Darrell Issa who is Chairman of the Republican Witch Hunt Committee in the House is running hearings on the lack of security at the US Embassy in Libya. Some Republican loyalists assigned to Libya dutifully complained that the State Department wasn’t meeting their security requests. What they actually wanted was their own aircraft, the State Dept told them to fly commercial. In fact they hadn’t requested anything for the Consulate in Benghazi. That city was considered friendly territory, and in fact the locals rallied to the aid of the Americans. In the aftermath the killing of the US diplomats, the civilian population rose up, overran militant’s compounds across the city and burned them down. We could use that sort of patriotism here.
“Gitmo will never close. That is a fantasy,” Begg said in a phone interview from his home in London. “I’ve stopped wishing for it. Even if it closes its doors, it will be only symbolic. The detainees who are still there will go somewhere else to be held and be treated possibly worse, and still not get their time in court. And Gitmo, in a way, will always be open. It will be in my memory, in my head, just like everyone else who experienced that hell.”
As Mace Neufeld, the producer of the 1990 film “The Hunt for Red October,” later recounted to Variety, studios in the post-“Top Gun” era instituted an unstated rule telling screenwriters and directors to get military cooperation “or forget about making the picture.” Economics drives that directive, Time magazine reported in 1986. “Without such billion-dollar props, producers [have to] spend an inordinate amount of time and money searching for substitutes” and therefore might not be able to make the movie at all, the magazine noted.
Emboldened by Hollywood’s obsequiousness, military officials became increasingly blunt about how they deploy the carrot of subsidized hardware and the stick of denied access to get what they want. Strub described the approval process to Variety in 1994: “The main criteria we use is . . . how could the proposed production benefit the military . . . could it help in recruiting [and] is it in sync with present policy?”
U.S. government experts believe the state of the opposition is so grave that it could take years to organize, arm and train them into a fighting force strong enough to drive Gaddafi from power and set up a working government.
The realistic outlook, U.S. and European officials said, is for an indefinite stalemate between the rebels — supported by NATO air power — and Gaddafi’s forces.
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has told a foreign ministers’ summit the alliance needs “a few more” aircraft for its mission in Libya.
Mr Rasmussen said he had received no offers from any ally at the meeting in Berlin to supply the extra warplanes, but he remained hopeful.
Nato would continue “day by day, strike by strike” to target Col Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, he told media.
Britain and France have been trying to persuade other Nato members to do more.
What if they gave a war and no one came?
I thought the U.S. was just providing “support.”
Washington withdrew its fighter jets as it scaled back its role in the mission, although US planes are still targeting Col Gaddafi’s air defences and it says it has still been flying a third of the missions.
Oh. I see. We’re still bombing them, just with different kinds of planes.
On the way to work this morning I caught the last hour of The Stephanie Miller Show, and while she and the Mooks are on vacation, Hal Sparks, her “Obama-is-the-bestest-president-ever-and-we-must-never-ever-question-his-actions-even-when-his-actions-go-against-progressive/liberal-ideals-because-he-can’t-do-anything-else-because-of-those-eeevil-Republicans” soul mate, is hosting the show. True to form, Libya is just a-okay with him, and any comparisons to Bush are completely out of line. Anyone trying to point out that the rationale used for Iraq is the same as that being used today for Libya was called a Bush-Lover and an Obama-Hater.
His logic was all over the map. First up:
“What would you expect the international community to do if the U.S. government starting lobbing bombs from the White House on peaceful (or rock throwing) protestors? Would you expect them to sit idly by?”
By that logic. we should be bombing the shit out of Israel, right? What about when Iran was attacking protestors? Oh, we couldn’t do that, according to Hal, because Iran really has a huge air force and we’d really be up against it then.
So . . . we only pick on countries we know we can trounce? Isn’t that what “our side” said about Bush and Iraq?
Then he started talking about oil. Of course we have to do this, he said, because we are dependent on oil, and they’ve got some and we’ve got to keep the flow going. And until we wean ourselves from the teat of oil, well, then, let the bombs fly.
That’s why we didn’t go into Darfur, he noted. So, even though the casualty count was far higher and the conflict far longer than this one, it was okay for us to sit that one out, according to Sparks. Wowzer.
Honestly, I was having trouble keeping up with his rapidly changing rationales.
But in the end, there was no questioning of Dear Leader. Not one word.
Obama’s answer seems dispositive to me on the Libya question: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” And he went on to say that the President could constitutionally deploy the military only “in instances of self-defense.” Nobody is arguing — nor can one rationally argue — that the situation in Libya constitutes either an act of “self-defense” or the “stopping of an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” How, then, can Obama’s campaign position possibly be reconciled with his ordering military action in Libya without Congressional approval (something, it should be said, he has not yet done)?
[ . . .]
The dangers from unilateral, presidential-decreed wars are highlighted in the Libya situation. There has been very little public discussion (and even less explanation from the President) about the reasons we should do this, what the costs would be on any level, what the end goal would be, how mission creep would be avoided, whether the “Pottery Barn” rule will apply, or virtually anything else. Public opinion is at best divided on the question if not opposed. Even if you’re someone who favors this intervention, what’s the rationale for not requiring a debate and vote in Congress over whether the President should be able to commit the nation to a new military conflict? Candidate Obama, candidate Clinton, and the Bush-era Democrats all recognized the constitutional impropriety of unilateral actions like this one; why shouldn’t they be held to that?
Do read Glenn’s entire post. Very much worth your time.
Like the demon-obsessed evangelicals who treat mental illness as an event of religious significance rather than a medical condition, New Agers are discouraging the genuinely sick from seeking help and treatment. Their endless doctrinal flexibility and limitless tolerance for the absurd are part of the reason for this. But I can’t believe that no one among the organizers of this event noticed the symptoms or drew the obvious conclusion. It’s more likely that they just see this as an additional source of income, whatever the consequences.
[ . . . ]
And money, of course, is a huge motive of the expo’s organizers and presenters; they’re not even shy about it. Ironically, some ads rail against the profit-driven corporatocracy and the greed of the mega-wealthy while hawking their own products and charging hundreds or thousands of dollars a pop for seminars and private consultations. Others promise that they can teach conference-goers the infallible way to acquire fabulous wealth for themselves, using the law of attraction, astrology, or whatever other fashionable nonsense is in vogue. Still others run the classic snake-oil salesman’s game of enriching themselves by selling false hope to the desperate, promising good health with no effort or magical cures for incurable diseases. The cures on offer run the gamut: psychic powers, prayer, ionized water, “far infrared light” (a new one to me), fad diets, “detoxification”, and classic scams like the Rife machine. One unintentionally hilarious ad apparently touts a raw-food diet as a means of healing gunshot wounds.
Most of the ads also display the credential inflation so common among pseudoscientists. Since most of their “specialties” require no knowledge and no certification, why not claim as many as you can? If one kind of bait doesn’t hook a potential client, maybe another one will! In that vein, here’s one who claims to be an MD as well as “an ordained rabbi in the Baal Shem Tov lineage, clan chief of the Lakota Spirit Dance, a Native American Sundancer, and a lineage holder in the Nityananda liberation tradition, and acknowledged as liberated by his two recognized enlightened spiritual teachers. He is an in-depth teacher in Advaita Vedanta, japa yoga, bhakti yoga, nada yoga, and karma yoga.” (Busy fellow! – and he must be absolutely up to his eyeballs in student-loan debt.)
Radiation Network provides a useful map, updated in real time, for those who might be worried about radiation levels on the West Coast. I’m not, but those who are running around and clearing shelves of iodine tablets, might want to check the map out before opening their wallets.
How to Read the Map:
Referring to the Map Legend at the bottom left corner of the map, locate Monitoring Stations around the country that are contributing radiation data to this map as you read this, and watch the numbers on those monitoring stations update as frequently as every minute (your browser will automatically refresh). The numbers represent radiation Counts per Minute, abbreviated CPM, and under normal conditions, quantify the level of background radiation, i.e. environmental radiation from outer space as well as from the earth’s crust and air. Depending on your location within the US, your elevation or altitude, and your model of Geiger counter, this background radiation level might average anywhere from 5 to 60 CPM, and while background radiation levels are random, it would be unusual for those levels to exceed 100 CPM. Thus, the “Alert Level” for the National Radiation Map is 100 CPM, so if you see any Monitoring Stations with CPM value above 100, further indicated by an Alert symbol over those stations, it probably means that some radioactive source above and beyond background radiation is responsible.
What a difference placement of a paragraph makes. The New York Times describes how the security police have retreated, leaving Egyptians vulnerable to looters and thugs.
By Saturday night, informal brigades of mostly young men armed with bats, kitchen knives and other makeshift weapons had taken control, setting up checkpoints around the city.
Some speculated that the sudden withdrawal of the police from the cities — even some museums and embassies in Cairo were left unguarded — was intended to create chaos that could justify a crackdown. And reports of widespread looting and violence did return late Saturday night, dominating the state-controlled news media.
“How come there is no security at all?” asked Mohamed Salmawy, president of the Egyptian Writers Union. “It is very fishy that the police had decided to leave the country completely to the thugs and angry mobs.”
Now, doesn’t the order of those three paragraphs make it sound like the “informal brigades” are the “thugs and angry mobs?”
The Egyptian authorities are revoking the Al Jazeera Network’s licence to broadcast from the country, and will be shutting down its bureau office in Cairo, state television has said.
“The information minister [Anas al-Fikki] ordered … suspension of operations of Al Jazeera, cancelling of its licences and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff as of today,” a statement on the official Mena news agency said on Sunday.
In a statement, Al Jazeera said it strongly denounces and condemns the closure of its bureau in Cairo by the Egyptian government. The network received notification from the Egyptian authorities on Sunday morning.
“Al Jazeera has received widespread global acclaim for their coverage on the ground across the length and breadth of Egypt,” the statement said.
An Al Jazeera spokesman said that the company would continue its strong coverage regardless.
In the meantime, it is being reported that Mohamed ElBaradei has joined the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Y’all remember Mohammed ElBaradei don’t you? He was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency who informed us, correctly, that there were no ”weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. If our government had listened to him, we would be trillions of dollars in the hole right now and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as thousands of coalition forces, would be alive and whole.
What is interesting about the Al Jazeera coverage is that it is just good old-fashioned journalism. I see no “analysis” by talking heads, just straight up reporting of the incredibly fluid and volatile conditions on the ground.
The Obama administration via the State Department appears to see the writing on the wall. Almost. Well, not really. They still think everyone can make nice. And that Mubarek can stay. For as long as we need him it takes.
Despite calls by protesters and others for a stronger U.S. stand against Mubarak, Clinton instead advocated a national dialogue in Egypt that would include Mubarak’s government and those seeking legitimate economic and democratic reforms.
“What we’re trying to do is to help clear the air so that those who remain in power, starting with President Mubarak, with his new vice president, with the new prime minister, will begin a process of reaching out, of creating a dialogue that will bring in peaceful activists and representatives of civil society to, you know, plan a way forward that will meet the legitimate grievances of the Egyptian people,” Clinton said on CNN.
That will take time, she conceded, adding that “it is unlikely to be done overnight without very grave consequences for everyone involved.”
The U.S. position was criticized Sunday by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who returned to Egypt last week as a leading opposition voice.
“Your policy right now is a failed policy, is a policy that is lagging behind, is a policy that is … having the effect here in Egypt that you are losing whatever (is) left of credibility,” ElBaradei told CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
“People need to see that you not only talk the talk, but walk the walk, and people need to understand and believe that you really seriously take democracy, rule of law, freedoms seriously. And to say we have a tight rope that — and between the people and the dictator, to say that we are asking a dictator who’s been in power for 30 years to implement democracy is an oxymoron, frankly,” he said.
The Egyptian people are making it quite clear that Mubarak’s time is up, and if he really gives a flying fuck about his country, he’ll move quickly to step down and allow for a peaceful transition of power. Sending fighter jets to buzz the crowds isn’t quite the message the Egyptian people should be hearing.
The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.
Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.
“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.
At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.
China’s commerce ministry announced on Tuesday in Beijing a steep reduction in export quotas for rare earth metals in the first months of next year, a move that threatens to cause further difficulties for manufacturers already struggling with short supplies and soaring prices.
The reduction in quotas for the early months of 2011 — a 35 percent drop in tonnage from the first half of this year — is the latest in a series of measures by Beijing that has gradually curtailed much of the world’s supply of rare earths.
China mines more than 95 percent of the global supply of the metals, which are essential for smartphones, electric cars, many computer components and a range of military hardware. In addition, the country mines 99 percent of the least common rare earths, the so-called heavy rare earths that are used in trace amounts but are crucial to many clean energy applications and electronics.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with regional leaders Saturday to sign an agreement for a massive energy project that could eventually net his country billions of dollars in revenue: a 1,000-mile natural gas pipeline whose proposed route cuts through the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.
As if to highlight the complications facing the project, at least 26 people were killed in attacks Friday and Saturday, including a Taliban commander and several people believed to be with a private security firm, Afghan and NATO officials said.
The United States strongly supports the proposed pipeline because it could draw Central Asia’s significant energy resources to Pakistan and India and bypass Iran, Washington’s top adversary in the region.
[ . . . ]
But the proposed $7.6-billion TAPI Gas Pipeline project and any revenue it may generate may be years away. The planned route passes from Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic, through violent territory still unsettled by insurgencies, including the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and the Pakistani city of Quetta, which is considered the home of the Taliban leadership.
Teng Biao, a bespectacled moon-faced lawyer who has made a name for himself by supporting political dissidents, walked out of the Thursday morning class he teaches at Beijing’s University of Politics and Law, and straight into the arms of the police.
He was going for a ride, they told him, to a small town outside the capital.
That is all anyone knows about Mr. Teng’s current fate, all he was able to put in a Twitter feed as he was taken away. Callers to his mobile phone later got a message that it was out of service.
When we buy anything made in China, we silently give our consent. If you thought this shit was all over, just because China is all modern and rich and high-tech, and you can travel to China where they can take your money as you buy trinkets and walk around on the Great Wall of China, understand that it never stopped.
Ulman read from Liu’s final statement before being sentenced to 11 years in jail for political incitement, titled, “I have no enemies.”
“And now, I have once again been shoved into the dock by the enemy mentality of the regime,” Liu wrote. “But I still want to say to this regime, which is depriving me of my freedom, that I stand by [my] convictions …. I have no enemies, and no hatred.”
Hatred, Liu wrote, “can rot away at a person’s intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation’s progress toward freedom and democracy.”
China blocked broadcasts of the ceremony on television and Internet sites. Just before 8 p.m. in Beijing, as the ceremony was beginning, CNN and BBC television channels went blank – as they had intermittently throughout the day. Chinese television news led their programs with stories on the latest economic figures, and new worries over inflation.
Also, some text messages containing the words “Liu Xiaobo” and “Nobel prize” were being blocked from delivery.
Chinese Internet users, or “‘Netizens,” tried to start an online campaign of support for Liu by changing their avatars either to yellow ribbons or empty chairs. One image being passed around online and via Twitter showed a black chair, in the shape of a human with arms and legs, and with handcuffs around the ankles.
Meanwhile, police in Beijing maintained a heavy presence outside the apartment compound of Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, who has had her telephone and Internet communications cut off for several weeks, since the announcement of the prize.
The government prohibited the Lius and their family members from leaving China to attend Friday’s ceremony, and barred other activists from traveling or even gathering at cafes or public places for fear that they would find a way to celebrate the occasion.
Workers erect a fence outside the apartment complex where jailed Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo's wife lives in Beijing on December 10, 2010. China clamped down on dissidents, the Internet and the media as the Nobel committee readied to honour peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, with activists missing and strong security at his wife's flat. AFP PHOTO
[ . . . ]
Foreign embassies in Norway were warned that if they sent representatives to the Nobel ceremony, they would risk unspoken diplomatic “consequences.” China broke off trade talks with Norway. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu denounced the Nobel committee members as “clowns” and accused them of “orchestrating an anti-China farce.”
As of Dec. 6, the Nobel committee said, 46 countries had announced they would send representatives to the prize ceremony. Fifteen countries–China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq , Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Egypt, Sudan, Cuba and Morocco–said they would stay away.
The government of Serbia had planned to boycott the ceremony in order to maintain good relations with China, but reversed that stance on Friday in the face of an outcry at home and from the European Union and said it would send an human rights official–not a diplomat–to witness the event.
“We had to affirm our relation with China and respond to Serbia’s interests with regard to the European Union,” Human Rights Minister Svetozar Cipliche told the Associated Press. Serbia is a candidate for EU membership.
“And now, I have once again been shoved into the dock by the enemy mentality of the regime,” Liu wrote. “But I still want to say to this regime, which is depriving me of my freedom, that I stand by [my] convictions …. I have no enemies, and no hatred.”![[cnobelchair]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-LG723_cnobel_F_20101210072919.jpg)
