Masonry, esoterism, the P2 and P4 Masonic Lodges, secret services, the Bisignani and Calvi cases, the Vatican bank (IOR), the AIF [the body which oversees the Vatican finances] and Berlusconi, [...] Christianity and yoga, Christianity and other religions, yoga and Buddhism and other material which was presumably to do with Gabrieles' children's schooling and studies."  Other material is to do with "how to hide jpeg and Word files, how to record and make videos, and how to secretly use a cell phone."

As always, Vatican politics remain obscure, especially when they come into contact with Italian political corruption.  But if Francis is taking aim at P4, or something similar within the Vatican ranks...well, things could get ugly.

That is the only way I can view this story, which shows that Obama kept a Yemeni journalist in jail, where he was held under false charges because he reported on drone strikes within Yemen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/23/yemen-journalist-us-drone-strike-released

A Yemeni journalist who was kept in prison for years at the apparent request of the Obama administration has been released in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a, according to local reports.

Abdulelah Haider Shaye was imprisoned in 2010, after reporting that an attack on a suspected al-Qaida training camp in southern Yemen for which the Yemeni government claimed responsibility had actually been carried out by the United States. Shaye had visited the site and discovered pieces of cruise missiles and cluster bombs not found in Yemen's arsenal, according to a Jeremy Scahill dispatch in the Nation.

Shaye was arrested in August 2010 and charged, the following month, with being an al-Qaida operative himself. He was known for his ability to make contacts with extremist groups, skills that led to regular work reporting for western media outlets such as ABC News and the New York Times. At his trial, his reporting work was marshaled as evidence of terrorist ties. In January 2011, he was sentenced to a five-year term.

The charges against Shaye provoked an outcry among tribal leaders, human-rights activists and fellow journalists. Bowing to the pressure, then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh pardoned Shaye weeks after his sentencing. But in a February 2011 phone call with Saleh, President Barack Obama "expressed his concern over the release" of Shaye. The pardon was revoked.

Utterly disgraceful, as is anyone who supports the man.

Completely and utterly random:

The reporter Michael Hastings has died in a car crash:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/18/hastings-car-accident-journalist/2436549/

Michael Hastings, a native Vermonter and a journalist widely known for his profile in Rolling Stone magazine of a general who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was killed Tuesday in a car crash in Los Angeles, according to multiple reports.

He was 33.

News of his death was first reported Tuesday evening by the website BuzzFeed, for which Hastings also wrote, and by Rolling Stone.

His reporting on Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the subsequent story in June 2010 led to the commander's resignation after he was quoted ridiculing President Obama, Vice President Biden and other administration officials. The story was titled "The Runaway General" and resulted from the considerable access to McChrystal and others that Hastings was granted.

"You never know how a story will be received," Hastings told the Burlington Free Press shortly before the piece hit newsstands and as the article was being widely distributed online. "I knew the reporting was new and different, but I'm kind of surprised at the impact."

The L.A. Police Department was unable Tuesday night to release the name of the man killed in the early morning wreck that media reports said was Hastings, spokesman Officer Christopher No told the Burlington Free Press. No said information could be made available later Tuesday or Wednesday.

The crash occurred at about 4:25 a.m. in Hollywood near North Highland and Melrose avenues, just north of the Wilshire Country Club. A vehicle crossed the median, slammed into a tree and burst into flames, No said. The male driver, believed to be the car's only occupant, was pronounced dead at the scene. No said he did not know the make and model of the vehicle.

Video and photos from the scene posted on the website of L.A. television station KTLA showed a mangled car crumpled against a tree and engulfed in flames. The KTLA report quoted LAPD Officer Lillian Carranza as saying the car appeared to be speeding when the crash occurred.

Looks like Turkey isn't the only place where people are pissed off and have had enough:

Protests against bus and underground fare rises in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo have turned violent. Police fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas, and detained more than 200 people. Police say they seized petrol bombs, knives and drugs. Violence has also been reported at protests in Rio de Janeiro. An estimated 5,000 protesters converged on the streets of Sao Paulo's central area on Thursday – the fourth day of the protests.

As many as 200,000 people have marched through the streets of Brazil's biggest cities, as protests over rising public transport costs and the expense of staging the 2014 World Cup have spread.

The biggest demonstrations were in Rio de Janeiro, where 100,000 people joined a mainly peaceful march.

In the capital, Brasilia, people breached security at the National Congress building and scaled its roof.

The protests are the largest seen in Brazil for more than 20 years.

Sao Paulo is, of course, infamous for its wealth disparities:



And the rest of Brazil is not much better, thanks to an ingrained culture of political corruption.

Greece, again:

Greece was back in protest mode after Antonis Samaras, the centre-right prime minister, broke ranks with his coalition partners and high-handedly closed the state broadcaster on June 11th without first securing their agreement. As sacked employees of ERT (Hellenic Radio and Television) continued to occupy the Greek state broadcaster's headquarters, streaming live coverage of their plight over the internet, scores of former colleagues peacefully set up camp in a park outside the ERT building in Agia Paraskevi, a suburb of Athens.

Paramilitary police officers have shut down and seized control of the ERT headquarters, and the intent is to dissolve the agency entirely. 

Naturally, this has nothing to do with saving money and everything to do with shutting down political criticism of the ruling coalition:

Giannis Stournaras, the unelected Greek finance minister whose ministry overtook control of ERT to oversee its dissolution, sent a written warning to radio and television stations, informing them that they would face consequences if they rebroadcast ERT's protest broadcast.  Sto Kokkino 105.5 FM, a radio station in Athens owned by the left-wing Syriza political party, was threatened with closure after it rebroadcast portions of ERT's broadcast.  More egregiously, 902 TV, a television station owned by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) had its signal repeatedly taken off the air by DIGEA, a private company which operates the network of digital over-the-air transmitters used by Greece's national private television networks.

Malaysia:

Tens of thousands of people held a rally near Malaysia's capital against alleged electoral fraud, further raising the political temperature after divisive recent polls. The latest in a series of protest rallies over the May 5 elections – which the opposition says were won fraudulently by the 56-year-old ruling coalition – saw a large crowd gather in an open field outside Kuala Lumpur Saturday night.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-290513.html

The UMNO-dominated ruling coalition, which has held power consecutively since 1955, had not lost the popular vote since 1969. That result was followed by race riots between ethnic Chinese and Malays, paving the way for two years of emergency rule and an intra-party coup which installed Najib's father, Abdul Razak Hussein, as the country's second prime minister since independence from colonial rule.

Najib faces a different type of crisis as allegations of fraud and irregularities in campaigning, polling and vote counting have raised widespread questions about the legitimacy of the May 5 polls. Led by former deputy prime minister and finance minister Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition has rejected outright the election result and organized massive rallies with protestors clad in black to mourn the "death of democracy".

So far, 10 rallies have been held across various states, attracting crowds ranging from 20,000 to 120,000. Black T-shirts emblazoned with "505" (the date of the polls) and "blackout", a reference to the mysterious power outages that occurred in the vote-tallying centers of a number of constituencies, have featured prominently at the multi-ethnic rallies.

Instead of permanently occupying strategic sites, protestors have returned home after the rallies. Nonetheless, the spreading protests are taking the initial shape of a so-called "color revolution", similar to the ones seen in places like Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. Images of mass protests also hark to the early phases of the Arab Spring demonstrations that overthrew authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa.

Opposition and civil society leaders have so far denied any intention of overthrowing Najib's government in a similar type of "Malaysian Spring." But some analysts believe UMNO's own anxieties about the protests may eventually turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, particularly if current levels of repression are intensified.

Bulgaria:

Police said on Sunday that about 15,000 people took part in a rally outside the government building in the capital Sofia to demand a new election. Protesters also gathered outside parliament and in other Bulgarian cities. Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski's decision to appoint 32-year-old media mogul Delyan Peevski as chief of the powerful national security agency DANS and parliament's rapidity in rubber stamping the nomination angered many people.

I believe our very own Dalek has given us a good amount of background information on the political situation in Bulgaria.

And there are protests going on in Peru (over privatization of education), Yemen (over security force brutality), Thailand (counter-protestors against Thaskin's Red Shirt movement), Japan (nuclear power), Indonesia (fuel price rises), China (in favour of Edward Snowden and Xuchang county protests over coal mining), Canada (employment insurance) and Egypt (everything).

So, Peter Levenda, probably best known on this site for his hand in the publishing (and perhaps creation?  he denies, but many still suspect) the Simon Necronomicon.

However, any truly dedicated follower of High Weirdness should probably be aware of his "Sinister Forces" trilogy, what Levenda refers to as "grimoires of American political witchcraft".  In these books, he attempts to undertake this project:

To what degree does mysticism (including occultism, religious organizations, and secret societies) influence politics? Can it be demonstrated that there is no real separation of church and state, despite most Americans' belief? Can we show that the world's political leaders are motivated by (at times bizarre and outrageous) religious or spiritual convictions, thus threatening at the least the very nature of the American way of life... and at the most American lives in general? Is politics a science? Is it an art? Or is it religion?

And for a man with Levenda's research skills and own...interesting history, which includes run-ins with intelligence officers, wandering bishops, longstanding involvement in the New York occult scene and an unwise quest for Colonia Dignidad, this project of research takes on a very unsettling and, indeed, worryingly sinister tone.

Below, I've included a number of notes from the first book of the trilogy, The Nine, with annotations by myself where I've considered necessary.  I am currently working my way through the second and third books, and will post the notes from those in due course.

I visited the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and the Library of Congress and fell upon a treasure trove of documentation showing Nazi fascination with occult themes... to the extent of financing research in Tibet and hunting down the Grail. This became the central subject matter of my last book, Unholy Alliance. Here was a perfect example of a nation being ruled by what were called—in any other age—occult leaders and "spiritual" visionaries. From the swastika to the SS, the Nazis were little more than the 20th century's best organized (and best dressed) cult. A political party? Please.

This is the real background to this project.  Unholly Alliance made the argument that the Nazis were religious fanatics and a religious cult, not a mere political movement.  Of course, any movement of sufficiently messianic qualities will eventually become a religious cause, but Levenda traces the particular occult influences on the Nazi Party and associated bodies, such as the Thule Society.  Sinister Forces is essentially an attempt to extend this project to American history, with disturbingly successful results.

During the Watergate era a somewhat unsettling revelation was made: that for twenty-five years (or more) the CIA had conducted psychological experimentation upon both volunteers and unwitting subjects—both at home and abroad—to find the key to the unconscious mind, to memory, and to volition. Their goal was to create the perfect assassin and to protect America from the programmed assassins of other countries. This project was known by the name MK-ULTRA, but it had its origins in earlier forms of the same "brainwashing" agenda: Operations BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE. To me, this was astounding. A US government agency was conducting what—to a medievalist—could only be characterized as a search for the Philosopher's Stone, for occult power, for magical spells and talismans. Indeed, some of the CIA's subprojects included research among the psychics, the mediums, the magicians and the witches of America and beyond. And the Army was not far behind in its mind control testing, as we shall see. What was even more disturbing was the revelation that nearly all records of this incredible and superhumanly ambitious project were destroyed in 1973 on orders of CIA director Richard Helms himself. In his testimony, he claimed that MK-ULTRA did not come up with anything worthwhile, and that the project had been terminated. Then why were the documents shredded? We do not know who the test subjects were. We don't know what was done to them. We don't know how they have been programmed, if at all. We don't know what they might do. Or what they have already done.

MK-ULTRA, and its associated projects, will of course form a large part of this story.  Not the whole story, but a significant aspect of it.

University of Chicago Professor Ioan Culianu was able to show that the technique of secret links and correspondences between objects and events discovered by a Renaissance magician—Giordano Bruno—are applicable to mind control and psychological warfare today. Charles Manson declared himself to be a reincarnation of Bruno, an oddly sophisticated choice for the nearly-illiterate convicted murderer. Professor Culianu himself was murdered in 1991, another crime that has never been solved.

And the second major obsession of this series is Charles Manson.  Manson is almost a stand-in, a symbol for the logical reproduction of the state's actions on an individual level...though he's important for other reasons, as well.

The victim was a nobody. An ex-con, once convicted of writing bad checks. A man down on his luck, working for a trucking company. He had been stabbed in a fury of nineteen slashing, slivering strokes—in a wood frame house in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning on a side street in a small country town—and no one heard a thing. The perpetrator left no clues, no identifiable fingerprints, nothing. The body might have lain there for days, except that the victim's co-worker stopped by to see why he hadn't shown up for work that morning. The body was found. The police were called. The officer who responded to that call and who was the first policeman at the scene is today the Chief of Police of Ashland, Kentucky. The murder took place in 1969. He told me it remains unsolved—and the murder open on the books—to this day.  The victim's name was Darwin Scott. He was the brother of one Colonel Scott. Colonel Scott had been sued—successfully—for paternity of a boy, one "No Name Maddox," by a girlfriend and sometime prostitute, Kathleen Maddox. No Name Maddox would soon be known by another name. Charles Manson.

It is a mystery. What happened to Manson in Chillicothe, that he suddenly became studious (he was still illiterate when he was transferred there), learned to read and write and do simple arithmetic, mellowed out, and became a star "prisoner"? His psychiatric reports were all negative up to that point; even during the first month at Chillicothe the doctors were despairing of him, believing that he needed a closed environment and not the relatively "open" ambience of Chillicothe. Then, suddenly, Manson became a different person and maintained that identity for over a year and a half, until his release. That degree of conscious control—especially in a disturbed, uneducated, illiterate, violent, criminal, sodomitic bastard child of an unmarried, alcoholic mother—is suspicious, if not alarming. Was Charlie "helped" by someone at Chillicothe?

During this time, US government agencies were conducting medical tests among various inmate populations in America. Their most prized subjects were violent criminals—sociopaths like Charles Manson—whom they dosed with massive amounts of drugs to gauge personality changes, emotional response, and other parameters that have never been revealed.

Taking stolen goods across state lines is, of course, a federal offense and Charlie was caught, as usual. Only this time, he had a pregnant seventeen-year-old wife. He drove a stolen car to Los Angeles, was apprehended, pled guilty, and asked the court for psychiatric help, for some reason referring back to his time in Chillicothe. The judge so ordered, and he was examined by Dr. Edwin Ewart McNiel in October 1955.

The implication here is fairly obvious: was Charles Manson experimented on during his time in Chillicothe?  We can never really know, thanks to the destruction of MK-ULTRA files by Richard Helms.  He also gets curiously sympathetic treatment from the legal system.

At Terminal Island, Charles is tested again by prison psychiatrists. This time, his IQ has climbed to 121, a substantial improvement over his score at Chillicothe. His verbal skills have noticeably increased, and he enrolls in a Dale Carnegie course, only to quit after a few weeks out of either pique or boredom. When he is seen as trustworthy, he is transferred to a Coast Guard station which is minimal security, but he is found hot-wiring a car in the parking lot and is slammed back inside to serve the remainder of his term.

During this time, Manson became involved with Scientology and it's this interest that has fueled a lot of the speculation concerning other influences at work in Manson's life. The creation of a small-time science fiction writer and would-be occultist, Scientology has been described as either a cult or a scam, or both, depending on which journalist, investigator or "survivor" you read. It has attracted celebrity membership, including John Travolta and Tom Cruise, as part of a concerted effort to win followers among Hollywood stars; it has also conspired against US Government agencies and been conspired against in turn. Its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, was a former Navy officer with a history of mental problems. He was a colleague of Jack Parsons, the rocket scientist and follower of Aleister Crowley. All of this will be discussed in more detail in the chapters that follow, as it bears heavily on our thesis, but suffice it to say that Scientology in the early 1960s was just coming into its own, recruiting heavily on street corners, and had obviously penetrated the prison system as well. An offshoot of Scientology is the Process Church of the Final Judgment, and Manson was believed to have been involved with the Process as well.

Manson was involved enough with Scientology at one point to have picked up the jargon and to pass himself off as a "clear": someone who had passed through all of Scientology's "deprogramming" levels and reached the stage where previous social, environmental, perhaps even genetic influences no longer had any effect on decision-making, emotional stability, etc. He had a Scientology "auditor" in prison, another Scientologist called Lanier Ramer, who—Manson claimed—brought him to the level of "clear" or, more accurately, "theta clear."

Levenda doubts Manson actually made it to clear, given the usual amount of time this requires.  But this is worth noting.

And there is this particular case, which was almost certainly a Manson-related murder, which deserves more scrutiny:

There was Darwin Orell Scott in Ashland, Kentucky: Manson's uncle and victim of an unsolved crime, carved with knives. And there was Marina Habe, a seventeen-year-old girl who was abducted on New Year's Eve, 1968 and whose body was found—carved with knives—a few days later. Although attributed to the Manson "family," the murder is still officially unsolved. But it was Marina Habe's case that led me to a whole other dimension of the thesis I was working on. It was Marina Habe who led me back to World War II, to Operation Paperclip, to Hollywood, escaped Nazis, psychological warfare and the enigmatic team of Clay Shaw and Fred Crisman.

On New Year's Day, 1969, the petite body of Marina Elizabeth Habe was found nude at the bottom of a ravine off Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, about four miles from home. The seventeen-year-old student at the University of Hawaii and aspiring actress was the victim of multiple stab wounds in the neck and chest, had been raped, burned, and had contusions in her eyes. It was a savage attack reminiscent of the later attack on Darwin Scott in Ashland, Kentucky. She had been returning from a date with friend John Hornburg in Brentwood the early morning of December 30, 1968 and was kidnapped from in front of the home she shared with her mother in the Hollywood hills after returning from a night out on Santa Monica Boulevard. The case remains unsolved, but there was a lot of speculation at the time that her killer was a Manson "family" member, since she was known to have befriended various members of the group. Manson himself has no alibi for the day and time of her death, and is known to have been in Los Angeles on the day she was kidnapped and killed, attending a New Year's Eve party at the home of musician John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Phillips himself is known to have been friendly with elements of the Process Church of the Final Judgment.

Levenda then goes on to describe the background of Habe's father, who as it turns out, had a very illustrious history.

As hostilities began with the accession of Hitler and the Nazi Party to a position of control within Germany, Habe found himself becoming a dedicated (some would say "rabid") anti-Nazi. (It is to Hans Habe, in fact, that we credit the discovery of Hitler's "Schicklegrueber" family background.) As war broke out, Habe found himself on Hitler's enemies list: his books were burned, and he was shot at in Vienna (because of his publication of Hitler's Schicklegrueber ancestry; Habe actually sent copies of his report to Germany at the time of Hitler's campaign against Hindenburg in an effort to ridicule Hitler and cause him to lose the election, a tactic which was in vain as we all know). Habe enlisted with a group of foreign volunteers in the French Army, and took part in the Battle of France. He was captured on June 22, 1940, armed only with an 1891 Remington rifle. Habe—in his book about the experience, A Thousand Shall Fall—rails against the French complicity in the defeat, accusing the Vichy hierarchy of actually wanting to surrender rather than fight Germany. (This book eventually became the 1943 MGM propaganda film The Cross of Lorraine, starring Jean-Pierre Aumont, Gene Kelly, Cedric Hardwicke, Peter Lorre and Hume Cronyn.) Held at a prison camp in Occupied France, Habe managed to survive for a few weeks under an assumed name before escaping, dressed in a German uniform and fleeing in an ambulance. He eventually made his way to Spain and Portugal, joining his wife—Erika Levy—in neutral Lisbon. President Roosevelt gave Habe a special emergency visa, and the couple arrived in New York harbor on December 3, 1940.

Further research suggests Habe made a significant contribution to the war effort:

Psychological warfare officer? Italian front? The newsclipping gave the author a further dimension for his research, and also suggested a new line of inquiry. Let's see where it leads us. Habe began giving talks at various clubs and societies in America during 1941, even staying for a while at West Point where, it is said, he continued to work at his writing. In 1942 he began a series of lectures at Army bases under the aegis of the War Department's Bureau of Public Relations on "How To Lose a War": an ironic title which took as its text the fall of France, and served as motivation for the American troops in their struggle against Nazism.

Shortly thereafter, in January 1943, Habe enlisted in the US Army. This was not mere expedience, since he had dependents and would probably not have been called up, but he asked to enlist anyway. By July of that year, he was in North Africa (and the new father of a son) as a second lieutenant. He was then loaned to British General Montgomery for a while, and September found him in Italy and this time with the US forces. After that, the record becomes a little confused. Some reports have him landing with Allied forces at D-Day, yet he seems to have entered Europe via Italy nine months earlier than that. Regardless of the order of events, by that time Habe was working for C.D. Jackson—more famous in his Time-Life incarnation—and was actively involved in psychological warfare operations, operations which lasted long after the war's end and which found Habe in charge of no fewer than eighteen German newspapers throughout the Allied territories.

Habe was no mere grunt, in other words.  He was a strategic asset, trusted with running major psychological warfare programs.  He also trained other soldiers in these techniques:

His memoir, A Proud Hungarian, mentions a psychological warfare school in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where Scitovsky and others were being trained in propaganda. He characterizes Habe as the "US Army's propaganda expert" in his memoir of the war years, and describes how Habe trained him in spotting important information in the New York Times, and how to use that information for propaganda purposes. They practiced making radio broadcasts, writing articles and filler, designing propaganda posters, and all of it in both French and German. According to Scitovsky, Habe also had been a student of the Bauhaus and thus had a good eye for artistic composition as well as literature and journalism.

And of course, this work had various intelligence applications, leading to Habe working with the OSS, the wartime forerunner of the CIA:

Another friend of Habe at this time is psy-war officer Alfred de Grazia— now a professor at Princeton University and, even more intriguingly, a friend of the late Immanuel Velikovsky—who was with Habe in North Africa in 1943. His book on the war years makes for very interesting reading, as it reveals that the "Mobile Broadcasting Company" was a cover for OSS (Office of Strategic Services) activities in Europe, and that they were joint OSS-US Army units.

http://thegoodthebadandmyopinion.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/mystic-wicks-revisited.html

Found this while googling to see if MW was still down.  People are still commenting on it...including at least one person who thinks the EVIL DISCORDIANS are to blame for everything.  We were trolling there for years, apparently.  YEARS.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/kyanonymous-fbi-steubenville-raid-anonymous

If convicted of hacking-related crimes, Lostutter could face up to 10 years behind bars—far more than the one- and two-year sentences doled out to the Steubenville rapists.

Just shows you how much they value women.  Or hackers, in another sense of "value".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Watch_%28TV_series%29

I'm not sure what to think.  This could be hilarious, or terrible.  Or hilarious and terrible.  Or terribly hilarious.  Or something else entirely.

I just got done chipping away at how I feel magic should work in fantasy

Does it involve jerking off to meaningless scribbles?

Meanwhile, I see things are getting interesting in Turkey.

Gezi Park is the focal point of the protests and is, in a sense, the straw that broke the camel's back.  This is quite good at explaining why:

The demonstrations are already about a lot more than sympathy for condemned trees in a street-widening scheme at the Gezi Park, and have taken on a distinctly anti-government tone. Reasons for the protests I've heard from friends over the past 48 hours include: a reaction to the ruling party's focus on building shopping centers everywhere, even in Istanbul's last patches of green, like the future mall planned for Gezi Park; how the half of the population that didn't vote for the government resents what it sees as its increasingly high-handed, majoritarian, we-know-best style; among secularists, a sense that the ruling party revealed a Islamist agenda that could infringe its lifestyle with sudden new regulations this month on alcohol consumption (my blog on that here); among the 10 per cent Alevi minority, anger at this month's choice of Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim's name for a third bridge over the Bosphorus, since he killed many Alevis; the general feeling that there is little transparency in what the government plans and does, and that the media is under great pressure not to discuss real events or who benefits financially from projects (one mainstream TV program during last night's was about radiation on Mars!); and above all, a sense of powerlessness, and frustration at the inadequacy of the main political opposition parties, which have left the bulk of secularists of Istanbul with a feeling that they've had no real political representation for years.

The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemned the demonstrators as "extremists running wild".

According to the Guardian:

The Turkish Doctors' Association said nearly 1,000 people had been injured in Istanbul on Friday, including six who lost eyes after being hit by gas canisters.

Ozturk Turkdogan, the head of the Turkish Human Rights Association, said hundreds of people in several cities had been injured in the police crackdown and a few hundred people had been arrested. The Dogan news agency said 81 demonstrators were detained in Istanbul.

Turkish police have previously been accused of excessive use of teargas and violence to stop demonstrations, including at this year's May Day rally.

Turkdogan said: "The use of gas at such proportions is unacceptable. It is a danger to public health and as such is a crime. Unfortunately, there isn't a prosecutor brave enough to stand up to police. The people are standing up against Erdogan who is trying to monopolise power and is meddling in all aspects of life."

And:

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was facing the biggest challenge to his 10-year rule this weekend as parts of Istanbul turned into a war zone. Violent clashes took place between riot police and tens of thousands of demonstrators outraged at the heavy-handed response of authorities to an environmental protest on Friday.

The eruption of frustration with Erdogan's government spread to a dozen other Turkish cities overnight and supporters gathered worldwide in Boston, London, Barcelona and Amsterdam to voice solidarity with the protesters.

Police eventually withdrew from the city's central Taksim Square early on Saturday evening, bringing an end to the clashes. By late night thousands of people were celebrating there. "This is it, we won, Gezi Park is ours again", said Burcu Kurhan, 33, one protester who joined the crowds in the inner-city park where peaceful protests started on Monday. "But we hope that Tayyip will have to go!"

Several overturned police and municipal vehicles were covered in graffiti demanding the government resigns.

The US has expressed concern over the way the Turkish government is handling the situation, and the British consulate in Istanbul took the unusual step of publicly rebuking the government for overreacting after a teargas canister landed in the consulate gardens.

"Our government actively supports the Syrian opposition, and they constantly call for more democratic rights in Syria. But look what they do to those who oppose their own ideas and policies – they try to shut us up with teargas and violence," said Nejla Gulten, a 32-year-old sociologist. "When the prime minister speaks about women, he never speaks about the problem of violence against women, but only about how many children we should have. He shapes every issue in Turkey to suit himself."

I've mentioned this story elsewhere, but it deserves its own thread:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/20/al-qaeda-enemy-or-asset/

Described by the American Civil Liberties Union as the "most gagged person in the history of the United States of America," Edmonds studied criminal justice, psychology and public policy at  George Washington and George Mason universities. Two weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, her fluency in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani earned her an FBI contract at the Washington DC field office. She was tasked with translating highly classified intelligence from operations against terrorism suspects in and outside the U.S..

In the course of her work, Edmonds became privy to evidence that U.S. military and intelligence agencies were collaborating with Islamist militants affiliated with al-Qaeda, the very forces blamed for the 9/11 attacks – and that officials in the FBI were covering up the evidence. When Edmonds complained to her superiors, her family was threatened by one of the subjects of her complaint, and she was fired. Her accusations of espionage against her FBI colleagues were eventually investigated by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, which did not give details about the allegations as they remained classified.

Although no final conclusions about the espionage allegations were reached, the Justice Department concluded that many of Edmonds' accusations "were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services."

When she attempted to go public with her story in 2002, and again in 2004, the U.S. government silenced Edmonds by invoking a legal precedent known as "state secrets privilege" – a near limitless power to quash a lawsuit based solely on the government's claim that evidence or testimony could divulge information that might undermine "national security." Under this doctrine, the government sought to retroactively classify basic information concerning Edmonds's case already in the public record, including, according to the New York Times, "what languages Ms. Edmonds translated, what types of cases she handled, and what employees she worked with, officials said. Even routine and widely disseminated information — like where she worked — is now classified."

Five years ago, Edmonds revealed to the Sunday Times that an unidentified senior U.S. State Department official was on the payroll of Turkish agents in Washington, passing on nuclear and military secrets. "He was aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives", Edmonds told the paper. She reported coming across this informationwhen listening to suppressed phone calls recorded by FBI surveillance, marked by her colleague Melek Can Dickerson as "not pertinent".

In the Sunday Times exposé, Edmonds described a parallel organisation in Israel cooperating with the Turks on illegal weapons sales and technology transfers. Between them, Israel and Turkey operated a range of front companies incorporated in the U.S. with active "moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions", supported by U.S. officials, in order to sell secrets to the highest bidder. One of the  buyers was Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) – which often used its Turkish allies, according to the Times, "as a conduit... because they were less likely to attract suspicion."

The Pakistani operation was, the paper reported,  "led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief" from 1999 to 2001, when the agency helped train, supply and coordinate the Afghan Taliban and gave sanctuary to their Arab allies brought together in the coalition named al-Qaeda. Ahmad, as the Timesnoted, "was accused [by the FBI] of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks."

In her interview, Edmonds  insisted that after its initial exposé, the Times' investigation had gone beyond such previous revelations, and was preparing to disclose her most startling accusations. Among these, Edmonds described how the CIA and the Pentagon had been running a series of covert operations supporting Islamist militant networks linked to Osama bin Laden right up to 9/11, in Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus.

While it is widely recognised that the CIA sponsored bin Laden's networks in Afghanistan during the Cold War, U.S. government officials deny any such ties existed. Others claim these ties were real, but were severed after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989.

But according to Edmonds, this narrative is false. "Not just bin Laden, but several senior 'bin Ladens' were transported by U.S. intelligence back and forth to the region in the late 1990s through to 2001″, she told this author, "including Ayman al-Zawahiri" – Osama bin Laden's right-hand-man who has taken over as al-Qaeda's top leader.

"In the late 1990s, all the way up to 9/11, al-Zawahiri and other mujahideen operatives were meeting regularly with senior U.S. officials in the U.S. embassy in Baku to plan the Pentagon's Balkan operations with the mujahideen," said Edmonds. "We had support for these operations from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but the U.S. oversaw and directed them. They were being run from a secret section of the Pentagon with its own office".

Edmonds' allegations find some independent corroboration in the public record. The Wall Street Journal refers to a nebulous agreement between Mubarak and "the operational wing of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was then headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri...  Many of that group's fighters embraced a cease-fire with the government of former President Hosni Mubarak in 1997."

Youssef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, cited U.S. intelligence sources in an article for Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy, confirming "discussions between the Egyptian terrorist leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and an Arab-American known to have been both an emissary of the CIA and the U.S. Government." He referred to an "offer" made to al-Zawahiri in November 1997 on behalf of U.S. intelligence, granting his Islamists a free hand in Egypt as long as they lent support to U.S. forces in the Balkans. In 1998, Al Zawahiri's brother, Muhammed, led an elite unit of the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbs during the Kosovo conflict – he reportedly had direct contact with NATO leadership.

In recent interviews, two Sunday Times journalists confirmed to this author that the newspaper's investigation based on Sibel Edmonds' revelations was to break much of the details into the open.

"We'd spoken to several current and active Pentagon officials confirming the existence of U.S. operations sponsoring mujahideen networks in Central Asia from the 1990s to 2001," said oneSunday Times source. "Those mujahideen networks were intertwined with a whole range of criminal enterprises, including drugs and guns. The Pentagon officials corroborated Edmonds' allegations against specific U.S. officials, and I'd also interviewed an MI6 officer who confirmed that the U.S. was running these operations sponsoring mujahideen in that period."

But according to Edmonds, citing the investigative team at the paper, the last two articles in the series were spiked under U.S. State Department pressure. She recalled being told at the time by journalists leading the Sunday Times investigation that the newspaper's editor had decided to squash the story after receiving calls from officials at the U.S. embassy in London.

A journalist with the Sunday Times' investigative unit told this author he had interviewed former Special Agent in Charge, Dennis Saccher, who had moved to the FBI's Colorado office. Saccher reportedly confirmed the veracity of Edmonds' allegations of espionage, telling him that Edmonds' story "should have been front page news" because it was "a scandal bigger than Watergate." The same journalist confirmed that after interviewing Saccher at his home, the newspaper was contacted by the U.S. State Department. "The U.S. embassy in London called the editor and tried to ward him off. We were told that we weren't permitted to approach Saccher or any other active FBI agents directly, but could only go through the FBI's press office – that if we tried to speak to Saccher or anyone else employed by the FBI directly, that would be illegal. Of course, it isn't, but that's what we were told. I think this was a veiled threat."

What is not mentioned in this article, but is mentioned on the author's personal site, is that the role Marc Grossman allegedly played.  Grossman was the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey (1994-1997), and then afterwards "went onto become Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (1997-2000), then served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under the Bush administration (2001-2005). His most recent political appointment was as Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (2011-2012). He is currently Vice President of the Washington DC lobbying firm, The Cohen Group." 

Grossman is alleged to have been the agent on the payroll of Turkish intelligence, as alleged by Edmonds.  And, as the author notes, "The Pakistani daily, The News, reported on 10th September 2001 that the ISI chief held several "mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council" that week, including CIA director George Tenet – but "the most important meeting was with Mark [sic] Grossman, U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs.""

If you're anything like me, you've probably noted how Obama's valiant defenders in the press have been keeping really, really quiet about the Benghazi attacks and subsequent questions that have arisen about the conduct of the State Department and the White House on the day of the attack.

Even people somewhat critical of the administration have been reluctant to look at Benghazi too closely, probably on the basis that the Republicans have been attempting to hammer Obama (and Clinton) over various aspects of that, and the Republicans are always wrong.

Well, things just got interesting:

While US diplomats were pulling bodies from a burning Libyan consulate and frantically smashing up hard drives last 11 September, their superiors blocked rescue efforts and later attempted to cover up security failings, according to damaging new evidence that may yet hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential hopes.

In vivid testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Gregory Hicks, deputy to murdered US ambassador Christopher Stevens, revealed for the first time in public a detailed account of the desperate few hours after the terrorist attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi.

Hicks claimed Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, telephoned him to complain that he had given critical evidence to congressional investigators without the presence of a "minder" from the state department. "A phone call from that senior a person is generally considered not to be good news," said Hicks, who said he had since been demoted. "She was upset. She was very upset."

The career diplomat also alleged he was actively discouraged by officials from asking awkward questions about why other top Clinton aides, including the UN ambassador Susan Rice, initially blamed the attack on a spontaneous protest that got out of control. He described that briefing he described as "jaw-dropping, embarrassing and stunning". It is now thought the attacks, involving up to 60 heavily armed militia, were co-ordinated by Ansar al-Sharia, a group affiliated to al-Qaida, and timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

The allegations of a state department cover-up follow equally embarrassing claims that military leaders blocked efforts to dispatch special forces troops to the Benghazi consulate.

Of course the Republicans are doing this as a roundabout way of attacking Obama and smearing Clinton, hoping to poison the well before a possible future Presidential bid.  I mean, duh.

But that doesn't mean there are some legitimate questions as to what exactly went down that day.  And what precisely the CIA were doing in Benghazi, which seems to be perhaps part of the reason for the White House's sudden drive towards damage control.  Saint Brennan of the Drones must be protected at all costs, especially if he was running some kind of covert op in Benghazi and missed out on the fact his people had been made, or had them too busy collecting Stingers to focus on their own safety.

Surprise, it's propaganda!

The CIA's whitewashing effort is revealed in a cache of documents newly released under a Freedom of Information Act request about the CIA's cooperation with Bigelow and Boal. The documents include a 2012 memo—initially classified "SECRET"—summarizing five conference calls between Boal and the CIA's Office of Public Affairs in late 2011. "The purpose for these discussions was for OPA officers to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Ladin operation," according to the memo. (Hundreds of pages of CIA documents about the film were released last year; the memo obtained by Gawker was approved for release late last month.)

During these calls, Boal "verbally shared the screenplay" for Zero Dark Thirty in order to get the CIA's feedback, and the CIA's public affairs department verbally asked Boal to take out parts that they objected to. According to the memo, he did.

Pro-tip: when the CIA says it is "absolutely comfortable" with the final product, chances are said product is bullshit.

So, this is an amusing little article by the British Embassy in Bahrain:

So-called human rights organisations, which unfortunately are largely administered by ex-ideologists and even terrorists, today propagate their own version of the word 'freedom', solely to take it away from others. They dismiss any notion that the minute someone's freedom intrudes on that of another person, it becomes an act of violation. For absolute freedom is absolute chaos. Like any other state of being, it must be accountable. But in today's world there is a frequent tendency for the press to brand those in power as 'baddies', and the real wrongdoers as victims.

During the last two years Bahrain has suffered hugely damaging media-inspired attacks on its image and integrity – without checks being made as to their veracity – whether news or comment.

Another thought...as much as beasts cannot be left to roam freely, so in human society the feral element's freedom should be under control.

Respect for freedom should really start from an early age. Otherwise our society will only breed ranks of the undisciplined – staining the values of freedom.

Freedom of thought, thinking and writing, should all derive their essence from graceful wisdom, not from the dogma of hooligans.

Indeed, such hooliganism cannot be tolerated.

 

Via the BBC...

This week, economists have been astonished to find that a famous academic paper often used to make the case for austerity cuts contains major errors. Another surprise is that the mistakes, by two eminent Harvard professors, were spotted by a student.

It's 4 January 2010, the Marriott Hotel in Atlanta. At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Professor Carmen Reinhart and the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Ken Rogoff, are presenting a research paper called Growth in a Time of Debt.

At a time of economic crisis, their finding resonates - economic growth slows dramatically when the size of a country's debt rises above 90% of Gross Domestic Product, the overall size of the economy.

Word about this paper spread. Policymakers wanted to know more.

And so did student Thomas Herndon. His professors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst had set his graduate class an assignment - pick an economics paper and see if you can replicate the results. It's a good exercise for aspiring researchers.

But no, he was correct - he'd spotted a basic error in the spreadsheet. The Harvard professors had accidentally only included 15 of the 20 countries under analysis in their key calculation (of average GDP growth in countries with high public debt).

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada and Denmark were missing.

Oops.

Herndon and his professors found other issues with Growth in a Time of Debt, which had an even bigger impact on the famous result. The first was the fact that for some countries, some data was missing altogether.

Reinhart and Rogoff say that they were assembling the data series bit by bit, and at the time they presented the paper for the American Economic Association conference, good quality data on post-war Canada, Australia and New Zealand simply weren't available. Nevertheless, the omission made a substantial difference.

Thomas and his supervisors also didn't like the way that Reinhart and Rogoff averaged their data. They say one bad year for a small country like New Zealand, was blown out of proportion because it was given the same weight as, for example, the UK's nearly 20 years with high public debt.

All sounds very scientific to me. 

At the time of the assassination, [David] Ferrie was a forty-five-year-old New Orleans resident. He possessed assorted talents and eccentricities. He was a pilot, having learned to fly in Cleveland at Sky Tech Inc. from 1942-45. He was a senior pilot with Eastern Airlines, until he was fired for homosexual activity on the job. He was also a hypnotist, accomplished pianist, a researcher of the origins of cancer, amateur psychologist, and a victim of a rare disease, alopecia, which made him lose his body hair. He listed his name in the telephone directory as Dr. Ferrie by right of a doctorate degree in psychology from an unaccredited school, Phoenix University of Bari, Italy. He was anti-Castro, anti-Kennedy, and anti-Communist; Ferrie was also a bishop of the Orthodox Old Catholic Church of North America. His odd lifestyle was embellished by an equally odd appearance, featuring a red toupee and false eyebrows. Investigator and Harrison Livingstone met Ferrie and remembered him as "an intense and sinister, cynical, disgusting, disheveled individual who was excited at the prospect of preying upon the vulnerable, the helpless, and the innocent."

I've become somewhat interested in the Kennedy assassination due to James Ellroy's American Underword trilogy.  Not interested enough to come to any firm conclusions, just to read around it, in my spare time.  Finding out things like this is always fun.

You may remember internet issues yesterday were being attributed to a war between a NATO bunker and prolific spammers.

Unfortunately, this may not be the case, as news out of Egypt is suggestive of another cause.

CNet News:

Egypt's naval forces arrested three divers cutting through an undersea Internet cable today, the country's military representative said, raising the possibility that saboteurs are behind severed lines and days-long Internet disruptions.

A coast-guard patrol stopped a fishing boat near Alexandria and arrested three men "while they were cutting a submarine cable" line belonging to Telecom Egypt, the country's main communications company, Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said on his official Facebook page. The page offered no details on the divers' identities, according to published reports.

Egypt has long been known as a central node for the world wide web, with its cables connecting several continents together.  If anyone wanted to disrupt the internet, for whatever reason, the undersea cables would be the place to hit.

I for one am very interested in what the motivations of these divers might be.

The truth is, in fact, even more disturbing than the title:

"Morphologically, we've built a jellyfish. Functionally, we've built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat," says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. The project is described today in Nature Biotechnology.

Anyone else amused and slightly disgusted by the 10 year rememberances in the press of, well, why we shouldn't ever trust the press?

Ezra Klein seems to have taken the most shit for his terrible article, and rightfully so, but this 2002 line from Nicholas Kristof is amazing:

President Bush has convinced me that there is no philosophical reason we should not overthrow the Iraqi government.

Only 44 years too late:

Declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations - he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks... but said nothing.

It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.

He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.

At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.

So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out.

He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to "just hang on through election".

Johnson was told by Defence Secretary Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crazification_factor

Crazification factor is a neologism coined by blogger John Rogers to refer to the portion of the electorate comprising the nuttiest of the wingnuts and the batshit crazy. In Rogers' words:

""Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.[1]

Thus, people in this category are called the "27 percenters." Perhaps the greatest confirmation of the existence of said factor in the last decade can be found in a 2003 poll of Russian attitudes toward Josef Stalin in which 36% thought he was a pretty cool dude.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/110806/bushs-approval-rating-drops-new-low-27.aspx

According to a Sept. 26-27 USA Today/Gallup poll, just 27% of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president, the lowest rating of his presidency.

And just today:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/7141

Ipsos MORI's monthly political monitor is out, with topline figures of CON 27%(-3), LAB 40%(-2), LDEM 11%(+4), UKIP 13%(+4).

The new Pope is actually far worse than the "Nazi" Pope we had before:

Bergoglio was the head of the Jesuits in Argentina during the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, during which the military murdered upwards of 30,000 people (as well as kidnapping hundreds of children whose parents the regime had tortured and murdered). Unlike Catholic officials in neighboring Chile and Brazil, where priests, bishops, and even cardinals spoke out against human rights abuses and defended victims of abuses, in Argentina, the Catholic Church was openly complicit in the military regime's repression. Bergoglio wasnot exemptfrom this involvement:military officers have testified that Bergoglio helped the Argentine military regime hide political prisoners when human rights activists visited the country. And Bergoglio himsel fhad to testify regarding the kidnapping of two priests who he stripped of their religious licenses shortly before they were kidnapped and tortured. This isn't just a case of Bergoglio being a member of an institution that supported a brutal regime; it's a case of Bergoglio himself having ties, direct and indirect, to that very regime.

I've got nothing:

The first skull in cherry-red wrapping was found on February 20 in a planter near a residential building downtown. Since then, seven others have been found near Mormon temples or consulates, including those for Russia, the Czech Republic and South Africa. The skulls are old, with traces of dirt.

Sorta.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512381/astrobiologists-find-ancient-fossils-in-fireball-fragments/

On 29 December 2012, a fireball lit up the early evening skies over the Sri Lankan province of Polonnaruwa. Hot, sparkling fragments of the fireball rained down across the countryside and witnesses reported the strong odour of tar or asphalt.

Over the next few days, the local police gathered numerous examples of these stones and sent them to the Sri Lankan Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health in Colombo. After noticing curious features inside these stones, officials forwarded the samples to a team of astrobiologists at Cardiff University in the UK for further analysis.

The results of these tests, which the Cardiff team reveal today, are extraordinary.  They say the stones contain fossilised biological structures fused into the rock matrix and that their tests clearly rule out the possibility of terrestrial contamination.

But don't get your hopes up too soon

There are other explanations, of course. One is that the fireball was of terrestrial origin, a remnant of one of the many asteroid impacts in Earth's history that that have ejected billions of tonnes of rock and water into space, presumably with biological material inside. Another is that the structures are not biological and have a different explanation.

Where's my expected orgy of Serious Liberals celebrating the death of history's greatest monster?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-21654930

A man dressed as the caped crusader Batman has handed over a wanted man at a Bradford police station before disappearing into the night.

Police said the costumed crime-fighter marched the 27-year-old man into Trafalgar House Police Station, in the early hours of 25 February.

The man was charged with handling stolen goods and fraud offences.

Police said: "The person who brought the man in was dressed in a full Batman outfit. His identity remains unknown."

Despite speculation on social media the arrested man could know the mysterious crime-fighter, West Yorkshire Police said: "We do not know the identity of the man dressed as Batman and do not know if he is friends with the man who was handed in."

I also note, going by the costume, this was classic Adam West Batman, not latex nipple Batman.

So, a decade on, how are Iraqis recovering from the shock and awe of freedom?

http://mondediplo.com/2013/03/02iraq

The new regime seems to have slipped in to the shoes of the former. Officials squat in the opulent residences of their predecessors, whose era they claimed they were ending. Almost no infrastructure has been built in Baghdad over the past 10 years, except the local government headquarters, the road to the airport and a few flyovers. Traffic police shelters at crossroads are stamped "gift from the town hall", recalling the "donations" (makarim) of Saddam: a personalised substitute for what should be provided anonymously by the state. Public service salaries remain insufficient, driving employees to find supplementary sources of income, legal or not. High-level corruption is tolerated, documented and used as leverage when necessary. Pervasive social climbing, nepotism and incompetence are poisoning institutions.

The Republican Palace in the heart of Baghdad became the "green zone" when the US made it the nerve centre of the occupation, and it embodies the worst of the new order just as it did the old. This huge, fairly well secured area is an exclusive political arena, a place of privilege, and a world that does its best to keep everyone else out. A whole deck of access cards defines a new elite, and a position within its hierarchy. The closure of the Karrada-Mansour main road, which cuts through the green zone, forces ordinary people to make ridiculously long detours. It would be feasible to reopen it, but that is not the issue: the green zone seems to have become the inalienable privilege of a caste that values not having to answer to anyone.

Oh.  Well, at least Afghanistan is doing better....

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/03/01/commentary/afghanistans-legacy-of-child-opium-addiction/

A report just released by the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan states that there were 2,754 civilian deaths and 4,805 civilian injuries in that country during 2012. Unmentioned is a serious side effect of the conflict: the high number of opium-addicted children in Afghanistan.

The number has increased systematically the past few years.

The situation is not limited to Afghanistan. Children are affected in Pakistan as well. In Karachi alone, there are tens of thousands of child addicts most of who receive no care or support. New and more effective policies are needed to address this situation.

A study conducted in Afghanistan showed that in 25 percent of homes where adult addicts lived there were signs of significant drug exposure in the children tested, some as young as 14 months. The children exhibited typical behavior for opium-heroin addicts: experiencing withdrawal when the drug was removed.

Not only were opium products found in indoor air samples, but the concentrations were extremely high.

This suggests that, as happens with secondhand cigarette smoke, contaminated indoor air and surfaces pose a serious risk to children's health.

The extent of health problems in children as a result of such exposure is not known. What is known is that the number of adult drug users has increased from 920,000 in 2005 to over 1.5 million in 2010, according to Zalmai Afzali, spokesman for the Ministry of Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan. A quarter of those users are thought to be women and children.

If current trends continue, Afghanistan could become the world's top drug-using nation on a per capita basis.

So, hey, how about that Mali intervention....at least Al-Qaeda got driven out.

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=49937

Violence has flared once again in the troubled West African nation of Mali. Heavy fighting between French forces and rebels have erupted anew in northern Mali, as a suicide car bombing killed six government allies in the city of Kidal. A hospital source reported that seven people were dead, which included the bomber, with another 11 wounded.

So, don't die of shock or anything, but something moderately creepy and interesting and unusual has been posted on our favourite conspiracy nut website, GLP.

Link

Essentially, what happened is someone got given access to room 322 at the ZaZa Hotel in Houston.  Inside of finding a normal room, they found it was strangely decorated, with odd pictures and paintings of skulls on the wall, and that it was smaller than the average ZaZa room ("by about 1/3" according to the poster).

When they asked about it at reception, they were told by the hotel clerk that said room "shouldn't have been rented out" and were promptly moved to another room in the hotel.

However, before leaving, pictures were taken, and you can see them in the gallery below

http://imgur.com/a/Hshw0/all

Items of note

- the floor is bare concrete.  The ZaZa in Houston is a high end hotel, and I've looked at pictures.  Normally, the rooms have tiled or carpet floors.

- the room size, and the mirror, suggest the disturbing possibility that there is another hidden room within 322, and the mirror is two-way.

- the picture in the room is believed to be Jay Comeaux, formerly of the Stanford Financial Group.  That is the same Stanford Financial Group owned by Allen Stanford, banker to the drug lords and (suspected) snitch to the CIA.

The NYT Style section is truly a global treasure

'"Hastings-on-Hudson is a village, in a Wittgensteinian sort of way," Mr. Wallach said.

My mind = blown.

This topic has been moved to Apple Zone.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=34148.0

This is an odd one:

THE enigma of the Irish property developer who claimed he was held captive for eight months and tortured deepened this weekend as more details emerged about his bizarre ordeal.

Kevin Michael McGeever was found wandering by the side of a Leitrim road last Tuesday, confused, emaciated, barefoot, with long fingernails and a lengthy beard. It soon transpired he was a wealthy property developer who sold apartments in Dubai and who was reported missing more than eight months ago.

It appears the only thing Mr McGeever has been able to tell them with certainty was that he was taken on May 27 last year from the mansion he built in Craughwell, Co Galway.

After that, all he can remember is that he was held in a dark room but could not say whether he was tied up, and that his captors came and went with food, such as sandwiches, and water. As for his release on to a rural road in Leitrim, he told gardai that he "found" himself on the roadside, but has so far been unable to tell them how he got there.

His muscle wastage and some slight injuries indicate he was held captive for a period, but gardai are still trying to figure out who may have kidnapped him and where he was held. Apart from a plastic sheet wrapped around him as he wandered on the rural road, his only possession was a brand new mobile phone which had no call history.

Dubai is, of course, a notoriously dodgy part of the world to do business in.

This is very interesting

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/magazine/gerard-de-villiers-the-spy-novelist-who-knows-too-much.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&pagewanted=all&

Last June, a pulp-fiction thriller was published in Paris under the title "Le Chemin de Damas." Its lurid green-and-black cover featured a busty woman clutching a pistol, and its plot included the requisite car chases, explosions and sexual conquests. Unlike most paperbacks, though, this one attracted the attention of intelligence officers and diplomats on three continents. Set in the midst of Syria's civil war, the book offered vivid character sketches of that country's embattled ruler, Bashar al-Assad, and his brother Maher, along with several little-known lieutenants and allies. It detailed a botched coup attempt secretly supported by the American and Israeli intelligence agencies. And most striking of all, it described an attack on one of the Syrian regime's command centers, near the presidential palace in Damascus, a month before an attack in the same place killed several of the regime's top figures. "It was prophetic," I was told by one veteran Middle East analyst who knows Syria well and preferred to remain nameless. "It really gave you a sense of the atmosphere inside the regime, of the way these people operate, in a way I hadn't seen before."

The book was the latest by Gérard de Villiers, an 83-year-old Frenchman who has been turning out the S.A.S. espionage series at the rate of four or five books a year for nearly 50 years. The books are strange hybrids: top-selling pulp-fiction vehicles that also serve as intelligence drop boxes for spy agencies around the world. De Villiers has spent most of his life cultivating spies and diplomats, who seem to enjoy seeing themselves and their secrets transfigured into pop fiction (with their own names carefully disguised), and his books regularly contain information about terror plots, espionage and wars that has never appeared elsewhere. Other pop novelists, like John le Carré and Tom Clancy, may flavor their work with a few real-world scenarios and some spy lingo, but de Villiers's books are ahead of the news and sometimes even ahead of events themselves. Nearly a year ago he published a novel about the threat of Islamist groups in post-revolutionary Libya that focused on jihadis in Benghazi and on the role of the C.I.A. in fighting them. The novel, "Les Fous de Benghazi," came out six months before the death of the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and included descriptions of the C.I.A. command center in Benghazi (a closely held secret at that time), which was to become central in the controversy over Stevens's death. Other de Villiers books have included even more striking auguries. In 1980, he wrote a novel in which militant Islamists murder the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, a year before the actual assassination took place. When I asked him about it, de Villiers responded with a Gallic shrug. "The Israelis knew it was going to happen," he said, "and did nothing."

The overlap between marketing and politics is inevitable when both of them cater to the lowest common denominator and the biggest possible audience. History is full of marketing men who had successful careers working in politics: Walter Lippmann, Ivy Lee, Tim LaHaye, and the notorious self-promoting usurper Edward Bernays. Nothing changes, either. In 2008, Brian Collins and company won the Ad Age prize for Marketer of the Year. Their project? Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

[...]

Information Marketing is probably a better training ground for a political operative than politics itself, these days. The A/B Testing loop, the segmented lists, the auto-responder cycles, the CRM funnels, analytics and response rates: it's all the same language now. Marketing and politics both rely on the techniques of Branding, and the outcome is very much the same, too. From our low voter turnout to the high return rates for "information products," this is not a system geared for customer satisfaction.

Source.

Rick Perlstein has a look at the other side of this equation: the way in which politics and databases are used for advertising purposes, and in particular the strange relationship between American conservatism and snake-oil salesmen:

Subscriber lists to ideological organs are pure gold to the third-party interests who rent them as catchments for potential customers. Who better suits a marketing strategy than a group that voluntarily organizes itself according to their most passionately shared beliefs? That's why, for instance, the other day I (and probably you) got an advertisement by way of liberal magazine The American Prospect seeking donations to Mercy Corps, a charity that helps starving children in the Third World. But back when I was getting emails every day from Newsmax and Townhall, the come-ons were a little bit different.

[...]

Soon after reading that, I learned of the "23-Cent Heart Miracle," the one "Washington, the medical industry, and drug companies REFUSE to tell you about." (Why would they? They'd just be leaving money on the table: "I was scheduled for open heart surgery when I read about your product," read one of the testimonials. "I started taking it and now six months have passed and I haven't had open-heart surgery.") Then came news of the oilfield in the placenta.

Perlstein believes this isn't just coincidence, either:

The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.

In 1961 Richard Viguerie, a kid from Houston whose heroes, he once told me, were "the two Macs"—Joe McCarthy and General Douglas MacArthur—took a job as executive director for the conservative student group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). The organization was itself something of a con, a front for the ideological ambitions of the grownups running National Review. And fittingly enough, the middle-aged man who ran the operation, Marvin Liebman, was something of a P. T. Barnum figure, famous on the right for selling the claim that he had amassed no less than a million signatures on petitions opposing the People's Republic of China's entry into the United Nations. (He said they were in a warehouse in New Jersey. No one ever saw the warehouse.) The first thing Liebman told Viguerie was that YAF had two thousand paid members but that in public, he should always claim there were twenty-five thousand. (Viguerie told me this personally. I found no evidence he saw anything to be ashamed of.) And the first thing that Liebman showed Viguerie was the automated "Robotype" machine he used to send out automated fundraising pitches. Viguerie's eyes widened; he had found his life's calling.

Following the Goldwater defeat, Viguerie went into business for himself. He famously visited the Clerk of the House of Representatives, where the identities of those who donated fifty dollars or more to a presidential campaign then by law reposed. First alone, and then with a small army of "Kelly Girls" (as he put it to me in 1996), he started copying down the names and addresses in longhand until some nervous bureaucrat told him to cease and desist.

By then, though, it was too late: Viguerie had captured some 12,500 addresses of the most ardent right-wingers in the nation. "And that list," he wrote in his 2004 book, America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Over America, "was my treasure trove, as good as the gold bricks deposited at Fort Knox, as I started The Viguerie Company and began raising money for conservative clients."

Fort Knox: an interesting image. Isn't that what proverbial con men are always claiming to sell?

The lists got bigger, the technology better ("Where are my names?" he nervously asked, studying the surface of the first computer tape containing his trove): twenty-five million names by 1980, destination for some one hundred million mail pieces a year, dispatched by some three hundred employees in boiler rooms running twenty-four hours a day. The Viguerie Company's marketing genius was that as it continued metastasizing, it remained, in financial terms, a hermetic positive feedback loop. It brought the message of the New Right to the masses, but it kept nearly all the revenue streams locked down in Viguerie's proprietary control. Here was a key to the hustle: typically, only 10 to 15 percent of the haul went to the intended beneficiaries. The rest went back to Viguerie's company. In one too-perfect example, Viguerie raised $802,028 for a client seeking to distribute Bibles in Asia—who paid $889,255 for the service.

Read the whole thing.

What is this I don't even

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/arkansas_town_enacts_martial_law/

Following a rise in violent crime in Paragould, an Arkansas town of around 26,000 residents, the mayor and police chief announced that starting this month police in SWAT gear carrying AR-15s would patrol the streets.

"If you're out walking, we're going to stop you, ask why you're out walking, and check for your ID," police chief Todd Stovall told a December town hall meeting. As if to render the implementation of a visible police state more palatable, Stovall assured residents that police stops would not be based on any profiling: "We're going to do it to everybody," he said.

According to local news reports, the police department canceled two subsequent town hall meetings to discuss the heavy handed policing plan. Following outrage from Paragould residents, the police cited "public safety concerns" to cancel the meetings. Meanwhile, Paragould's mayor has reportedly dialed back his rhetoric around the amped up policing proposal and, according to the Arkansas Times, the mayor said patrolling police would not "constantly" be carrying assault rifles. Although announced to begin in January, no SWAT patrols have begun in Paragould yet.

So, they won't be constantly carrying AR-15's.  They'll just be armed men in combat armour, asking for your papers, citizen.  Nothing to worry about.

Charlie Stross asks "why are there so many stupid people"?

I have a speculative answer:

We are hominids. One of the things that makes us different from other primates is that we have language. Language enables us to communicate about our environment and to communicate our interior states. This is a very powerful tool; it means that if, for example, you have figured out a better way to peel a banana, you can tell me about it, and I can acquire that trait.

Our ability to exchange extended phenotypic traits without genetic exchange (thank you, language faculty!) makes us, as Dawkins pointed out in the 1990s, exceptional.

Because of this ability, we don't have to invent everything for ourselves, individually; we can borrow one anothers' good ideas. So we only need to be smart enough to understand and use the cognitive tools created by our most intelligent outliers.

Let me re-formulate that hypothesis: The evolutionary pressure selecting for general intelligence (to the extent that general intelligence exists) breaks once a species develops language.

And a logical corollary of this hypothesis is that we are only just smart enough, on average, to be capable of horizontal transfer of memes. Once language and culture arrived (note specialized usage of term 'culture'), we didn't need to get any smarter: we could "borrow" from one another. Therefore we're only just smart enough to do this.

(I call this Charlie's Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis.)

Steve Hynd suggests that this could explain the trajectory of the Republican Party at the moment:

My analogy is this: the Republican Party has lost the minimum intelligence to listen to its outliers because it has lost the minimum intelligence to realize that its outliers are now on its left-moderate wing.

[...]

To borrow from Charlie, the Republican Party – a memetic entity – has become too stupid for horizontal transfer of new memes which would fit it for survival in a cultural environment which is rapidly changing in demographics and in its attitudes to bigotry of various stripes. It can change that and evolve or it can stay the same and become extinct.

never mind, thread ruined.

You have to admit, the man had style.

This is pretty huge news:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21170265

David Cameron has rebuffed criticism at home and abroad of his commitment to hold a referendum on the UK's future in Europe if he wins the next election.

Labour and the Lib Dems have said plans to renegotiate the UK's membership and put it to a public vote was a gamble and against the national interest.

France and Germany warned the UK against pursuing an "a la carte" approach. The US said the UK and the EU were stronger together.

But the PM said he had public backing.

Peter Oborne explains fairly well why this is a huge deal:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/9821289/David-Cameron-may-have-finished-off-the-Tories-but-he-had-no-choice.html

All Conservative leaders since Margaret Thatcher have faced one central problem: how to prevent the party splitting wide apart over Europe. This was the difficulty that pulverised John Major, caused William Hague to go bald, propelled Iain Duncan Smith to the party leadership, and then got him sacked a short time later.

Until yesterday, David Cameron's policy was both sensible and wise: to let sleeping dogs lie. He took heed of Mr Hague's advice that shifting position on Europe was like moving an unexploded bomb, liable to go off at any moment, across a crowded room. Much better to leave alone. No wonder that the Prime Minister delayed any action for so long, and carried it out with such reluctance.

Yesterday, with immense trepidation, the unexploded bomb was moved. At first sight, Mr Cameron has got away with it. He received a hero's welcome from Conservative MPs when he entered the chamber for Prime Minister's Questions. Truculent customers such as the viscerally Eurosceptic Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell say they are delighted. Meanwhile, there was enough pro-European language in the Cameron speech to keep the Tory Left happy. Mr Cameron has pleased everybody, and that makes it less unlikely that the Conservative Party will win the next election.

So much for the short-term consequences. In the longer term, the situation is much more interesting, and more dangerous. The Prime Minister has moved the bomb, but he has not defused it. It remains in the room, ticking away. It is simply in a different place, and the circumstances have changed: Mr Cameron, by committing the Tories to an in-out referendum, has greatly increased the likelihood that Britain will eventually leave the European Union, while a formal split within the Conservative Party over Europe now looks almost certain.

There's also the international context:

Cameron has just put the world on notice that the UK is prepared to cause major disruption to the economic life of an immense trading bloc, with who knows how many cascading effects on the pattern of global trade and investment. We're not a political risk in the way that say, Pakistan is, but Cameron has established political risk as a necessary factor in the ways that other countries will think about the UK from now on. As such, what the hell is going on here is going to be a matter of interest to the world's intelligence agencies above and beyond the usual level of spying-between-friends. In addition, there's the fact that pretty much every state with a dog in this fight would probably be pleased if the current government were to be replaced by a more co-operative entity. I have no idea whether or in what way these two things might connect, but I do wonder if the Conservatives will be on the receiving end of some of the same kind of attention that Labour used to get back in the Cold War days.

Prepare for "interesting times".

This can't be good.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/497799/remote-controlled-war-pakistan-seeks-us-explanation-on-drone-manual/

Pakistan has asked the United States to halt its highly controversial drone campaign following reports that US President Barack Obama's administration was planning to give the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) a "free hand" to continue its remotely-controlled war in tribal regions.

The issue was raised by Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar in a meeting with Richard Olson, the US ambassador in Islamabad, on Tuesday, a foreign ministry official told The Express Tribune.

Foreign Minister Khar voiced her concern over reports that the CIA would step up its drone campaign in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, said the official, who wished not to be named.

She also urged Ambassador Olson to explain his government's position on the new "playbook" for targeted killings, which would not apply to Pakistan. This, according to The Washington Post, means the CIA will continue to hunt for al Qaeda and its Taliban cohorts in the tribal regions for a year or so before the new rules become applicable to it.

John Brennan, tipped to become next head of the CIA, is very, very (unhealthily) keen on drone attacks, you should recall.

...before it becomes completely fucking tedious?  As if Obama isn't exactly the kind of "moderate" MLK despised:

"cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."

and

"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."

Of course, Actual MLK will be ignored for Mythical Feel Good MLK, which will make that glaring problem go away.  For anyone unaware of history, which is, of course, most people.

Societies are not unitary.  They are not social systems (closed or open); they are not totalities.  We never find a single bounded society in geographical or social space.  Because there is no system, no totality, there cannot be "sub-systems", "dimensions" or "levels" of such a totality.  Because there is no whole, social relations cannot be reduced to "ultimately," "in the last instance," to some systemic property of it – like the "mode of material production," or the "cultural" or "normative system," or the "form of military organization."  Because there is no bounded totality, it is not helpful to divide social change or conflict into "endogenous" and "exogenous" varieties.  Because there is no social system, there is no "evolutionary" process within it.  Because humanity is not divided into a series of bounded totalities, "diffusion" of social organization does not occur between them.  Because there is no totality, individuals are not constrained in their behaviour by "social structure as a whole" and so it is not helpful to make a distinction between "social action" and "social structure".

Just in case you forgot.

Once seen as a symbol of youth culture and Japanese soft power, Hello Kitty has now become an inspirational figure to terrorist masterminds all over the world, including this nefarious five year old from Pennsylvania:

Link

A 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl was suspended from kindergarten after she allegedly threatened to shoot herself and a friend with a pink plastic Hello Kitty bubble gun.

Officials at Mount Carmel Area Elementary School in Mount Carmel labeled the unnamed girl a "terrorist threat" over the January 10 incident, which occurred while she and a friend were waiting in line for a school bus, according to PennLive.

Robin Ficker, an attorney for the girl's parents, said the girl told her friend, "I'm going to shoot you and I will shoot myself" with her Hello Kitty bubble gun, which she didn't even have with her.

School officials then questioned both girls, grilling them for half an hour without their parents present. After the interrogation, the would-be 'shooter' was labeled a "terrorist threat" and suspended for 10 days. The school also ordered the kindergartner to be examined by a psychologist.

You'll notice how she cunningly threatened her helpless victims while the gun was not even present.  Truly a criminal genius.  Had it not been for the alertness and bravery of school officials, we could be mourning another tragic terrorist atrocity in America today.  God bless them, and their far-sighted actions.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/03/exclusive-al-awlaki-booked-pre-11-air-travel-for-hijackers-fbi-documents-show/

Yes, it's FOX, but elements of this ring true.

One FBI investigative report known as a 302 summarizes the bureau's investigation of Al-Awlaki's Visa transactions. While heavily redacted, the document indicates a credit transaction for "Atta, Mohammed -- American West Airlines, 08/13/2001, Washington, DC to Las Vegas to Miami," the document says.

The mid-August flight, according to the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, which first investigated the attacks, was one of Atta's numerous and crucial surveillance flights.

"On August 13, Atta flew a second time across country from Washington to Las Vegas on a Boeing 757 (seated in first class) returning on August 14 to Fort Lauderdale," the 9/11 report reads.

The FBI documents also show a credit card record for a "Suqami, S. ----Southwest Airlines, 07/10/2001, Ft. Lauderdale to Orlando." Satam al-Suqami was one of the muscle hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11, which slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The third individual, identified in the records is a "W. al-Sheri -- National Airlines, 08/01/2001, San Francisco to Las Vegas to Miami."  This appears to be either Waleed al-Shehri or Wail al-Shehri. The two brothers were also muscle hijackers, according to the 9/11 Commission report. 

And this:

Fox News was also first to report that the cleric was a guest speaker on moderate Islam at a Pentagon executive dining room in February 2002. The newly released documents now suggest the FBI knew five months earlier of al-Awlaki's probable link to the hijackers.   

Fox News was also first to report that al-Awlaki was held at New York City's JFK airport on Oct. 10, 2002, under a warrant for passport fraud, a felony punishable by 10 years. However, as Fox News was first to document, an FBI agent, Wade Ammerman, from the bureau's Washington field office ordered the cleric be released from custody, even though there was an active warrant for his arrest.

Fox News' reporting, which has not been publicly disputed by the bureau, suggests that after the 9/11 attacks the FBI tried to work with al-Awlaki or track him for intelligence purposes.

I've suggested something along this line before.  Al-Walaki was in contact with suspected Saudi intelligence agent* Omar al-Bayoumi while under FBI surveillance in 2000.  The call was relating to (Nawaf)  Alhazmi and (Khalid) Almihdhar, two of the 9/11 hijackers.   Alhazmi and Almihdhar were known to have attended the 2000 Al-Qaeda "conference" in Malaysia by the CIA....but the CIA did not inform the FBI that said known terrorists were in the country.

Two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, according to a Newsweek investigation, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars.

Payments arrived "in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family."  Prince Bandar tutored Bush Jr on foreign policy during the 1999-2000 period, and currently is the head of Saudi intelligence.

Al-Walaki left the US shortly before 9/11 occured, and returned once before the October incident mentioned above.  That time, the FBI tried to hold him on a money-laundering charge.  Also worth noting that after that incident, he was placed on the terrorist watch list for the USA...then removed again, only days before he returned (the October incident mentioned above).

Despite large amounts of evidence tying al-Walaki to the 9/11 attacks, he was not considered a potential Al-Qaeda operative until 2008.  Something rather odd was going on between all of these actors, and while it may not add up to the Truther's wildest dreams of the encroaching NWO, it's still fishy enough to merit investigation.

*Suspected, that is, by the FBI, among others.

Give this a read, please

http://symbalitics.blogspot.ca/2013/01/aaron-swartz-blood-for-oil.html

In the post-war era, one can define the "post-modern" problem as the point where production of information undermines information monopolies, this includes money, religion, and academia. This leads, in Marxist and Marxian thought to the continental movement now labelled "post-structuralism," the work of Derrida, Lacan, and others. On the right it leads to fundamentalist movements and traditionalism. Both left and right assert what I will label the "neo thesis." The neo-thesis states that the early 20th century was a disruption, that it is impossible to return to the time before it directly, but, largely agreeing with Hayek, that the disruption can be returned to by re-asserting a social control. What Derrida calls "the game itself," is the means to return to a Pre-World War II normalcy. Hence, a neo- world, where movements assert a three fold argument: the present is corrupt, the solution is to return to some imagined better moment, and the means is by having some particular ideology as the primary one which rules over others. Thus fights, even over small disagreements, become brutal, because the are a fight over the very most basic rules of social participation, the "other" is alien, not merely in disagreement.

However this ideological framework is not dominant for randomly or because of its intrinsic aesthetic appeal. It grew up because the reality is that control of a few key pieces of capital, knowledge, and resource, dominate over all the others. It was Derrida who quipped that two things would never be viritual: oil and Jerusalem, everyone wants the real thing. In this he encapsulated the problem: control over the keys to the mechanized economy and control over the brand equity of the "game itself" are the basis of all power, and since power is needed to maintain the benefits of the present, the basis of present society.

Enter Intellectual Property, and the role of academia. The West had two important rents: one is the path dependency of finance, which the very nature of the oilarchies could not easily duplicate, and the other was the path dependency of knowledge creation, which the oilarchies did not want to duplicate.

Thus part of the drive to create streams of income, was to propertize information, at the same time, cut the oil cost of its storage and transmission. These two goals are in fundamental contradiction: knowledge, the more it is digitized, and internetworked, acts less and less like property, and more and more like heat. It diffuses.

This is what bothered people who dealt with this system. Viewed in terms of the marginal, that is capital, cost, a copy costs almost nothing, and enough copies, and the value is enormous. At the same time that information became more important, the value of creation dropped to almost zero. The value of a song writer is less than zero: most musicians spend more on the tools to make music, than they earn. Rent has a value, thus a brand name musician, who is easy to find, is worth a million hits for nothing.

Academia is part of the path dependent rental advantage of the US, and as such, its price rose through the roof, going up by far more than inflation for the last 30 years.

It is this connection: the need to create rents to say ahead of the ability of low stake holder resource billionaires, that made IP and Academia behave like rents. The problem is that while academia does, indeed use rents all the time, for example, naming mathematical theorums after the creator, scientific laws after the discoverer, footnoting and textual apparatus, these rents are difficult to impossible to monetize directly. Academic rent created the drive to larger and larger administrative systems, and more and more power being given to people who controlled the money flow. With every passing year, there was the need to squeeze larger rents.

All in all it's quite brilliant, and links together two things I had never connected before (the role of oil in the global economy and the role of IP in academia)

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/archaeologists-uncover-clues-to-why-vikings-abandoned-greenland-a-876626.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=http://t.co/1Xj9KbkB

For years, researchers have puzzled over why Viking descendents abandoned Greenland in the late 15th century. But archaeologists now believe that economic and identity issues, rather than starvation and disease, drove them back to their ancestral homes.

TL;DR they didn't like eating seals all day, every day.