Afghan Bog
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Why the US is losing the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan population:
- Between 1-2am on the rainy night of 16 January 2008, a large number of international military personnel wearing desert camouflage surrounded the house of two brothers living in a two-family house in Kandahar.
According to various family members, the soldiers knocked loudly on the door.
One of the brothers, Abdul Habib, went to answer it and was shot.
Numerous soldiers (“the Americans”, say the family) dragged Abdul out into the courtyard and shot him at least five more times.
Then, inside the house, the soldiers saw the other brother — Mohammed Ali — running up the stairs from his basement dwelling and he too was hit by at least seven rounds and killed instantly.
Members of the household say that soldiers then searched everywhere (“they even opened a package of biscuits”), found nothing (no weapons, nothing else) and left.
And no accountability from anybody.
- The UN expert Philip Alston has tried to investigate the case, noting that the victims “are widely acknowledged, even by well-informed government officials, to have had no connection to the Taliban.” He’s got nothing out of the US commander about what happened.
In fact Firebase Gecko is widely perceived as untouchable, not least because US special forces (“other government agencies” like the CIA) operate from there.
…
In Ahmed Rashid’s words, the Taliban see themselves “as the cleansers and purifiers of a social system gone wrong.”
If international forces come to seem like part of the social system gone wrong, then they’ll be easy prey for the Taliban propaganda machine.
Into this upside down environment President Obama is sending more US troops — 17,000 to start — and this without any game plan, much less an “end game,” to try and bring under control a conflict gone really, really bad the last couple of years.
Despite the nose on the face, it has been reported again and again, the military alone will not win in Afghanistan (the latest here) and a conflict solution requires doing something about the Afghan/Pakistan border.
One thing, however, must not happen: Compare Afghanistan with Iraq and a “surge” of more US troops.
Noted Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn wrote yesterday that idea would be an enormous mistake.
- The greatest source of error for the Americans in Iraq was not a policy mistake but an abiding belief that they alone made the political weather.
Anything good or bad which happened was the result of American action.
…
If the US intervention in Iraq proved anything it was that the Americans never had the strength to shape the political and military environment to their own liking.
Yet well-reviewed books on Iraq still appear in which Iraqis have a walk-on role and when somebody pushes a button in Washington something happens in Baghdad.
These misconceptions are important because the mythology about the supposed success of the “surge” is being promoted as a recipe for victory in Afghanistan.
This would not be the first time that false analogies between Iraq and Afghanistan have misled Washington.
I was in Afghanistan during the war against the Taliban at the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002 and one of the most striking features of the conflict was the lack of fighting.
The warlords and their men, who had previously rallied to the Taliban, simply went home because they did not want to be bombed by US aircrafts and they were heavily bribed to do so.
There was very little combat.
Yet when I went to Washington to work in a think-tank for a few months later that year the Afghan war was being cited by the Bush administration as proof of America’s military omnipotence.
It is difficult to believe that the Obama administration is going to make as many crass errors as its predecessor.
So amazed were the Iranians to see President Bush destroy their two most detested enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003 that some theologians held that such stupidity must be divinely inspired and heralded the return of the Twelfth Imam and the Shia millennium.
The reinforced US military presence in Afghanistan risks provoking a backlash in which religion combines with nationalism to oppose foreign intervention.
It is this that has been the real strength of movements like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Mehdi Army in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan which the US wants to eradicate.
Read all of Cockburn’s piece here.
Obama and his generals need a blueprint for Afghanistan, and quick.
Wonder with Stevie Wonder
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This dream-like, can’t-believe-my-eyes presidency continues: “And I think it’s fair to say that had I not been a Stevie Wonder fan, Michelle might not have dated me. We might not have married. The fact that we agreed on Stevie was part of the essence of our courtship.”
(Illustration found here).
And the bare-armed, kick-ass First Lady:
- I’d go to my grandfather’s, because he was a real music junkie.
He’d blast music throughout the house.
And that’s where he and I would sit and listen to Stevie’s music together.
Songs about life, love, romance, heartache, despair.
He would let me listen to these songs over and over and over and over again.
All of President and Michelle Obama’s gushing was aimed at Stevie Wonder, who was presented the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song during ceremonies yesterday at the White House.
The Obamas are something else.
Maybe because George Jr. Bush was so horrifyingly horrible — an idiot surrounded by nasty-faced idiots — has made this president and first lady appear so captivating, even after just a month or so in office, and although true in some aspects, there’s no denying these two guys are a cut above the fold.
Watching Obama nod his head in time with Wonder’s music during inauguration festivities last month, carrying a confident, having-myself-a-real-good-time smile, evoked unreal-like emotions, creating a sense of seeing something so unusual, so outside the grain of normal for a US president, the brain just softly blubbered: Whoa!
The same sensation occurred last summer when Obama made that graceful, three-pointer jump shot during a visit with US troops in Kuwait. (See a quick-video here).
This guy is way too cool — he carries the appearance of unmitigated confidence.
And the real-nagging, dream-like problem here, for me, is both of the Obama’s appear sincere.
And not in that political sincerity kind-of-way — George Jr. was as sincere as a fox-in-the-hen-house, the Clintons are so way-too-full-of-themselves it’s hard to tell, Jimmy Carter appeared sincere (out of his element, but sincere about it) — but more personal, and more accessible.
Not to say Obama ain’t political, he’s some kind of unnatural natural to have come way out of left field and beat them all — 18 months ago wasn’t given a dick’s chance to become president — and he’s still at the top of his game as witnessed by his speech Tuesday night.
And playing the Beltway/Village game like a seasoned pro.
And Michelle?
She’s literally cut the cloth for first ladies:
- Apparently, Obama’s decision to go sleeveless again is stirring up a debate.
The tribute to Wonder was the second time in as many days that the first lady bared her arms: She wore a plum Narciso Rodriguez dress when her husband addressed Congress on Tuesday night.
She appears on the latest issue of People magazine in a sleeveless magenta Tracy Reese frock and also went sans sleeves on her recent Vogue cover.
But should people be up in arms about Obama baring hers?
In the USA Today poll — 40%: Yes, she’s a modern first lady; 11%: No, it seems too informal; 49%: Who cares? It’s her decision.
Michelle Obama is the hottest First Lady since I was in sixth grade.
Unlike Jackie, however, Michelle appears able/willing to kick your ass real quick if need be.
While nearly at the same time, incite a response like this today from an employee at the EPA:
- It was Mrs. Obama’s sixth visit to a federal agency and hundreds of employees lined up for two hours to snag a standing-room-only spot in the gilded, high-ceilinged auditorium.
“We are just thrilled to be working for an administration that respects the work we do, environmental work, but public service more specifically,” said Beth Hall, who works in the ground water and drinking water office.
Ms. Hall, who is also a working mother, said that Mrs. Obama was something of a role model.
“For those of us who’ve been up the mommy track, she’s been very inspiring,” she said.
Both of them Obamas appear sincerely way-too-cool for school.
‘Climate Storm’ — Unstoppable Catastrophic Calamity
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In what could be a major metaphor for the entire climate change debate occurred Tuesday, starting first at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and ending up in the Indian Ocean near Antarctica.
- NASA and climate researchers are weighing their options after yesterday’s crash of a new satellite designed to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide with unprecedented accuracy.
The big problem with climate change is similar to the one facing the financial meltdown: The concept that got us in this mess is the same one trying to get us out.
(Illustration found here).
A function synopsis of NASA’s satellite from nature.com:
- The $280 million mission would have provided much needed information on the origin and fate of carbon dioxide emissions.
The instruments aboard the satellite were designed to measure carbon dioxide at a precision higher than any current space-based measurements of a trace gas, and would have helped scientists to identify sources and sinks of the greenhouse gas.
Although the project was intended as a science mission, its results would also have been relevant to policymakers.
Yes, indeed, if any measures can be brought to bear on a situation which will make all other situations — i.e., the economy, the war on terror, Jennifer Aniston at 40, etc., etc. — seem like a walk in the park.
Despite all the discussion on climate change, nothing is really being done.
Even David Letterman knows the score.
See his ‘Dead Meat’ rant from last September on global climate change via HuffPost.
In the last couple of years, research studies are seemingly worse than previously reported.
From the UK’s telegraph.com:
- WWF’s report, Climate Change: Faster, stronger, sooner, has updated all the scientific data and concluded that global warming is accelerating far beyond the IPCC’s forecasts.
As an example it says the first ‘tipping point’ may have already been reached in the Arctic, where sea ice is disappearing up to 30 years ahead of IPCC predictions and may be gone completely within five years –
something that hasn’t occurred for a million years.
And it’s not only with CO2, but also CFCs — human-produced compounds called chlorofluorocarbons — which impacts the infamous ozone hole:
- The ozone hole over Antarctica grew to the size of North America this year — the fifth largest on record — according to the latest satellite observations.
…
The main cause of the ozone hole is human-produced compounds called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which release ozone-destroying chlorine and bromine into the atmosphere.
The Earth’s protective ozone layer acts like a giant parasol, blocking the sun’s ultraviolet-B rays. Though banned for the past 21 years to reduce their harmful build up, CFCs still take many decades to dissipate from the atmosphere.
However, with CO2 still legal, still blazing, the future looks really, really bad, as carbon dioxide can stay around for a long, long time.
In an interview Tuesday with McClatchy Newspapers, David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, this “long tail” of CO2 would mean a certain kind of horror for planet earth.
Archer, whose new book, “The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate,” explains the burning of fossil fuels ignited the future: “In the long run, it could be a steep price to pay for a century or so of fossil fuel energy.”
And in order to survive, mankind must adjust:
- “The question may come down to ethics, rather than economics,” Archer wrote, much as the issue of slavery did more than a century ago.
“Ultimately it didn’t matter whether it was economically beneficial or costly to give up. It was simply wrong.”
Wrong doesn’t trump greed and the grind-on of civilization:
- If the world continues its heavy use of coal over the next couple of hundred years until it’s essentially used up, it would take several centuries more for the oceans to absorb about three-quarters of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. In those centuries, there would be a “climate storm” that Archer says would be significantly worse than the forecast from now to 2100.
And to the multitudes under denial:
- There are people who will “believe” anything they want to; the question is whether anyone has a scientifically credible justification for that belief.
It was predicted over a century ago that rising CO2 concentrations in the air would warm the planet.
Now it seems to be doing just that, just as predicted.
If anyone can explain why things should not work in this way, then I’d be interested to hear, but so far there are just no completing ideas, just beliefs stemming from whatever source, and an active campaign at disinformation sponsored by the fossil fuel industry.
Is earth, then condemned?
- No, the damage has not yet been done. We could stop releasing CO2. Technologically that is not so hard.
The problem, though, David, is not technology, but dumb-ass people and most likely we are doomed, a situation akin to George Carlin’s Hippy-Dippy weatherman predictions — and I paraphrase — ‘Rain is forecast, but our radar has also picked up some Russian ICBMs heading this way, so don’t sweat the rain showers.’
yeah…
‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’
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“Why ain’t they turning?” — Frederick Fleet, in the crows nest of the Titanic.
(Illustration found here).
As President Obama prepares for a major speech tonight to a joint session of Congress — a State of the Financial Union, if you will — on the mysterious horror of our economy, he might pull a spin of Wild Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign workhorse slogan that knocked Bush I out of the White House.
This time, however, Obama needs to tell US peoples the truth — the stupid economy is totally fucked and nobody knows how to fix it.
Although Obama is reportedly ready to render a “sober assessment” of the disastrous US economy, he might follow Clinton’s recent remarks that instead of negative talk, he should lighten up a little: “I just want the American people to know that he’s confident that we are gonna get out of this and he feels good about the long run.”
The long run?
American’s confidence in this ‘feel good’ approach sucks:
- The Conference Board’s index declined more than forecast to 25 this month, the lowest level since data began in 1967, from a January reading of 37.4, the New York-based research group said today.
Another report showed the drop in home values accelerated in December.
…
“Just when you think confidence can’t go any lower, the bottom falls out of it, and you can be sure the rest of the economy is not far behind,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, which had the closest forecast at 26.7.
“If consumers’ spending matches their flagging spirits, this recession is going longer and deeper.”
At least, Mr. Obama, point out the iceberg!
Afghan Rabbit Hole
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A lot of verbiage was tossed about last week on President Obama’s approval of 17,000 more US troops for Afghanistan, and even the country’s president declared “We have opened a new page” in the conflict.
One needs, however, to check that page against the book from which it comes.
(Illustration found here).
The problem is just not the resurgent, well-oiled Taliban, but the citizens of Afghanistan.
From the Washington Post this morning:
- The additional 17,000 troops the Obama administration is preparing to send to Afghanistan will face both an aggressive, well-armed Taliban insurgency and an unarmed but equally daunting foe: public opinion.
In more than a dozen interviews across the capital this week, Afghans said that instead of helping to defeat the insurgents and quell the violence that has engulfed their country, more foreign troops will exacerbate the problem.
…
“Bringing in another foreign army is not going to help.
They always come here for their own interests, and they always lose.
Better to let everyone sit down with the elders and find a way for peace,” said Ibrahim Khan, 40, a cargo truck driver from Paktia province.
“People are feeling hopeless and afraid, but nobody knows who the enemy is anymore.”
Yes, indeed — who is the enemy?
And the US doesn’t help matters — always in denial, deflecting the killing of unarmed civilians — as raids take out some insurgents:
- But video footage and photographs obtained by Reuters from the site clearly showed at least one young boy had been killed in the bombing which struck an encampment of nomad tents.
Little was left of the other bodies, except mounds of flesh.
U.S. Brigadier General Michael Ryan travelled to the site of the bombing to lead an inquiry.
Though weapons and ammunition were found, investigators concluded only three of the dead were militants and the other 13 were civilians.
What a horrible mess the US has become involved in and with no real way out.
According to one of the best, Gareth Porter, Obama was first asked by the US military for 30,000 more troops for the Afghan mission, but once he discovered there were no real plans for the GIs, nixed the bigger number.
And there’s an eerie resemblance to another bad-run US war effort — Vietnam.
- What had changed in the nine days between those two statements, according to a White House source, was that Obama had called McKiernan directly and asked how he planned to use the 30,000 troops, but got no coherent answer to the question.
It was after that conversation that Obama withdrew his support for the full request.
The unsatisfactory response from McKiernan had been preceded by another military non-answer to an Obama question.
At his meeting with Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon Jan. 28, Obama asked the Joint Chiefs, “What is the end game?” in Afghanistan, and was told, “Frankly, we don’t have one,” according to a Feb. 4 report by NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski.
…
Both Obama’s decision to agree to just over half of his field commander’s request for additional troops and the broader strategic situation offer striking parallels with the decision by President Lyndon B. Johnson in April 1965 to approve 36,000 out of a 49,000 troop request for Vietnam.
Johnson’s decision, like Obama’s, was made against a background of rapid deterioration in the security situation, worry that the war would soon be lost if more U.S. troops were not deployed, and an unresolved debate over how the troops would be employed in South Vietnam.
Some of Johnson’s advisers still favored a strategy of protecting the key population centers, whereas the field commander, Gen. William Westmoreland, was calling for a more aggressive strategy of seeking out enemy forces.
We all know what happened there!
Read Porter’s entire piece here.
Withdrawal is the only solution, but how long will that decision be put off — we hope it’s not like Johnson’s and there’s another five years of death and destruction ahead.
This rabbit hole has a graveyard waiting at the bottom.
After the Precipice
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A now-no-longer-forgotten war, the ponderous grind-down conflict in Afghanistan is getting some payback time in the press.
Although economic news played up front in the US — President Obama announced Wednesday his homeowners bailout plan, a day after he signed his $787 billion “overall” economic stimulus package — events in Afghanistan are helping nudge that disaster back toward center stage.
(Illustration found here).
Looking at Afghanistan in its current mode, coupled with its historical back-story as the graveyard of empires, the US military operation now nearly seven-and-half-years along carries early-building aspects of another foreign-populated necropolis.
And working without an “end game,” or any overall strategy will quickly increase burial plots.
In fact, a Taliban honcho told CBS he doesn’t understand “why the U.S. relies on figures and the number of troops in a country such as Afghanistan, where the number of foreign invaders has never made any difference, and the winners have always been the freedom fighters.”
This Taliban guy, supposedly a former government minister from the regime that ruled Afghanistan when the US invaded in October 2001, also said the number of “freedom fighters” has doubled since last year to more than 10,000 and the insurgency has changed tactics, moving from rural areas to urban.
He also snarked a deep, scary dig:
- “The history of Afghanistan will never take a full U-turn, and we are not used to being defeated by foreigners.
For a hundred years, Afghanistan has remained a graveyard for foreigners.
There’s no way for it to suddenly become a land of victory for the U.S.
It never can happen, and history won’t be changed in this century either.”
Afghanistan looks, walks and talks like another “q” word — (quagmire).
An Iraqi US troop “surge” may not re-cycle in Afghanistan, a land-locked country of 251,825 square miles with 80 percent of its population located in rural areas, tied together in at least nine major demographic sects, blended into tribes and clans scattered about a huge, magnificent landscape.
Such a military environment requires an “the indirect approach,” which is working “by, with and through” host-nation forces — rather than ’surges’ of U.S. troops.
(Illustration found here).
Although Obama approved 17,000 more troops this week, emphasizing “the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires,” the NATO Commander, US Gen. David McKiernan painted a “tough year” ahead despite the added GIs.
Mckiernan wants as many boots on the ground in country, but even then, as he says, since the southern areas where the Taliban is the strongest has “stalemated” and unlike Iraq, this is no hit-hard-and-get-out-quick operation:
- He said that he could not determine exactly how long the troops would be there, but that the buildup would “need to be sustained for some period of time,” and that he was looking at “the next three to four or five years.”
And the good, rotund general also bucked history:
- General McKiernan, who declared three times during the news conference that “the insurgency will not win in Afghanistan,” said that the failed history of the British and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan should not be a predictor of America’s future in the country.
“There’s always an inclination to relate what we’re doing now with previous nations,” General McKiernan said, adding, “I think that’s a very unhealthy comparison.”
The Soviets had at least 100,000 troops in country for 10 years! (Rotating more than 600,000 through the country).
Talk about unhealthy — The Soviet Armed Forces lost 14,453 personnel, 417 servicemen were missing in action or taken prisoner; the debacle eventually led to the demise of Soviet Russia.
Other than that…
Main problem, the “outsider” complex: US troops face the distrust and anger from the population and the slaughter of civilians has just about lost the average Afghan’s heart and mind.
Last month, Newsweek screamed Obama’s Vietnam, comparing the Southeast Asia mess with the current South Asia mess, concluding there’s “no easy way out.”
And just this week, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) said in a statement released on Tuesday — which received little if no media attention — that maybe more GIs in Afghanistan is not the right plan of action.
According to Raw Story:
- “Sending more US troops made sense in, say, 2006, and it may still make sense today,” he wrote. “The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated badly over the past year, however, despite a larger US and coalition military presence.
“We need to ask: After seven years of war, will more troops help us achieve our strategic goals in Afghanistan?” he continued.
“How many troops would be needed and for how long? Is there a danger that a heavier military footprint will further alienate the population, and, if so, what are the alternatives?
And with the lessons of Iraq in mind will this approach advance our top national security priority, namely defeating Al Qaeda?
“We must target Al Qaeda aggressively, and we cannot allow Afghanistan to be used again as a launching pad for attacks on America,” he added. “It is far from clear, however, that a larger military presence there would advance these goals.”
Obama and the US might be like that coyote who’s ran way, way out over a cliff, and once he realized his fatal error, starts grabbing at nothing but air as he falls way, way down into a far, deep canyon to spatter in a tiny, tiny dot.
Corrupted Culture
Filed Under Media, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Corruption rot spawned from lies.
The entire Iraqi misadventure is a horror-shame of an affair.
From UK’s The Independent on Monday:
- In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US-directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
…
“I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.
The US invaded Iraq without a clue and a plan.
Thus greed took its course — $50 billion gone a-missing, creating a “bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.”
(Illustration found here).
One of the best covering the Middle East, Patrick Cockburn, wrote the Independent story and adds:
- Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown.
One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad’s infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads.
Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later.
Such obvious graft and corruption could only mean some US involvement:
- Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption.
In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armoured cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets.
Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defence Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud.
Investigators with the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) are reportedly looking into the alleged nefarious activities of retired US Col. Anthony B. Bell and Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force.
Bell was in charge of Iraqi reconstruction contracting in 2003 and 2004 while Hirtle was a senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004.
This whole affair stinks, but in a sad, dangerous Elmore Leonard kind of way — dumb-ass, wiseguys getting into big, bad trouble because of greed.
As in the case of grinning, Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun-toting Dale C. Stoffel, a 43-year-old American businessman and arms dealer, who was killed in December 2004.
- Everyone has heard stories of selfless idealists killed in Iraq.
Stoffel was not one of those and probably would not have wanted to be seen that way. He was a self-professed man of action, one who was proudly and openly in Iraq to make a fortune.
Still, he supported the war and the promise of a new Middle East and was a solid Republican, an enthusiastic backer of George W. Bush, and a donor to the president’s campaigns.
Read aspects of Stoffel’s death here and here.
An Islamic insurgent group, however, claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying on their Web site here, “On The 8th of December 2004, God’s punishment took him by surprise on the hands of the sons of Iraq to bring him down from the White House to become a thrown corps on the road.”
Was it a corpse, or maybe a plural form, meaning the entire US?
In the NY Times story last Saturday on the new Iraqi corruption probe:
- Before he was shot on a road north of Baghdad, Mr. Stoffel drew a portrait worthy of a pulp crime novel: tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into pizza boxes and delivered surreptitiously to the American contracting offices in Baghdad, and payoffs made in paper sacks that were scattered in “dead drops” around the Green Zone, the nerve center of the United States government’s presence in Iraq, two senior federal officials said.
Corruption in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion has been amazing.
Is the current investigation part of an inquiry into the famous $12 billion shrink-wrapped $100 bills on pallets gone a-missing episode?
Or the 190,000 US weapons gone a-missing?
On wait, that wasn’t Iraqi “reconstruction” graft, that was military graft — one must go to the sub-genre, yeah, of military reconstruction graft — but corruption and its rot is part of the program.
And just last week, another name arose to signify the age of total lying corruption — R. Allen Stanford, with yet another billion-dollar fraud.
According to Bloomberg:
- Stanford, his investment firm and the bank were sued by the SEC over the sale of $8 billion of the bank certificates.
The SEC accused the banker and his companies of running a “massive, ongoing fraud” by making false claims to investors about investment strategy and returns.
“I can assure you this company is well positioned, with the right products to be successful even in this environment,” Allen Stanford wrote in a letter to clients dated Feb. 11.
Company spokesman Brian Bertsch referred press inquiries to the SEC.
Liar to the end.
A tidal wave of cultural corruption shell-shock.
Blog On
Filed Under Media, Musings | Leave a Comment
Today is here.
Blog on…
Drone Ownward
Filed Under Just Plain War, Orwellian | Leave a Comment
The future is still here — “the first time a combat vehicle has used a laser to shoot down a UAV.”
(Illustration of General Atomics Predator UAV found here).
This morning another report of yet another unmanned aerial vehicle — UAV, or “drone” — attack on a suspected insurgent hideout in Pakistan.
From the New York Times:
- Two missiles fired from American pilotless drones killed up to 32 people, including Arab and Uzbek fighters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, in South Waziristan on Saturday morning, according to a Pakistani intelligence official and local residents.
…
The exact name of the village hit on Saturday is not clear. But according to some locals reached by telephone and the intelligence official, the village is known as Shwangai and is a gathering place and a base camp for Pakistani and foreign fighters loyal to Mr. Mehsud. (Reported leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud).
The village is about 60 miles from the Afghan border.
A local resident said that 25 coffins had been taken from Makeen and dead bodies were still being recovered from the debris hours after the attack.
“The bodies of the dead were charred beyond recognition,” said Khan Zaman, a resident from Makeen reached by telephone.
The big, shocker news, however, came 5,000 miles away from that Pakistani village.
From the same Times story:
- The attack followed the statement in Congress on Friday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the pilotless aircraft take off from a base inside Pakistan.
“As I understand, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” Ms. Feinstein said during a hearing attended by the director of U.S. national intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair.
In his testimony, Admiral Blair said that the drone attacks had achieved their goal.
“Al Qaeda today is less capable and effective than it was a year ago,” he said.
The drone attacks, especially in the last six months, have increased anti-American sentiment in Pakistan to very high levels.
Ms. Feinstein’s acknowledgment that the flights have the tacit support of the Pakistani government is likely to further inflame the protests over the flights. Her statement was prominently covered the Pakistani press Saturday morning.
Since the beginning of 2008, the American drones have launched nearly 30 missile attacks against Al Qaeda and Taliban targets inside the tribal areas, according to a compilation by the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington.
The coldness of modern life.
These drones have been used by the US military since the 1950s, mostly in reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering, but in modern times, UAVs have come in handy once cameras, bomb racks and endurance were added to the machines.
The problem: Where is this unmanned aerial war front in Pakistan headed?
From NPR earlier this month:
- Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international affairs at Boston University, says the U.S. needs to admit it’s opened another front and another war.
“This is a war that is mostly conducted by remote control, unmanned aerial vehicles launching missiles at targets on the ground,” Bacevich says. “But it is a war … that deserves very critical scrutiny by the new administration.”
Bacevich says there’s been very little debate or dialogue about the growing U.S. military offensive in Pakistan — whether in Congress, in the public realm or the UN. For the most part, the aerial attacks on Pakistan’s soil are still seen as an appendage to the Afghan conflict, rather than an independent issue.
…
Some analysts say the problem is the longer the U.S. continues its military action in Pakistan — using Predators — the greater the chances of becoming embroiled in a much broader conflict in Pakistan.
Nawaz, with the Atlantic Council, says militants have already started moving from the remote border region into more built-up areas of Pakistan.
“What would happen when the next drone attack occurs on a city or a town or a village inside the Northwest Frontier province? Or inside central or southern Punjab? What then?” Nawaz asks.
Yesss, what would happen?
And what would happen if insurgents got a hold on one of these?
- Boeing is seeing a glimmer of progress in its work toward fielding laser weapons.
The defense industry giant on Monday said tests of its Laser Avenger system in December marked “the first time a combat vehicle has used a laser to shoot down a UAV,” or unmanned aerial vehicle.
In the testing, the Humvee-mounted Laser Avenger located and tracked three small UAVs in flight over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and knocked one of the drone aircraft out of the sky.
Drone on and upward.
Timing the ‘Shadow Army’
Filed Under War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Wednesday’s seemingly-fearless, intricate attacks in Kabul by a way-over-resurgent Taliban should be very much a sign-post of an eye-opener on the bad road ahead in Afghanistan.
Apparently, a near-identical Mumbai operation with its seemingly random assaults and a kind of scatter-brained detail to its movements — The old, time-tested “shooting as they went” scenario.
Fifty-six mostly bystander/civilians were killed.
(Illustration found here).
These Taliban guys are putting a choke hold on the situation — timing is always crucial, but even more so in any precarious situation, which is now Afghanistan, and the US might be running out of time.
President Obama is reportedly set to increase the US troop level to about 60,000, but the bulk of the main force won’t be deployed until after a strategic review in time for a NATO summit in April.
He still dragging his feet — surge or no surge or surge, surge.
Bill Gates said Tuesday Obama has several options in front of him and most likely will make a decision in the “next few days” about how to handle this horribly deteriorating affair.
Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, told the US Senate Intelligence Committee today that despite all that could be done (and was done for more than seven years), the Taliban and like-groups have “expanded in scope” and the real problem is with the Pakistani border — However, that’s a whole another glob of worms intertwined in the same bubbling bucket of worms.
And this shit don’t help.
From Agence France-Presse:
- Thousands of US weapons, including assault rifles and grenade launchers, may be in Taliban or Al-Qaeda hands in Afghanistan because of lax controls, congressional auditors warned on Thursday.
The Pentagon has failed to track an estimated 87,000 weapons given to Afghan security forces, one-third of the 242,000 shipped by the US government between December 2004 and June 2008, the Government Accountability Office said.
Those attacks were timed for Dick Holbrooke’s appearance in Kabul, a timely reminder from the Taliban on the Afghan twist for the fate of foreigners — an insurgency that will over time whittle an army into unmanageable shreds.
When irrational behavior becomes too sophisticated to grasp, what happens next?
New tactics introduced, hard to find any security:
- Most of Wednesday’s attackers adopted a new look, according to witnesses. Some were clean-shaven and wore Western-style clothes, unlike past attackers, who wore traditional Afghan clothing and sported beards.
…
Assaults in the capital are also becoming more complicated. Wednesday’s offensive involved at least eight insurgents in three different parts of the city, requiring considerable planning and coordination.
And a detailed view:
- Eight Taliban attackers launched a three-pronged assault around 10 a.m. Wednesday…
…
– Five men with assault rifles and hand grenades storm the Justice Ministry, killing two guards. Guards shoot one attacker dead, but the rest enter the ministry and kill 10 employees and one police officer. Security forces end the siege by storming the building and killing the attackers.
– About the same time, a man wearing a suicide vest tries to force his way into the Education Ministry a half mile (one kilometer) away. Ministry guards shoot him dead before he can enter. There are no other casualties.
– Two attackers wearing suicide vests enter a correctional department compound across town. Guards kill one attacker. The other enters the building and blows himself up, killing six police and wounding 29.
…
Security officials say all the assailants were between 20 and 25 years old. Officials detain 21 suspects.
Security forces recover six Kalashnikov assault rifles, two pistols, eight grenade launchers, 10 grenades, 24 gun magazines, 100 bullets, six mobile phones, one vest packed with 14 pounds (6.5 kilograms) of plastic explosives and 4 pounds (2 kilograms) of ball bearings.
Twenty years ago this Sunday — Feb. 15, 1989 — General Boris Gromov walked across Friendship Bridge out of Afghanistan and into what was then Soviet Uzbekistan, bringing to an inglorious end to not only a terrible military blunder, but the USSR itself.
Gromov reiterated an old axiom for Afghanistan at a recent Moscow news conference: He said force will accomplish nothing in Afghanistan, and notes that increasing or decreasing troop strength will only bring a negative result. The general says the best way to deal with Afghans is to reach an agreement with them.
Any other path seems to lead to disaster.
And in the shadows, a blending of Taliban and al-Qaeda, creating another backpedal across Friendship Bridge — the real, real giant of an underlying problem in the Afghan/Pakistan war zone:
- Al Qaeda has reorganized its notorious paramilitary formations, setting the stage for a dramatic come back.
…
The Shadow Army is active primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and in eastern and southern Afghanistan, several US military and intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity. The force is well trained and equipped, and has defeated the Pakistani Army in engagements in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat. In Afghanistan, the Shadow Army has attacked Coalition and Afghan forces throughout the country.
…
“The Shadow Army has been instrumental in the Taliban’s consolidation of power in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province,” a senior US intelligence official told me. “They are also behind the Taliban’s successes in eastern and southern Afghanistan. They are helping to pinch Kabul.”
…
The Shadow Army has a clear-cut military structure, a U.S. military intelligence officer said.
A senior al Qaeda military leader is in command, while experienced officers command the brigades and subordinate battalions and companies.
There are three or four brigades, including the re-formed Brigade 055 and several other Arab brigades. At its peak prior to the U.S. invasion in 2001 the 055 Brigade had an estimated 2,000 soldiers and officers in the ranks.
The rebuilt units consist of Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians, North Africans, Iraqis, as well as former members of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards.
At present, the 055 Brigade has “completely reformed and is surpassing pre-2001 standards,” an official said.
The other brigades are also considered well trained.
What the shit happened?
And what’s Obama to do?
Fight a shadow in a land of shadows with time fleeting away?
News Bytes Dog
Filed Under Media, Musings | Leave a Comment
Today has been what’s most-definitely called a big news-event day, from all things financial — the ongoing stimulus package finally passed Congress, bank CEOs were grilled on Capitol Hill, more fallout came from yesterday’s unveiling of Bank Bailout Two and Bernie Madoff’s old lady snatched $10 million from a brokerage firm the day before the old schemer was arrested — to horror stories from overseas, such as the series of highly-coordinated, audacious strikes by Taliban forces on government offices in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing at least 26, and reports of multiple bomb blasts throughout Baghdad, Iraq, leaving at least 18 dead.
(Illustration found here).
And this evening, the Washington Post reported: Two Huge Satellites Collide Over Siberia!
- The Pentagon and NASA are scrambling to assess the risk to spacecraft and the international space station from hundreds of pieces of debris created in the collision Tuesday of two satellites 491 miles above Siberia.
NASA’s initial estimate is that the space station faces a “very small” but “elevated” risk of being struck.
The situation is unprecedented.
Scraps of spacecraft and other orbital junk have crashed together previously, but this was the first incident involving two intact satellites.
One was an Iridium satellite launched in 1997 and used for the company’s satellite telephone network; the other, a Russian Cosmos satellite launched in 1993, had been non-operational for a decade, NASA and Pentagon officials said.
…
The military can track space debris as small as a baseball.
The U.S. Strategic Command monitors 18,000 distinct pieces of debris, according to Reggie Winchester, spokeswoman for the command. That number will jump by at least 600, the preliminary estimate for the number of pieces of debris from Tuesday’s collision.
Even a very small object packs tremendous kinetic energy at orbital velocities, which are on the order of 17,500 mph.
And another rarity:
- Rescuers dug their way through the remains of houses and businesses on Wednesday after a rare and deadly February tornado ripped through a small Oklahoma town on Tuesday night.
The medical examiner’s office confirmed 8 people were dead, and local authorities said 46 were injured.
…
Tornadoes are rare in February, “at least for this far north and west,” said David Andra, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla.
The last fatalities during a February tornado occurred in 1975, with three deaths, he said.
And what’s been expecting for awhile — An indication this whole, freakin’ financial mess is even worse than straight-talking President Obama admits, that the economy is an ER trauma patient near death:
- (Treasury Secretary Tim) Geithner struck a different tone in his speech.
The patient he diagnosed is nowhere near ready for ambulatory care or physical therapy.
Rather, it’s struggling to breathe without life support.
Worse, it is still in danger of infecting the whole hospital.
The financial sector, pro-cyclical on the way up — easy money begat more easy money — is also pro-cyclical on the way down.
“Instead of catalyzing recovery, the financial system is working against recovery,” he noted.
And a terrible, nasty situation made also even worse:
- A pedestrian was struck by a sport utility vehicle on a street in Corona, Queens, on Wednesday morning, then immediately struck again by a cargo van that dragged the victim 17 miles through a web of city highways and to Coney Island in Brooklyn, the police said.
The pedestrian, apparently a male, was killed.
And now real news from Movietone.
‘Nobody Knows Anything’
Filed Under Musings | Leave a Comment
“When it comes to backs, nobody knows anything.”
– Peter Paul ‘Paulie Walnuts’ Gualtieri, The Sopranos
One of the most-frightful aspects of this extremely-current financial meltdown is its seemingly incoherent complexities, made worse by dumbfounded, clueless financial people: “I don’t, in all candor, understand a lot of it,” conceded Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Northern Trust, a major Chicago-area bank, referring to the Wall Street blow-out/bailout.
Mr. Kasriel is not just another Northern Trust rank-and-file financial specialist, but the bank’s top guy.
And he don’t know shit — Northern Trust snagged $1.5 billion last October in TARP Part One, and apparently still didn’t know after TARP Part Two was unveiled yesterday by the US top economic guy, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, whose grinding performance was of such gloominess the Dow nose-dived 250 points during his odd, awkward financial pitch (dropping 400 points on the day).
(Illustration found here).
Doug Thompson at capitolhillblue this morning:
- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner went before the American public Tuesday to offer up a new bailout plan for banks.
By the time his miserable presentation ended, America saw a need for a bailout plan for the Geithner.
President Barack Obama promised Geithner would deliver a detailed bailout plan that would correct earlier mistakes and move forward.
Geithner’s “plan” wasn’t a plan at all, just a vague reference to what he said would be a plan.
And Geithner’s whining:
- To make matters worse, this guy is trying to convince us that he needs more time to get up to speed, saying we should understand that he has only been on the job since Jan. 20.
Bullshit.
Geithner has been a player in our financial system for years.
You can find his fingerprints all over many of the problems that plague our economy.
He should wear a button that shouts “conspirator!”
Indeed!
A damn-swell reverse, however, from last fall:
- The 47-year-old president of the New York Federal Reserve has been working closely with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on the credit crisis. Wall Street seemed cheered by the news of his selection.
The Dow Jones industrial average jumped nearly 500 points Friday, rising sharply after reports that Geithner would be nominated.
Didn’t I tell you?
This Wall Street/financial meltdown is completely incomprehensible — to nobody, but everybody.
A major current concern with this new financial rescue is ‘lucidity‘ in the details:
- “There’s still a lack of clarity,” Dan McMahon, director of equity trading at Raymond James Financial Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida, said of Geithner’s proposal. “These are smart people and they’re supposed to have it figured out.
We’ve been waiting all week and then he said nothing.”
Clarity is a good take needed for the situation, and so is the word, transparency, which in turn makes us return to Tim Geithner and his immediate-if-not-sooner predecessor, Hank Paulson — Them two plus Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke slap-dashed together the “bank bailout” last September, if we remember that far back — with no such thing as oversight.
This from Paulson’s original proposal:
- Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Although some chipping away of the secrecy clause did occur, the TARP’s IG noted in its report to the US Congress last week, “TARP agreements generally do not require recipients to report or to track internally the use of TARP funds …”
And to muddy material waters even more, Paulson announced in mid November TARP will no longer be used for its original intent of buying troubled mortgage-backed assets, but instead would be re-focused to the “non-bank financial sector,” including credit card and auto loan debt.
The mechanics of such a move is a complete puzzle, as in nobody knows, and apparently Geithner’s showcase event yesterday was just an extension to Paulson’s bullshit.
As all this was going on, more TARPola stories were being heard by high-greed apologists gathered today before the US House Financial Services Committee to try and explain away billions and billions and billions of taxpayer monies.
- “It is abundantly clear that we are here amidst broad public anger at our industry,” said Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief of Goldman Sachs.
“Many people believe — and, in many cases, justifiably so — that Wall Street lost sight of its larger public obligations.”
And why all those huge Wall Street bonuses, Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the committee, asked the bigwigs, does more money mean better work habits?
- Many of the chiefs said they had not used the government money to pay bonuses and many tried to dispel notions that they had been irresponsible in their spending.
“We have never been wasteful,” said John G. Stumpf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo.
Still, Mr. Frank asked, “If you weren’t getting a bonus, what would you not do? Would you take longer lunches or leave early on Wednesday?”
He added, “Why do you need to be bribed to have your interests aligned with the company?”
John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley replied: “We love what we do. If you gave us no bonus, we would still be here.”
Where?
Atop the salary food chain: All of them CEOs except one earned between $600,000 and $1.5 million in “salary” last year — See the listing at Think Progress.
Nobody knows anything about anything.
And Tony Soprano, trying to uncover who amongst his people is an FBI informant, ends up not really knowing — The source of the trouble confused “one black-haired fat fuck” for the other.
Tony Obama should watch his back.