Brain Fodder

Let's Trade

2007-01-27T21:18:00.000Z

It's time for the two opposing teams to trade a player. The Democrats should give Joe Lieberman to the Republicans in exchange for Chuck Hagel. Lieberman has been chowing down on Dubya's dick ever since that piece of shit stole the 2000 election. Hagel has been criticising Dubya, particularly over Iraq, since at least 2005. Recently, Hagel lashed into Senate Republicans who were still backing Bush's handling of Iraq.

Each of these two would fit in better with their opposition than they do their own parties. Better still, if Hagel switched sides he'd not only get strong Democratic Party support (the grassroots hate the Iraq war even if the current potential Democratic presidential candidates try to pussyfoot around the issue), he'd also get support from Republicans who hate what Bush has done to the country. Sure, the Republicans who think Bush is wonderful would never vote for a turncoat, but they wouldn't vote for a Democrat anyway.

Words of Profound Truth in Dubya's SOTU

2007-01-26T16:44:00.000Z

Yes, I know, you do not associate the words "Dubya" and "truth," especially when it comes to the State Of The Union speech. "Dubya" and "truth" go together about as well as "fire-fighting with gasoline," "carnivorous vegetarian," or "square circle." But the fact is that occasionally Dubya does let slip a true statement.

It could be due some vestiges of his psychopathic background breaking their way through his alcohol- and coke-rotted brain. Psychopaths love to let their victims know their plans in advance. It gives the victims time to worry and to dash around trying to do something to ward off the attack (although the warning is never given if the victim truly had a chance of doing anything about it). It enhances the psychopath's feelings of superiority by giving the victim a handicap (although, as I said, the victim still isn't in a position to win). Or it could just be that the many repetitions Unka Dick has to make in order to get Dubya to do what he's told leak out,

We've seen examples in the past. "The job would be a heck of a lot easier if this were a dictatorship. As long as I'm the dictator." Bush is well on his way to becoming a dictator with imperial powers. Dubya declared a "War on Terra." That's not the result of a charming southern accent; his foreign and environmental policies are destroying this planet (which most of us call "Earth" but was known to the Greeks as "Tellus" and to the Romans as "Terra"). And we must never forget this gem: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and so do we."

So what truth did Dubya let slip in the SOTU? This:

The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that's the case, America is still a nation at war.

How true. How very true. Two sentences, one after the other, and both dripping with truth. Not "truthiness" but real, honest-to-goodness truth.

"The evil [and it was deeply evil] that inspired [a very detailed plan which was carried out by minions] and rejoiced [oh, how that evil rejoiced at the prospect of what it would achieve by 9/11] is still [unfortunately] at work in the world [with decreasingly less chance of stopping it as time passes]." What Dubya neglected to mention, although an increasing number of people have come to realize it, is that the evil Dubya is speaking of is the Cheney/Bush maladministration. Those evil fuckers are still at work lying us into war in order to steal other countries' oil and so they can turn the US into a fascist dictatorship (at which point Dubya will find the job a heck of a lot easier).

"As long as that's the case [which it will be, unless we impeach and/or indict these evil fuckers, something we have very little time left to do] America is still a nation at war [of course it is, so that Halliburton can make money on reconstruction contracts, so that the Carlysle Group and other defence contractors can make money resupplying arms and matériel, so that the oil companies can make record profits, so that Cheney can stay in power]."

Read his words again and weep, for those words are the untrammelled truth of his and Cheney's past, present and future plans:

The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that's the case, America is still a nation at war.

DU is to Blame for Gulf War Syndrome

2007-01-07T16:50:00.000Z

[9 Jan 2007: minor typos fixed]

It's been pretty damned obvious that Depleted Uranium (DU) from Bush-the-slightly-smarter's Iraq warwas to blame for Gulf War Syndrome in US military personnel, and for the vast increase in cancer rates and birth defects in Iraq (a factor of 8–12 times higher depending on which type of cancer or birth defect). However, the Bush maladministration often tries to put the blame on various other things. Like the smoke from the burning Kuwaiti oil wells. Like clouds of noxious chemicals supposedly released when Saddam's stockpiles were bombed. Like blaming Gulf War Syndrome (but not the Iraqi birth defects and cancer) on the cocktail of injections against chemical and biological weapons that US troops were given.

A report on birth defects in Afghanistan proves otherwise. Bush-the-slightly-smarter didn't supply the Taleban with chemical weapons like he did Saddam (using Donald Rumsfeld as the envoy for the deal), so they didn't have any significant stockpiles of chemical weapnos. No burning oil wells. Just the same horrific birth defects and cancers. If your stomach is strong enough (there are some very unpleasant pictures of extreme birth defects), take a look at this.

Afghanistan got off lightly compared to Bush-the-slightly-smarter's war where 350 tons of DU were used. We have no idea how much DU Bush-the-fucktard has used since the Pentagon is silent upon the issue except for saying that it had used 2 200 tons in March and April 2003. This is genocide. Quite possibly, since desert storms blow DU-laden dust around the planet, omnicide (the death of all life on the planet).

Three major divisions of Abrahamic religion want the "end times" to come. The Jews want the final battle, when all their enemies will be destroyed, Jahveh will relocate from Heaven to Earth and the Jews will be rewarded by their deity (Jahweh) and live happily ever after on Earth. The Christians want the final battle when they'll be raptured (naked, for the first time in their lives since they hate nudity) to Heaven where they'll have ringside seats watching everyone left behind suffering in great misery before being cast down into Hell to suffer even greater misery and will be rewarded by their three-in-one deity (God/Jebus/Holy Never Seems to Do Much Except Pad the Number) by an eternity of bliss in Heaven. A third group thinks that they will win the final battle and be rewarded by their deity: Satanists.

Bush and Cheney sure aren't Jews. And no true Christian would do half the things they do. That leaves only one option...

European Commission Gets Global Warming Wrong

2007-01-07T03:05:00.000Z

According to this report in the Financial Times, the people in the European Commission analsying global warming are a bunch of fucktards who couldn't find their arses if you gave them a map and they used both hands.

The FT report doesn't say that in so many words, of course. In fact it reports the European Commission's flawed analysis without any critical comment of its own. In short, the European Commission says that global warming is a good thing for Northern Europe:

Fewer in the north would die of cold, crops there would boom and the North Sea coast could become the new Riviera, an analysis to be approved by the European Commission next week shows.

It does say that Southern Europe wouldn't do quite so well, what with droughts and tourists from the North sunning themselves on their own beaches instead of holidaying in the Mediterranean. And it is all a pile of steaming shit.

Britain is about the same latitude as Siberia, which is fucking cold, but Britain and the rest of Northern Europe is a good deal warmer than it otherwise would be because of the Gulf Stream. Global warming may be on the brink of shutting down much of the Gulf Stream.

Of course, it's that horrible science stuff that the Bush maladministration ignores. And even the scientists disagree amongst themselves, with some saying "gonna be bad, gonna be soon" and others saying "the evidence is not conclusive." Don't let the wikipedia article article fool you: none of the scientists is saying it can't happen or it won't happen. The most that the optimistic ones are saying is that they do not believe the current evidence is strong enough to convince them (the data is "noisy" and what appears to be a trend may just be due to noise) and/or that they do not believe the theoretical arguments have been sufficiently-well justified. I doubt you'd find any of them willing to bet a large sum of money on Northern Europe getting warmer, colder or staying the same.

At this stage of the game we don't know enough to be sure what is going to happen in Northern Europe as a result of global warming. Which makes the European Commission's report a pile of steaming shit, because it has not assigned a probability to its conclusions but stated them as a certainty. A certainty that no respectable scientist in the field would back, not even the optimistic ones who think the shutdown to be unlikely.

Of course, the oil companies (particularly Exxon) tell us that global warming isn't happening at all and we can merrily continue burning fossil fuels and dumping additional carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere even though it's making the seas so acidic that shellfish may be wiped out (because the acid will dissolve their shells faster than they can secrete them). To paraphrase Mandy Rice Davies under cross-examination in the Profumo trial, "Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?"

My First Blow Job

2007-01-05T03:29:00.000Z

Yeehah!!!!!!

I dun got my very first blowjob today!!!!

That'll teach Bill Clinton who is the betterer President.

I got a blow job off Unca Dick who is cuddly and sexy but Clinton got his blow job offa a chunky jewish intern. I win!

Damn, but I sure wish I was still a drinker. Because I could do with a few stiff Southern Comforts right now. To take the taste of Unca Dick's jizm out of my mouth.

I Am NOT Stupid

2007-01-05T03:23:00.000Z

Hah! Some folks said I was stoopid. Said I was too dumm to figger out how to lick piss off a nettle. But I showed 'em. I'm the deciderer, and when I decide to lick piss off a nettle, I do it right. That'll show Jebby. He cain't lick piss off a nettle not nohow.

Hey, Unca Dick, what you laughin at?

The Bush MALadministration is NOT stupid

2007-01-05T02:59:00.000Z

I've said it several times before: the Bush maladministration is not stupid. Bush himself may have the intelligence and emotional stability of a retarded six-year-old but Cheney is pulling Dubya's strings (on behalf of Poopy Bush, who is himself a third-level underling in the Rothschild empire of evil).

I've know this for about 5 years. What it took me a lot longer to realize was that most progressives had not realized it. They kept falling for the Rovian/Cheneyan tactic of thinking that the Bush maladminstration was stupid and incompetent. Wake up and smell the fucking jackboots! As long as you people think that Bush and Cheney are stupid and incompetent you'll think that you just have to explain their "mistakes" often enough and slooooooowly enough and eventually they'll see the light.

Their objectives are to turn the US into a fascist dictatorship, steal the world's oil and make their obscenely-rich cronies even richer. If you persist in thinking that they are trying to make America a better place for the majority of the American people then they will appear to be stupid and incompetent. If you understand their true objectives then you know they're very competent (not great, but at least good) and that the only way to stop them is indictment/impeachment.

Some people are finally waking up to this. Heather Wokusch understands this. In her article Return of Bush and the F-Word in 2007, Part II which appeared on her own site and on Buzzflash as this contribution she cites the Rockride Reseach Institute article by Lakoff, Ferguson & Ettlinger which highlights some of the many reasons why this evil crowd are not incompetent.

Please, people, wake up from this shared nightmare. If not for your sakes then for mine.

Why I Realized That Tony Blair Was a Scumbag

2006-12-29T15:38:00.000Z

I realized that Tony Blair was a dishonest scumbag before he starting sucking Dubya's dick.

Which is strange, because until Dubya came along I didn't take much of an interest in UK or US politics. I'd gathered that Blair had shifted the Labour Party rightwards, calling it "New Labour" (next name change will be to "New Socialism" and finally to "National Socialism") so that it was really Conservative-Lite. But that didn't worry much because up until then I'd figured that both the major UK political parties were equally fucked up (in different ways, but fucked up nonetheless), with the exception of the Tories under Thatcher (who was Genghis Khan in drag). But, for reasons I cannot recall, one particular incident of Blair's grabbed my attention: the Millennium Dome.

For my US readers (OK, I'm kidding myself, I don't have any readers) I'll have to go into the background. The Tories introduced the National Lottery (a.k.a. "idiot tax"). The idea was to con idiots into gambling and thereby achieve three objectives:

Give the downtrodden poor the illusion that they had a chance to escape poverty.
Enrich Camelot (the company with the franchise to run the lottery).
Push 50% of the profits into "public works." That is, fund total shite that nobody wanted and that it would be embarrassing to fund directly from tax revenue so that corporate buddies could get rich.

One of those "public works" was the Millennium Dome. An attraction built in London to rival great exhibitions of the past such as the Crystal Palace. Everybody thought it was a bad idea. Nobody wanted it. Even by lottery-funding standards, it was high on the list of unwanted shite (and when you consider some of the white elephants the lottery funded, that is hard to achieve).

Public opinion polls said the idea should be scrapped. Most members of parliament (the equivalent of the US house of representatives) thought the idea should be scrapped. Blair pressed on regardless and the MPs actually went along with it.

Later it was revealed just what a cunt Blair was. Prime Ministers have long used the party whips to blackmail MPs of their own party into submission: the threats range from dropping the MP as an official party candidate at the next election to actual blackmail involving nasty secrets. Margaret Thatcher introduced an innovation in prime-ministerial blackmail known as "collective responsibility."

"Collective responsibility" was the code phrase for a means of blackmailing all of her cabinet into concealing any dissent. The overt meaning was that if the majority of the cabinet reached a decision then all of the cabinet, even the dissenters, had to say they thought it was a wunnerful idea so they all shared the blame if anything went wrong (they were collectively responsible). What it really meant was that if any cabinet member dissented then it would be trumpeted to the press, who would make a meal of it and talk of "party disunity", which would lead to a loss of confidence by voters, which would mean the party lost the next election. It was blackmail pure and simple: "You must all say that you agreed with the decision or I'll take the party down with me. You may or may not retain your seats in the next election but even if you do you'll be in the minority party without any power."

Blair refined the trick. When his cabinet discussed the Millennium Dome not a single one of them wanted it apart from Blair himself. Expanding upon the lesson he learned from Thatcher's example, he basically said that unless they all changed their minds he'd tell the press that his entire cabinet disagreed with him, voter confidence would plummet, and they'd all lose their seats in the next election.

So Blair's cabinet said publicly that they all agreed with what was really a minority (of 1 decision. The cabinet pressured the whips. The whips pressured the MPs. And so the UK government decided not to force the lottery to drop the Millennium Dome.

That's enough to define Blair as a scumbag, all by itself. But the question is why did he stick his neck out like that? The answer is that because an old school chum of his had the contract to construct the Millenium Dome. Blair was a dishonest, lying, thieving scumbag long before he started sucking Dubya's dick.

Of course, the Millennium Dome turned out to be the flop everyone said it would be. A gigantic waste of money.

Gerald Ford - Rot In Hell

2006-12-27T21:56:00.000Z

No matter what good qualities Ford possessed, one single act means he deserves to rot in Hell (not that I believe there is such a thing, but if there is then Ford should rot there).

Predictably, that act is the pardoning of Nixon. But not so much because of Nixon himself (although Nixon richly deserved impeachment). Nor even for the precedent that it set: "we can't impeach a president for fucking up the country, only for fucking an intern).

The reason Ford's pardon of Nixon was such a terrible thing is because of the shadowy figures behind Nixon. The shadowy figures that were the true cancer on the presidency. The shadowy figures who regrouped and infected the Reagan presidency. One of those shadowy figures then came into the open and became President George Bush the Slightly Smarter. The shadowy figures gained confidence and power with each presidency they infected, culminating in the current reign of pResident George Bush the Fucktard.

Had Nixon been impeached there is a chance that some of those shadowy figures would still be in jail cells instead of aiding and abetting the smirking chimp. Kissinger and his ilk would be serving life sentences for war crimes instead of walking free (except in France, where Kissinger has been convicted of war crimes charges).

It is for this that Ford deserves to rot in hell. And if, as Ford claimed, he had America's best interests at heart when he pardoned Nixon, then he'd agree that he deserved it.

Make no mistake, the war on Iraq is no mistake

2006-12-21T13:16:00.000Z

Don't be misled by the title of this post. The war on Iraq is a war crime. It's a disaster for the vast majority of US citizens. It's a fucking disaster for everyone in Iraq. It's probably going to turn into a disaster for the whole world. But it's not a mistake.

Why do I say it's not a mistake? Because it was planned by Cheney and Wolfowitz back in 1992. It's not the result of faulty intelligence. It's not the result of an error of judgement. It's not the result of miscommunication ("You invaded Iraq? I asked you to get me an order of fries. You must have misheard me.")

And why do I point out what ought, if the mainstream media weren't in Cheney's pocket, to be obvious? Because it means that, as usual, the forces of sanity are fighting the wrong battles. You will never persuade Bush and Cheney that the war is a mistake because for them it wasn't. You will never persuade Bush and Cheney that it's turned into a fucking disaster because it's all going exactly how they want it to. You will never persuade Bush and Cheney to pull out and save American lives because they don't give a flying fuck for the lives of US soldiers. As Rumsfeld said, the troops are "fungible" (meaning if one wears out or breaks you can just requisition another one).

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until people wake up: the Bush administration is not stupid. Bush might have the knowledge, intelligence and emotional stability of a retarded five-year-old with ADHD, but Cheney is running the show, aided and abetted by people like Rove and the rest of the neocons. And everything is going exactly according to their plans.

Where almost everyone makes a gigantic mistake is in assuming that the Bush maladministration has the good of the American people as its primary objective. Get real. Of course they don't. Their objectives are:

Turn the US into a fascist dictatorship with them in control.
Make their obscenely rich buddies and backers obscenely richer.
Steal the world's oil.

If you work on the assumption that Bush and Cheney are trying to do what's best for America you have to conlude that they're stupid, incompetent fucktards; if you oppose them based on that assumption you'll never be rid of them. That's what they want you to do, because you're falling for the feint and leaving yourself wide open to the real thrust of their attack.

Look at just two of their past tricks.

Stole the 2000 election using many different tactics, including voter intimidation. The tame press focused on "butterfly ballots" and "hanging chads," which meant the the trojan horse of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) went through unopposed. A trojan horse because it caused electronic voting machines (programmed by corrupt Bush supporters) to be used almost universally.
Leaked the true details of Bush being AWOL from TANG. All the liberals gloated when Dan Rather broadcast them: at last the true nature of Bush was revealed and the voters would turn away from him. Then it came to light that the documents used by Rather might be fakes. That was enough to turn the whole issue into a discussion not of Bush's cowardice but of Rather's competence, thereby defusing the whole situation.

So let's be clear about Iraq. It was planned back in 1992. Then-Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney asked then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz to draft a strategy report. Shorn of military and political euphemisms, the report basically said that the US should invade Iraq to steal its oil, then use Iraq as a forward base to invade all the surrounding oil-rich countries so their oil can be stolen too. The war on Iraq was no mistake.

Under international law, the US must leave Iraq as soon as the country is stabilized. Under international law, the US cannot leave Iraq until the country is stabiliized. Cheney wants to stay in Iraq until not only is its oil sucked dry but the oil of the surrounding countries is sucked dry. Chaos in Iraq suit's Cheney's plans. It is no mistake.

There is a toll in life, of course, but Iraqis are "sand niggers" and don't count to the racist GOP. Nor do the lives of US troops because none of them are the relatives of rich and powerful Republicans. Nor is there any danger of running out of military personnel, even without a draft: Bush has flushed the US economy down the shitter so fast and so hard that there was a sonic boom at the sewerage works. For a lot of poor, hungry people the only hope of employment is in the military.

Before the war the oil companies all stated that they opposed the war because it was likely to disrupt oil production and therefore be bad for business. Oil production was disrupted. Prices went up. In the years since this illegal war started, all the oil companies have reported record profits. Of course, it's no surprise that the oil companies lied back then: they're such liars that they refused to take an oath when testifying to the Senate (and were later shown to have—surprise—lied to the Senate).

Bush and Cheney really, really want the power to torture Iraqis. Not because it gains them usable information (it doesn't and they wouldn't use the information if it did). All that torture does is inflame the Iraqis and the entire Islamic world. Which is exactly what Cheney wants. Remember, the US is not allowed by international law to leave Iraq while it is in chaos, and Cheney doesn't want to leave Iraq. No mistake there, and the "leaking" of the Abu G'hraib photos was probably deliberate.

Inflaming the Islamic world is an added bonus because most of the Islamic world just happens to sit on vast reserves of oil. It would not be surprising if other Islamic countries perpetrated terrorist attacks on US soil (or the attack was a domestic creation that was attributed to Iran or Syria or Libya or Nigeria). No mistake there.

There are fourteen permanent military bases (except they're no longer called "permanent" because that word caused too many ripples) in Iraq. Bases which can be used as staging posts to invade surrounding oil-rich countries. The US is constructing its largest embassy in the world there. Far, far larger than it need be if it's to be purely an embassy (Iraq is not the largest country by area or population, nor does it have the largest number of civilian US visitors). But it is of an appropriate size if it is to be used as a regional administrative HQ for the US's newly-acquired (by invasion) oil serfdoms.

Iraq is all going exactly to the plans drawn up by Cheney and Wolfowitz in 1992. See the excellent PNAC Primer for the sordid details. PNAC, the Project for a New American Century is a neocon thinktank with a membership that is comprised of key figures in the Bush administration and those who exert significant influence upon it: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, JEB Bush, etc.

In the PNAC Primer you'll also see that PNAC issued a policy document in 2000 calling for (again, I'll translate the euphemisms) the transformation of the US military into a force of marauding pillagers who'd go around stealing the world's resources (primarily oil). It notes that:

[...] the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.

You might recall that because of the similarities (attack without warning on US soil, around 3,000 casualties) 9/11 was frequently labelled "a second Pearl Harbor" and "a new Pearl Harbor."

Imagine that! Because of the Bush Maladministration's seeming incompetence, Cheney gets his wet dream of a decade turned into a reality. It couldn't have worked out any better for him had he planned it all himself.

So if you persist in thinking of this bunch of evil bastards as incompetent and stupid then the result of your opposition to them will be that one day you'll wake up to find their jackboots kicking your teeth down your throat. We don't stand a chance of fixing things if people persist in thinking that the war in Iraq is a dreadful mistake rather than a coldly cynical, evil action.

BTW, don't congratulate yourselves that the Dems took control of Congress. Liebold machines, voter intimidation and the like mean that Cheney could have retained control if he wanted to. The conclusion is that he didn't need to. I can think of the following possiblities as to why he might not feel such a need:

The public isn't too smart, so when Iraq is still a fucking mess in 2008 they'll blame the Democrats.
The illegal NSA wiretapping of Democrat congresscritters has turned up enough blackmail material that Cheney can still get Congress to do whatever he wants. This illusion of cross-party support is something most dictatorships like to foist upon the world.
Imposition of martial law in response to another horrific terrorist attack on US soil effectively makes Bush resident-for-life.

Take your pick, or come up with an alternative. Because you can bet this bunch of evil fuckers will not give up power without a struggle, and they could have stolen the mid-terms as easily as they stole the last two presidential elections.

Just remember that they're not stupid or incompetent, they're fucking evil and we have a small chance of foiling their plans. Fall for the "Bush makes yet another mistake in calling for a surge" headlines and we're all fucked.

That's Entertainment

2006-03-14T23:25:00.000Z

Oh man, that is so fucking funny. Cracks me up every fucking time I see it. That's the funniest part of the whole fucking video! There's nobody in the entire fucking world who could watch that and not piss themselves laughing. Probably shit themselves too, it's that fucking funny. It's fucking hilarious.

General Pace! You're not laughing as hard as I am. And you're not laughing as hard at this bit as you were earlier. Let me tell you here and now that the pyramid of naked sand niggers and Lyndie England pointing at them is far funnier than the Iraqi being sodomized with a light-stick that you seemed to find so funny. That's not just my opinion, that is my direct order as Secretary of Defense and as your superior. You will find the human pyramid the funniest part of the entire fucking video or I'll do to you what I did to Shinseki. Capiche?

The Meaning of "Is"

2006-03-05T00:46:00.000Z

Once upon a time, a popular and competent President was taken to task by Republicans for attempting to evade full disclosure by a careful selection and parsing of the words he used: the famous "it depends what the meaning of 'is' is." I believe that Bush's handlers parse the speeches they write for im in a similar manner before attempting to beat them into his moronic head with a baseball bat.

Bush said: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." and is now being pilloried [link is to WaHoPo article, registration required but is free and you can give a fake e-mail address to avoid spam] (and he damned well should be pilloried, if not hanged) because of a tape that surfaced showing that many of his minions did anticipate a breach of the levees. But it all depends what the meaning of "anticipate" is...

Check out this dictionary entry for anticipate.

Meaning 1: To feel or realize beforehand; foresee: hadn't anticipated the crowds at the zoo.

It is quite clear from the tape that his minions had anticipated the breach of the levees in this sense.

Meaning 3: To deal with beforehand; act so as to mitigate, nullify, or prevent: anticipated the storm by boarding up the windows.

It is quite clear from what transpired that nobody in the higher levels of the administration anticipated the breach of the levees in this sense.

So there we have it. A lot of people, Bush included, anticipated [foresaw] the breach of the leveees but nobody anticipated [mitigated, nullified, or prevented] the breach of the levees.

Bush told the literal truth. And so did Clinton. Nobody died when Clinton used English carefully in an attempt to cover up getting a BJ and spewing his jizm over a blue dress, but they impeached him anyway. Hundreds died when Bush decided he didn't give a shit about poor blacks in New Orleans...

Let Me Eat Cake!

2006-03-02T19:05:00.000Z

And so the real truth behind Katrina has come out [link requires New York Times registration but it's free to register]. Many of us already suspected it based on what we knew of Bush's past behaviour. In fact many of us were damned certain of it because Bush is consistently dishonest, crooked and looks after nobody but number one. But now the videos have surfaced and not even the shit-for-brains Bush supporters can defend their chimpanzee. If the Democrats don't have the intelligence and the balls to turn this into a major issue then you can write off the United States.

See this timeline for the full gory details. Highlights of the chimpanzee's inadequacy follow:

August 28th: Bush was warned that Katrina would be a disaster by the National Hurricane Center Director and did absolutely fucking nothing.

August 29th: Bush had a photo op with John McCain and ate some of McCain's birthday cake.

August 30th: Katrina wrecked New Orleans. Bush partied on by playing guitar with country singer Mark Willis.

September 1st: Bush LIED and said "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

September 2nd: Bush finally got off his arse and did something related to hurricane Katrina. That's right, he flew overhead on Air Force One for another fucking photo op.

Actual useful help came far later, and was bungled, and is still being bungled. But, of course, Halliburton is making out like bandits with no-bid reconstruction projects.

As a side-note, if Brownie's story is true (and who can believe anything said by anyone in the Bush administration?), despite being an idiot who got fired from his last job for incompetence, he actually showed far more leadership than Bush. He claims that he told his subordinates to do whatever was necessary, to "bend the rules" if they had to, and he'd take the blame if anybody complained. Yeah, he'd expect that as long as the rule-bending was for justifiable reasons he'd get away with it. Yeah, he'd expect that minor rule-breaking would be ignored even if it were unjustifiable. Yeah, he'd expect that even major rule-breaking that was unjustifiable would be glossed over by a President greatful for pulling his stones out of the fire provided the overall result were satisfactory. But he'd also know that if things went drastically wrong then he'd have to take the blame. And he might also suspect that he'd be made the scapegoat for just about anything if doing so would protect Bush. Nevertheless, if his tale is true, he showed true leadership by shielding his subordinates at risk to himself and by risking his career (and even liberty) in order to expedite matters.

If the Democrats cannot take advantage of all that they should be taken out and shot. Seriously. Bush has committed far worse crimes, and if left in power will commit even more (and possibly even worse still) crimes, but this is enough to destroy him (if the Democrats can be bothered). I'm no media type, but how about this:

The scene is a royal palace in France. A courtier approaches Marie Antoinette and says: "Your majesty, there is a bread shortage. The poor are starving." Antoinette replies "Let them eat cake."

The scene is Bush and McCain at McCain's birthday celebration. An actor imitates McCain's voice and says "Your majesty, your courtiers warned you yesterday that Hurrican Katrina would destroy New Orleans and today it has come to pass just as they predicted." An actor replies in Bush's voice "Let me eat cake."

The scene is an aerial shot of a flooded New Orleans with the cheery caption "Welcome to Lake Bush." A voice-over says "Deluded and out of touch as Marie Antoinette was, at least she wanted the commoners to have some cake rather than eat it all herself."

Yes, I know, Antoinette never actually said "Let them eat cake," and actually showed some degree of concern for her subjects. Which is more than Bush has ever done. But most people think she did, and that's what matters when getting the message across.

Bush Admits...

2006-02-25T18:08:00.000Z

Today pResident George Wanker Bush admitted to ordering the bombing of Samarra's Askariya Shrine, also known as the "Golden Mosque" and the "Shrine of the Tenth and Eleventh Imams," but claimed "It wuz an accident."

Bush went on to explain, in his characteristic mangled English, that he wanted to destroy "nookular" facilities in Iran, but got Iran and Iraq confused. "After all," he said, "there's only one letter difference between them." He continued "Not only that, them letters is only five letters apart, so they's real easy to get confused." as though that statement proved anything other than his innumeracy.

When asked by a reporter how even the Pentagon could confuse a mosque with a nuclear facility, Bush showed this slide of Israel's Dimona nuclear facility and said that they look so alike that is was no wonder that the Pentagon thought it was a "nookular" facility. Bush declined to answer further questions saying that he had a busy day ahead of him sorting through the costumes in his "dress-up box."

Later, President of Vice "Dead-eye" Dick Cheney stated: "This proves that the administration was right all along in saying that Saddam Hussein had, in fact, reconstituted his nuclear weapons program. Covering the dome of the nuclear facility with gold-colored aluminum foil and disguising the chimney as a minaret was his way of concealing it. Fortunately, CIA intelligence officers that we have yet to leak the identities of for the crime of exposing our lies saw through this deception. We will not hesitate to destroy any other nuclear facilities in Iraq or Iran that are similarly camouflaged." Cheney is, of course, a master of seeing through disguises having recently identified a quail cunningly disguised as a 78-year-old Texan lawyer.

Condi Lies 'R' Us blamed the mistake over the Golden Mosque upon Hugo Chavez, although did not explain further.

Osama the Tool

2006-01-19T23:54:00.000Z

Once upon a time, Osama bin Laden was a tool of the CIA dirty tricks department, funded (secretly) by the US government and by the Saudi royal family.

The CIA paid him to go to Afghanistan and fight the Soviet invaders. The plan was to turn Afghanistan into Russia's equivalent of Vietnam: a war they could not win and which would drain their treasury and self-esteem. And it worked. Supposedly, Osama is no longer a paid tool of the CIA. Quite why the Saudi royal family contributed to Osama when he was fighting the Soviets (and continue to fund him to this day) has never been satisfactorily explained by the pundits.

The legitimacy of the House of Saud's claim to the kingdom relies entirely upon the backing of the Wahabi sect of Islam (the founder of that sect and the first King Saud relied upon each other to give each other legitimacy). The only problem is that the House of Saud is composed of apostate playboys who pretend to be faithful Muslims in public and as infidels in private, and the Wahabi sect know it. So there is a popular movement amongst the Wahabis to overthrow the House of Saud and replace it with somebody more to their liking. The pundits claim that the House of Saud funds Osama (by donations to charities they know damned well are a front for Osama) so that he'll go off and kill other people instead of them. I have never bought that theory. If Osama is a devout Wahabi then he should view those bribes as a big insult and be even more determined to overthrow the House of Saud. Instead this religious fundamentalist accepts the bribe (we're talking Islamic fundamentalist, not the corrupt Falwells and Robertsons of Christian fundamentalist).

Could it be that Osama, just like the rest of his extended family (the second-most wealthy and powerful family in Saudi Arabia), actually be supporting the House of Saud? By going off to fight the Russians in Afghanistan he attracted all the hothead Wahabi Saudis who would otherwise have been thinking about how to overthrow the House of Saud. Osama's actions have actually reduced the risks faced by the House of Saud.

Bush-the-slightly-smarter fooled Saddam into war with Kuwait and lied about Iraqi troops massing on the Saudi border. As a result of which, US forces were stationed in Saudi Arabia (ostensibly to defend it from Iraq, but quite possibly to defend the House of Saud from rebellion). Osama said and did little about that at the time. Nothing major, just enough to convince his recruits that he wasn't ignoring it.

Bush-the-fuckwit came along, having been sold upon Cheney's vision of invading Iraq to steal its oil. The problem was that they needed an excuse. Conveniently for them, up popped Osama with 9-11 to give them that excuse. Was Osama still a CIA tool?

Osama also demanded that Bush pull US forces out of Saudi Arabia and "Dead or Alive" Bush meekly accepted Osama's bidding without a complaint. Could it be that the presence of US troops was making the real Wahabis unhappy and so it was expedient to get them out? That might have happened anyway if a large troop force in Iraq is sufficient to allow some to go into Saudi Arabia at a moment's notice to protect the royal family. But revolutionary coups can happen very quickly. So it is more likely a compromise worked out between the Sauds and the US: move the troops out of Saudi Arabia so the Wahabis calm down, but keep them close enough that the Wahabis would be worried about retaliation. A compromise that is probably the best the US and the Sauds could hope for, and one which Osama just happened to demand.

Every so often, when Bush's popularity was flagging, up popped an Osama video or audio tape, or an Osama press statement. How convenient.

And now it is obvious that Cheney's dream of invading Iraq to steal its oil has gone horribly wrong, now even the mainstream media are demanding the US pulls out of Iraq, Bush is desperately looking for some way of stopping his popularity ratings plummeting. Guess what? Osama just popped up again and offered a permanent truce with honour if the US pulls its troops out.

2 + 2 = 9-11.

The Essence of Religion

2006-01-19T21:26:00.000Z

What is the essence of religions

You might consider the answer to be "God" (or "a unique, all-powerful God with no equals or superiors," if you were feeling pedantic and were describing a monotheistic religion).

You might consider the answer to be "faith," where faith is defined as the belief in something despite lack of evidence or even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Aside:

Some might dispute that definition of faith, although it is essentially how faith was defined by the fathers of the early Christian church.

You do not need faith to believe in observable facts. For instance, you believe that you are reading this post on a computer monitor; you do not need faith in order to believe that.

Nor do you need faith to believe something that you have previously observed and have reason to believe still exists. When I last visited the toilet I observed that the bowl was undamaged (and needed cleaning); in the absence of the sounds of an explosion coming from the direction of the toilet I have every reason to believe that the bowl is still undamaged (and in the absense of the sounds of anyone else in my home I have every reason to believe it still needs cleaning).

You need faith to believe in something for which there is no evidence. Like God, angels, the tooth fairy, the easter bunny, etc.

Even more so, you need faith to believe in something which is contradicted by the evidence. It is said by religious people that God sometimes answers prayers. They cite as evidence the fact that people with cancer undergo remissions after they have prayed (but usually make no mention of the fact that the person was also undergoing medical treatment for the cancer). They cite even more enthusiastically cancers which go into spontaneous remission (with no medical treatment) after prayer, however it was known hundreds of years ago that some cancers go into remission if a person suffers an infectious disease (this is a promising form of treatment that became neglected once pharmaceutical companies grew large enough to suppress it). However, no matter how hard and how often they pray, God has never healed any amputees. You therefore need faith to believe that God heals people who pray, and faith to ignore the fact that God apparently hates amputees.

To put it bluntly, faith is believing the unbelievable. And religious people do this because they have been brainwashed into believing that they must believe in God and Heaven or else they will face eternal punishment in Hell (which they are also brainwashed into believing). And what is such brainwashing also known as? Thought control.

And there you have it. The very essence of religion is thought control. Without years of brainwashing as impressionable children, most adults would no more believe in God and Heaven than they would in Santa Claus. Yet, as children, they saw actual evidence for the existence of Santa. The reason they no longer believe in Santa is that past a certain age their parents revealed the truth and stopped brainwashing them. Religions never stop brainwashing their faithful because they cannot afford to lose people from their congregation nor to lose pennies from the collecting plate. Without constant reinforcement, people would start to wonder if what they've been brainwashed into believing is a crock of shit.

Once you realize that the essence of religion is thought control, you understand that religions don't have to have a God. In fact there are at least three main categories of religion, which differ in when the bulk of their rewards are supposed to appear:

God-based religions. Although you may get immediate rewards (like being healed if you pray, except it's nothing more than coincidence), the real reward comes after you die. Since nobody ever comes back from years of being dead to say how good Heaven is (or how bad Hell is) the faithful believe in the scam. You do the church's bidding, and contribute to its coffers, in order that you will go to Heaven. You'll never know it's a scam because you'd have to be dead to benefit and once you're dead you cease to exist.
Tyrannies such as Communism. The rewards here may come in your lifetime (if the next 5-year-plan goes as promised) but if not then you are engaged in a heroic struggle so that your children will benefit. You do the regime's bidding in order that your children will, perhaps not in your lifetime, benefit. Again, you'll be dead before you learn that it's a scam and that your children will be no better off (and possibly worse off) than you were.
Psychiatry. The reward is meant to appear in your own lifetime. But psychotherapy is never-ending (at least if you're rich and paying for it). The illusion of reward is always there, you just have to work a bit harder at it. Of course, for the recalcitrant cases there is electro-shock treatment, mind-numbing pharmaceuticals and lobotomy to reduce them to drooling idiots capable only of uttering the divine mantra of psychotherapy: "Me happy. Psychiatrists good!"

Thought control, necessary to make you believe the unbelievable. Rational people of the world unite and throw down your bibles and communist manifestos: you have nothing to lose but your gullibility.

Oh, and cancel your psychiatrist appointment too: a statistical study showed that the same percentage of people recovered from mental health problems whether they had psychiatric treatment or not. One possibility is that all those who recovered with psychiatric treatment would also have recovered without it, therefore psychiatric treatment is unnecessary except for the financial benefit of psychiatrists. The other possibility is the psychiatry managed to help some of those who would not have recovered without treatment but also damaged an equal percentage who would have recovered without psychiatric treatment. Either way, psychotherapy is yet another religion the world is better off without.

Pat Robertson Fucks Up Again

2006-01-13T20:40:00.000Z

Well, well, well. Talebangelical Pat Robertson has been forced to eat crow yet again. Any sane person would have learned by now not to make moronic remarks, but Robertson is far from rationality. Look at just a few of his past idiocies:

After 9-11, Robertson and Falwell immediately stated that God had allowed it to happen because of all the adultery, homosexuality and all the other behaviours inimical to the Talebangelical creed that were taking place in the US.

After national outrage, Robertson and Falwell were forced to retract those comments and apologize.
Robertson called for Hugo Chavez to be assassinated by the US.

After national outrage, Robertson lied by claiming he had been misquoted and had said no such thing.

After recordings of Robertson calling for Chavez to be assassinated had been widely disseminated, Robertson made some feeble excuse about his earlier lie and apologized.
After a newly-elected Dover School Board overturned its predecessor's intention to teach "Intelligent Design," Robertson said that Dover could no longer rely upon God's favour and deserved every misfortune that befell it because Dover had "rejected God."

It was then pointed out (though not as widely as it should have been) that "Intelligent Design" was a very shoddy attempt at rebadging "Creationism" in an attempt to sneak religion into the classroom and that the very last thing its adherents wanted was for the courts to get the idea that it really was Creationism under a new name. Robertson's comment that Dover had rejected God made it quite clear that Robertson believes "Intelligent Design" is a way of sneaking God into the classroom.

Own goal, Robertson...

Robertson's latest own-goal is as moronic as ever (perhaps more so than usual). Like all the Talebangelicals, Robertson is looking forward to the end-times coming. Like all the Talebangelicals, Robertson believes that the end-times cannot come until all the Jews of the world have relocated to Israel. Like all the Talebangelicals, Robertson is a strong supporter of Israel and is 100% behind Israel torturing and killing Palestinians, and illegally annexing their land, in order to drive the Palestinians out of Israel so that the "master race" are the only inhabitants (the historical allusion I used is deliberate, because the parallels are so strong).

So when Sharon decided to pull some settlers out of some parts of Palestinian lands that Israel has illegally occupied, Robertson went apeshit. It didn't matter to Robertson that Sharon was giving up some annexed land as a tactic to gain control of Jerusalem (which is far more eschatologically important). So when Sharon suffered a stroke, Robertson naturally claimed it was the work of God because God wants Israel to be occupied by Jews and nobody else:

God considers this land to be his, You read the Bible and he says 'This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No, this is mine.'

That's unambiguous: according to Robertson, parts of Israel must not be carved off and given to non-Jews. The only problem is that Robertson was part of a group who wanted to build a "Christian Heritage Complex" (no doubt one that celebrates Christ's love of golf by incorporating an 18-hole course) in Israel. Which would require carving up part of Israel and letting the Talebangelicals use it. Of course, the Christian Heritage Complex would pay rent, so they weren't exactly being given it, so Robertson wasn't being entirely hypocritical.

Israel, of course, reacted predictably to Robertson and told him to fuck off. Robertson, of course, reacted predictably by once again apologizing for being a complete dickhead.

Now here's what puzzles me. Robertson (like Dubya) claims that God speaks to him all the time and tells him what to do and what to say. And yet Robertson (like Dubya) repeatedly fucks up. How can this be? I can think of several possible explanations (which Robertson would dispute and say were completely wrong):

Robertson does not believe in the Bible and God does not speak to Robertson. Robertson is a con-man preying on the poor and disadvantaged by telling them that only if they save money by going hungry and wearing patched clothes and send that money to Robertson will they go to Heaven. Robertson then spends the money on mansions, cars, private aircraft, and the very best food.
Robertson believes the crap he spouts but either there is no God or God chooses not to speak with a buffoon like Robertson. The voice Robertson hears in his head is not God but a hallucination.
Robertson believes the crap he spouts but whenever he talks to God he's dialling the wrong number. Instead of God giving Robertson advice, it's Satan.

However, there is also an explanation that accepts that Robertson sincerely believes the crap he spouts, and that he is talking with God rather than Satan, yet still he gets bad advice. The explanation is that God thinks Robertson desperately needs to gain some humility. God is deliberately feeding Robertson advice that will make Robertson look dumber than a box of rocks lying in a pile of shit in the hope that one day Robertson will gain a little humility.

If teaching Robertson a lesson in humility is why God is putting such nonsense into Robertson's mouth, it doesn't seem to be working. Perhaps that is also why God appears to have cursed Robertson with constipation. Certainly, if Robertson were constipated it would explain why he is so full of shit.

Maybe God has gone a step further than simple constipation and cursed Robertson with hæmorrhoids (which make constipation even worse and far more painful). It sure looks that way. And it make sense too, because the last people God cursed with hæmorrhoids were the Philistines (now called Palestinians) for stealing the Ark of the Covenant. And just as God (in Robertson's insane opinion) punished Sharon for giving Israeli land to the Palestinians, it is only fair that God punish Robertson - in the same way that he did the Philistines (as the Palestinians used to be known) - by giving him constipation and hæmorrhoids.

BTW, it is well worth reading this account of just how God punished the Philistines. The Biblical account in Samuel I is a little difficult to follow (especially as the ~~Babble~~ Bible chose to Bowdlerize matters by referring to hæmorrhoids as "emerods"), whereas the retelling I have linked to explains things in a more comprehensible (and hilarious) fashion. Read how God kills the Philistines and then smites them with hæmorrhoids (gives an entirely new meaning to "grapes of wrath"). Read how the dead Philistines decide to return the Ark along with five golden statues of mice and five golden statues of their hæmorrhoids in the hope that God will stop punishing them (no, I'm not making this up, it's in the ~~Babble~~ Bible).

Robertson and the Talebangelicals are far more interested in Old Testament rules and punishments than New Testament rules, even though as (nominal) Christians the New Testament should take precedence and the Old Testament should be examined merely for historical interest in the old requirements that were superceded once Jesus got nailed to a cross. So it's only fitting that Robertson be cursed with constipation and emerods. And, since Robertson has conned so much money out of the gullible, he'll certainly be able to buy enough gold to make many statues of mice and hæmorrhoids with which to buy off God's wrath.

More Microsoft Security Holes

2006-01-04T20:11:00.000Z

There once was a time, all of five years ago, when I thought Microsoft was the biggest threat to this planet. Then Dubya stole an election. Even so, Microsoft is working hard to compete for the top spot.

I've long known that Microsoft products were a steaming pile of shit full of security holes. I've long known that Microsoft products have more holes than swiss cheese. I've long known that Microsoft has never come up with an original idea other than in marketing and steals technology if it can and buys technology if it must. Most Microsoft "enhancements" to Internet Standards are deliberate attempts to lock out competing operating systems and products. I've frequently seen Microsoft deliberately modify its products and operating systems to lock out competitors.

I admit to being truly scared by Microsoft on-line updates. They can be used to apply security patches (although those patches frequently do not fix everything they should because if they did it would break Microsoft's "enhancements" to Internet Standards and stop their own browser from being able to look at "enhanced" web pages served up by their own web server). But those updates can be used to do so much more. Like upgrading Microsoft Tord (pronounced to rhyme with "word," which is how Microsoft spell the name of the product) so that it can no longer read its older file formats (which competitors had reverse-engineered so that people using Linux could create documents readable by Tord, until the "update"). Like updating Windows and Windows Media Player to lock out Real Player (by re-jigging a system call Real Player relied on). Like scouring your hard drive to find out which Microsoft products you may have installed illegally (and there's nothing to stop them getting all your private data if they wish).

For a more comprehensive exposition of Microsoft's flaws, take a look here. You can find more nuggets of Microsoft's fool's gold (dog turds wrapped in gold-coloured aluminium foil and sold as 24 karat gold) here (see the links under the "Microsoft" heading).

Anyway, Microsoft have done it yet again. Another security hole. One which has apparently been waiting to be found since Windows98. This article states that Microsoft has released a temporary patch which is not completely effective. Microsoft themselves say that the problem affects Windows XP (SP1 and SP2) and Windows 2003 server; that various anti-virus products give complete protection; that Windows OneCare Users who see a "green" status are completely safe. Microsoft lies.

See this page (it is linked to from the "World+dog scrambles to fight Windows flaw" page I linked to above) for more truthful details. Read between the lines and you'll see that the loophole also exists on W2K and Windows/ME and probably also exists on Windows98 but that so far exploits have only been seen in the wild for XP and 2003 server. That page also makes clear that there are many ways to get infected, not just from rogue web sites (as Microsoft claims). It also has a link to an unofficial patch that does fix the problem. Oh, and just to hammer the point home, the same source recently released this stating that this bug is now being exploited by a worm spread by MSN Messenger (oh, the irony).

To summarize:

There's a fucking big security hole in Windows that will let people rape your computer.
The Microsoft temporary patch does not completely fix the problem.
Microsoft lies about the severity of the issue.
The Microsoft official patch, due on the 10th, may fix the issue if, and only if, it doesn't mean some of their "enhanced" web pages will break. I'm serious here. There was a previous security hole about a year ago that Microsoft refused to fix completely because it would break some of the proprietary web technology they use to try to lock out competing web browsers and web servers.
Microsoft products are a pile of steaming shit.
Microsoft are cunts.

In the meantime, I am thankful that I use Linux. Far fewer security holes. More efficient so it runs faster. More reliable (never crashes). Has features (such as disk journalling) that Microsoft charge extra for. Oh, and it's free. Yes, free. You can pay for it if you want all the manuals and a good deal of hand-holding, or you can download the ISOs of one of the many competing Linux distributions, burn them to CD, and install it for free.

de Ford's Law of Abusable Legislation

2006-01-02T18:56:00.000Z

What do I mean by "abusable legislation?"

First of all, I use the term "legislation" in its broadest sense. It may be actual legislation initiated and passed by Congress. It may be actual legislation requested by the President and passed by Congress. It may be an executive order from the President. It is something which has an effect upon the way in which government is carried out and/or the way government and/or the legal system interacts with the people.

By "abusable" legislation, I mean legislation that may be used in ways for which it was not believed to be intended. That is to say, the purpose of the legislation was sold to Congress and/or the public as accomplishing legitimate objective A and no other objective but can, in fact, also be used for illegitimate objective B. Objective B is often slightly related to objective A; more often objective B is simply objective A carried to unfair and unjust extremes. If you're lucky, you may have a Constitution and a Supreme court that will rule objective B unconstitutional, but you probably won't be that lucky.

As an example of abusable legislation, take the misnamed USA PATRIOT Act. It was sold to Congress (who were not given time to read its many hundreds of pages) as solely for the purposes of defeating terrorism. Congress was assured that, despite many of the provisions being open to abuse by being used to pursue domestic criminal offences, they would not be so used. Of course, they were so used, and very shortly after the act was passed. In fact, almost all the prosecutions under the act have been for domestic criminal offences of the type which Congress and the public were promised would not happen.

So here is my Law (and five corollaries) of Abusable Legislation:

If a piece of legislation is passed which can be abused then, sooner or later, it WILL be abused.

Corollaries:

Abusable legislation is almost always abused whilst those who initiated and drafted it are still in power.
Abusable legislation is almost always abused by those who initiated and drafted it.
The real purpose of those who initiate and draft abusable legislation is almost always so that they can abuse it, with the purported objective being a ruse to get it passed.
Abusable legislation is almost always passed in response to "temporary" emergencies such as war, rebellion, acts of terrorism, or natural disaster.
If abusable legislation is passed in response to a "temporary" emergency, either the emergency never ends or, if the emergency does end, the "temporary" abusable legislation is never repealed.

World history is replete with examples. President Bush seems to be going for the world record, topping all previous empires, kingdoms and republics in history combined.

It goes without saying that the ultimate objective of passing abusable legislation is to create a despotic dictatorship.

And finally, some Bush quotes...

You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier.

If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.

The NSA and Cookies

2005-12-31T01:11:00.000Z

Some people are getting seriously overly-paranoid about the recent revelation that the NSA was setting permanent (well, very long life) web cookies and that federal guidelines state they should only use "session-only" cookies (ones that go away if you shut down your browser or reboot your computer). There never was any danger.

If you've read any of my other posts, you'll know I despise the Bush administration and have nothing but contempt for the illegal wiretapping Bush has been doing for the past four years. But don't get your knickers in a twist over the NSA cookies because they are not a danger. I know this because I geek for a living.

The http protocol (the thing that requests and receives web pages) is "stateless." It doesn't have any memory of what you've done before. It cannot even be sure that the computer requesting one page from a web server is the same as the computer requesting a different page on the same server. They may have the same IP address, but if you're on dial-up you could have been kicked off after getting one page, somebody else connects and gets your old IP address and requests the other page. It's unlikely, but it's possible.

This statelessness makes it impossible to implement things like shopping carts. That's why Netscape came up with the idea of cookies. Now, like all of Netscape's design decisions made before it became open source software, the design decision was made without consultation with any of the Internet or WWW standards bodies, the concept was flawed and the implementation was even more flawed, but it kind of worked.

If you feel like being bored senseless by geeky things, here is Netscape's original cookie specification. Here is the Internet Engineering Task Force's attemp to fix Netscape's flawed proposal before it got cast in stone. Naturally, both Netscape and Microsoft[turdmark] decided not to do it the right way because they'd already shipped the broken way to a handful of beta testers. The IETF eventually came up with a way of doing it right while accommodating browsers that chose to do it the flawed Netscape way.

If you did read the geeky stuff, you'll have seen that there are mechanisms in place so that only the site that issued the cookie to your browser will get to see its contents. Even with cookies that expire far in the future the best the NSA can do is tell if you've been there before when you visit the NSA website (and, depending upon stored content, perhaps some of what you looked at last time). They can't use those cookies to find out that you've been visiting bdsmworld.com or wetandmessy.com or inflatablesheep.com or www.impeachbush.org.

Of course, cookies can be abused by advertisers like DoubleClick (or "doublecunts" as they're known in the geek trade). Just about any website you go to has adverts from one of a handful of advertising placement companies. Each of those adverts is accompanied by a cookie from that company. So if you visit different websites with adverts from the same company, they can track where you have been. If you go to site A and see an advert from badguys.com it leaves a cookie. If you then go to site B that has an advert from badguys.com it can inspect the cookie it left from the previous advert and keep track of you. Eventually you buy something on-line from a company that has an agreement with badguys.com to hand over your personal details, and then they have you. A flood of junk mail and junk e-mail.

But unless the NSA is secretly running an advertisement placement company (not impossible) they can't do that to you. And even if the NSA were doing that, it would be unrelated to, and unaffected by, cookies from nsa.gov.

Of course, in the early days of cookies both Netscape and Microsoft made fundamental, "computer programming 001" type mistakes that meant that a specially-crafted cookie could do bad things to your computer. Those problems got fixed, eventually, and it's been years since a cookie could cause actual damage.

Some people have also been overly-paranoid about why the NSA were using cookies in the first place since the site apparently doesn't need them. So are they right?

<clickety-clickety> - the nsa.gov webserver claims it's running Microsoft Internet Information Server version 6.0. Webservers sometimes lie about what they are in order to try to prevent people attacking them, but nobody with any sense would make a webserver lie and claim to be IIS/6.0 since every script-kiddy in the land would try to attack it (because Microsoft products are a pile of shit as far as security goes). Microsoft webservers turn on cookies by default. In fact it's damned difficult to turn them completely off. So an upgrade or security patch to IIS could have re-enabled them. No sign of them on the main page or a few randomly-chosen pages.

Ah-ha! The job application form sent a cookie, which is entirely reasonable if it's a multi-stage form. A cookie labelled "WebLogicSession". <google google> WebLogic is from BEA and "delivers application infrastructure technology in a single, unified, easy-to-use platform for application development, deployment, and management." Translation: it's a tool that allows complete morons to create websites with interactive content (like job application forms). There are a lot of similar products, and almost all of them use cookies unnecessarily, not just on the pages where they're needed.

So it looks like the NSA claim that they upgraded some third-party software which decided to use cookies everywhere and set for long expiry times is at least plausible. And even if it's a complete fabrication there was never any danger in the first place.

Why Only Impeachment Will Do

2005-12-28T16:38:00.000Z

I wrote here about the need to impeach Bush over his wiretapping. I mentioned that legislation was unlikely to curb him. Let me expand upon that.

When Bush wanted to torture people, there were several laws that should have stopped him. The Constitutional amendment about "cruel and unusual punishment." Two international treaties against torture (the Geneva Conventions and a treaty specifically against torture), to which the US is signatory and are therefore constitutionally considered to be "the supreme law of the land." US legislation against torture. And the Army Interrogation Manual which put limits upon interrogation techniques.

Did Bush let any of that stop him? Of course not. He had John Yoo write an opinion that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and outdated. He had John Yoo write another opinion that it wasn't torture unless it caused pain as intense as organ failure. He labelled people as "enemy combatants," a classification not in the Geneva Conventions, so they could be tortured. He shipped people to a naval base on Cuba at Guantanamo Bay and claimed US law didn't apply there since it was outside the US (under international law it would be classified as US soil, just as US embassies are). And, of course, he lied and said the US doesn't torture, it abides by the law (well, John Yoo's LSD-trip interpretations of the law).

And then came McCain's amendment to close all the loopholes and specifically limit interrogation of "terrists" to those techniques in the Army Interrogation Manual. Bush and Cheney pleaded and begged to continue to be allowed to torture people (while at the same time saying the US doesn't torture people) but McCain stood firm. The amendment passed. And immediately after the amendment passed, the Pentagon announced that it was revising the Army Interrogation Manual and that the new edition would contain eight pages that would be classified secret. You don't have to see those secret pages to know what they will contain.

This is just one example of Bush bending, twisting and ignoring the law so he can do whatever he damned well pleases. There are many others, though most are too complicated for hard-of-thinking Bush supporters to grasp.

Further legislation to prevent Bush wiretapping US citizens just won't work. FISA already prevented that, and the result was that Bush simply ignored FISA and went his own way. If Congress is foolish enough to try to curb Bush with further legislation, that too will be ignored. The only way to stop him is by impeachment (which will have to include Cheney because he's even worse than Dubya).

If Bush is not impeached then he will use his wiretap powers to eavesdrop upon representatives and senators in Congress. There will be enough of them with secrets (extra-marital affairs, sexual foibles, graft, corruption) that he will be able to blackmail a majority into voting his way upon every issue, even if they totally disagree with him. And then instead of Bush having to break or ignore laws to get his way he will be able to get laws passed that support his every whim.

What's worse is that he may be able to blackmail a supermajority of Congress and a majority of at least three-fourths of state legislatures. That gives him the power to amend the Constitution any way he wants. Like getting rid of that pesky XXIInd Amendment that limits him to two terms.

If you want to prevent this nightmare scenario, write your Congress critters and inform them where wiretapping will lead. Explain to them that a man who has repeatedly bent, broken, twisted and ignored laws will not be constrained by further legislation and that only impeachment will do. Explain to them that if they do not impeach Bush now they will never be able to in the future because a majority of both houses will be under Bush's thumb and unable to rebel. It's now or never.

Everyone Hates Me

2005-12-28T02:39:00.000Z

They all fucking hate me. The Democrats have always hated me. The US public hates me. My own fucking party has started to treat me like I'm radioactivist. And now this.

Barney just crapped in my elbow. Miss Beazley just crapped down the back of my left leg with a really runny crap that's soaked right through. And Laura thinks it's fucking funny.

That's enough! The fucking three of them are going to be on a CIA flight to fucking Gitmo tomorrow. They'll learn that you don't fucking crap on the President and get away with it.

Why Both Sides of the Aisle Hate the Wiretapping

2005-12-25T23:06:00.000Z

Both sides of the aisle are seriously pissed off with Bush's wiretapping.

It's easy to understand why the Democrats are pissed off. Their every campaign tactic would be known to a President who could get his brain (Rove) to figure out exactly the best counter-tactic. Their every personal foible would be known: no longer would Rove have to invent credible smears, he'd know where to send photographers to capture evidence of illicit dalliances.

It's harder to figure out why the GOP is so upset. Rarely have I seen anybody try to explain that. And when I have it's the "you're not going to like it when the shoe is on the other foot." But, unless the California and Florida decertification of Diebold voting machines, and the imminent decertification of ES&S voting machines are taken up by most states, that shoe isn't ever going to be on the other foot. The coming mid-terms are the very last chance the US has to institute an honest electoral system, because if the GOP succeeds in rigging the voting again it's going to win by a landslide, mandate rigged voting machines in every state, and you're facing one-party rule forever.

So why are those on the right of the aisle so upset? Because almost all of them are corrupt, with some of them being very corrupt. I know the Democrats slid down the slippery slope to corruption after decades in power, but most in the GOP started out corrupt. For instance, google for DeLay honorarium and you'll find that one of the very first things he did after gaining a seat was try to exploit it for "honorariums" and set up his "K-Street Project."

And therein lies the problem. The GOP pretends to have a united front even though in actuality they are almost as diverse as the Democrats. The difference is that the GOP realizes the importance of "having all their shit in one sock." If necessary, they will chew on Bush's turds, but they won't actually swallow and they'll spit it out when they're out of public sight. They'll play along to stay in power, but you can only push them so far (see McCain's attempt to explicitly ban torture).

Bush's wiretaps means that he'll learn all the dirty little secrets of GOP representatives and senators. Stuff, since they're so corrupt, that can get them indicted and locked away for many years. They know that if Bush's wiretaps continue, they'll not only have to chew on his turds, they'll have to swallow, and tell everyone how yummy they are with a big grin on their face as they say it.

Given that Bush is crazier than a shithouse rat on PCP, that's something they don't want to happen. A few of them have already politely declined Bush "helping" with their election campaigns because they know how deeply unpopular he is with the majority of the country (and their states still have honest voting methods). One welcomed Bush's help and found he went from a large majority to a major loss. They want the freedom to be able to do what is best for them, not what is best for Bush (they should be trying to do what is best for the country, but they're corrupt Republicans so you can't expect that to happen). Once Bush wiretaps them, they become his puppets.

The GOP has to put an end to it now or they're screwed. They're not worried that ordinary citizens get wiretapped. They're orgasmically ecstatic if the Dems get wiretapped. But the GOP getting wiretapped is a disaster for the GOP as corrupt individuals who have a limited freedom to work in their own best interests.

They might try using legislation to explicitly force him to stop wiretapping. But they know, from John Yoo's and Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzalez' previous imaginative (as in "LSD trip") interpretations of other laws that they're unlikely to stop him that way. So when that fails they're going to go for impeachment. They have to.

Yet another DU story

2005-12-24T20:23:00.000Z

Leuren Moret, as always, exposes the horrors of Depleted Uranium munitions here.

Read it. You can't afford not to if you want any hope of life on earth surviving.

Joe Wilson for President!

2005-12-23T00:33:00.000Z

OK, I know Joseph Wilson III has not expressed any desire to stand as a candidate, and has even described himself as non-partisan. But...

There has been speculation about who will enter the Democratic primaries for 08 (and who will win). Apparently, Hillary Clinton, with over 40% support, is way ahead of the pack. The problem is that the pack are all wimps, kow-towing to Emperor Bush over Iraq, when the majority (over 60%) of the country thinks Bush is wrong on Iraq. The potential Democratic candidates, including Hillary, are rushing towards the centre as fast as they can because their advisors (who never leave K-street to find out how bad things are in the rest of the US and how desperately people want liberal policies) say that's how they can win. The advisors have been saying that for years, and they've been wrong every damned time.

Joe Wilson is an ideal candidate. He has been an ambassador, so has a good grasp of diplomacy (whereas all Dubya knows is how to piss off other countries, and Hillary's only qualification is that she may have slept with a President).

Joe Wilson is brave (unlike Dubya, who used his father's connections to duck out of Vietnam by serving in the Texas Air National Guard until it became too much for him and he went AWOL, whereas Hillary didn't even face the draft that her husband avoided). Wilson was acting as ambassador to Iraq prior to Desert Storm (Bush-the-slightly-smarter's war). He received a diplomatic note from Saddam saying that anyone harboring foreigners would be subject to execution. Wilson had already allowed 70 Americans to take refuge in the US Embassy. So the next day he gave a press conference with a noose around his neck telling Saddam that he was harboring Americans and wasn't about to give them up.

Joe Wilson, like Dubya, speaks his mind (Hillary is moving further and further away from the liberal principles she once espoused in the hope it will make her more electable). But unlike Dubya, Wilson knows when to remain silent and instead use a slightly more subtle way of making his views known (it's that "diplomacy" thing again). When Wilson returned to the US after the Iraq noose incident, he explained in an interview that the noose was intended to send the message "If protecting american lives is a crime, I'll provide my own fucking noose."

Joe Wilson has recently called the Busheviks "brownshirts," "radicals," and "school yard bullies" whereas Hillary is sucking up to them and saying they were right to invade Iraq even if they went about it the wrong way.

So who do you want? Somebody like Hillary who will "triangulate" until she ends up as "Bush lite" keeping the troops in Iraq and not reversing all the other evil that Bush has done? Or somebody who is willing to speak out against the evil that is the Bush administration and has put his life on the line in order to protect 70 Americans?

Joe Wilson isn't a politician, which is why he'd probably refuse to stand. The fact that he isn't a politician is probably the strongest reason for wishing that he would. Democratic politicians like Hillary will "triangulate" if they think it will get them elected (it will cause her to lose), while Republican politicians know they have to stick to their guns (or at least pretend they are doing so whilst in fact moving so far to the right they end up in an alternate universe).

Faced with a choice of Republican or real Democrat, willing to stand up for Democratic principles, the polls show the country will vote for the Democrat. Faced with a choice of Republican or Republican-lite, people are going to vote for the real thing. Since the potential Democratic candidates are all rapidly becoming Republican-lite then our last hope is somebody like Wilson.

Bush's Wiretapping Defence

2005-12-22T16:35:00.000Z

Here is a prediction of one of the legal contortions Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzalez will use to justify Bush wiretapping US citizens. The idea came to me, ironically, from Senator Robert Byrd's No President is Above the Law speech:

The President claims that these powers are within his role as Commander in Chief. Make no mistake, the powers granted to the Commander in Chief are specifically those as head of the Armed Forces. These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens. They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing within the powers granted in the Commander in Chief clause that grants the President the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians.

I doubt any Senator is as thoroughly versed in the Constitution as Byrd: he carries a copy of it around with him at all times and studies it frequently. But I believe he has not given consideration to just how evil and slimy these people are.

The problem with Byrd's analysis is where he says "foreign power." Condi Lies 'R' Us has already dropped a big hint about the administration's view on this when she said she did not believe the pResident was required to get Congressional approval to attack Iran or Syria (or whichever oil-rich country they want to go after next). Congress did not give approval for a war in Afghanistan or a war in Iraq but for a War on Terror. In the Bushevik view, that means anyone and anywhere.

Oh dear, al-Qaeda is operating in Syria? Because we have Congressional approval for a War on Terror, that means we can whack Syria without any further approval from Congress.

What's that you say? al-Qaeda is operating in Iran? The War on Terror means we can invade Iran and we don't have to ask Congress first.

The administration is no longer claiming to be fighting foreign powers as such (although, of course, they are since they want to invade those countries for oil) but going after individual terrorists wherever they may be and whatever their nationality.

And that is the exploitable loophole. Once you conceed (as Congress did in its resolution) that this is a War on Terror, rather than a war against a specific country, the pResident's commander-in-chief powers apply to anyone, anywhere. Including US citizens in the US (ask Jose Padilla if you don't believe me). In fact the Padilla case, unless SCOTUS upholds the recent 4th Circuit Court's we are not amused attitude, it will serve as a precedent that US citizens on US soil can be treated as legitimate military enemies.

And there you have it. If it's legal to treat a US citizen arrested on US soil as a military enemy and subject to commander-in-chief authority rather than presidential authority then Bush can wiretap US citizens. In the War on Terror, anyone, anywhere may be an enemy including US citizens on US soil.

Obviously, such a position forces various clauses of the Constitution into conflict. There are the clauses guaranteeing US citizens various rights (notably the 1st and 4th amendments) and the clauses about commander-in-chief authority. When a US citizen upon US soil can legitimately declared a military enemy, which clauses govern?

If it is contested, this is something that will have to be decided by the Supremes, and there's no guaranteeing which way they'll decide (particularly if Scalito is serving). If the Supremes vote for tyranny then there is still one hope left: impeachment. But don't hold your breath.

I Just Did a Big Shit on the Constitution

2005-12-21T20:19:00.000Z

It was this big. Seriously. It was a monster. Turdzilla! And, man, did it reek! Laura threatened to call in the UN Chemical Weapons Inspection Team because she said it was giving off a poisonous gas. Laura also told me I'm not allowed to eat Burritos any more, but I'm the President and she can't stop me - if I eat them when she's not around.

I want to make it clear that it was perfectly legal to take a dump on the Constitution. Torquemada - that's my nickname for Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez - explained it to me: I am acting within my Constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief. Not only that, see, Congress approved "all necessary and appropriate force" in the War on Terra. And, boy, did I have to strain hard to force that sucker out - it brought tears to my eyes.

Anyway, like I said before, the terrists hate us because of our freedoms, so if I take away your freedoms the terrists will love us and the War on Terra will be over. That's why I'm going to take a massive shit on the Constitution tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after. And I'll keep on shitting on the Constitution until you have no freedoms left. And then the terrists will love the US and will no longer try to destroy the US by taking away your freedoms.

Now I know there are some people, people who are currently allowed to disagree with me without ending up in Gitmo, who say that I shouldn't crap on the constitution. I respect their right to their opinions, at least until the new, improved USA PATRIOT Act passes, but by having this discussion they are aiding my enemies. After all, the Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper.

The Downside of Impeaching Bush

2005-12-20T20:01:00.000Z

Most left-wing blogs are quivering with ecstasy: Bush has admitted committing a criminal act (eavesdropping on US citizens without a warrant) and has insisted he will continue to do so. Congress is outraged. There are hopes of impeachment. But there is a downside to this.

Consider the following. Condi Lies 'R' Us has been on talk shows saying that what Bush did was perfectly legal but, when pressed for the statutes that permitted his actions came up blank. Torturer Geneneral Gonzalez has also been on talk shows saying that what Bush did was perfectly legal but, when pressed for the the statues permitting his actions came up with three different bogus legal constructions. What is interesting in all this is the dog that didn't bark in the night.

Unless I missed it, Darth Cheney has not spoken on this. Normally, when Condi has to tell lies on talk shows then Cheney does so on the same day. This time he hasn't. Maybe he doesn't think the issue is critical enough yet. Maybe he hasn't yet soaked up enough vital essence from lying in his undisclosed secret bath full of slaughtered virgins' blood to appear in daylight without turning into a pile of dust. Or maybe there is another reason.

Yes I do know that Cheney must have been at least peripherally involved in briefing Congressional intelligence committee leaders since Jay Rockefeller wrote Cheney a letter of protest. But Cheney can claim that he was only passing on orders. Cheney is, after all, the President of the Senate and is the natural go-between in this administration between the President and the Senate.

Bush is a pliable puppet - that's why he was chosen. People make much of the fact that Bush had plans to invade Iraq before he stole the 2000 election and said he wanted to be a war president because of the "political capital" it would give him. But did he think that up himself or was it fed to him? Take a look at this and you will see that Cheney and Wolfowitz had plans to invade Iraq to steal its oil since 1992 (read the whole document because it describes Cheney/Neocon plans since 1992 and has some very chilling information about a "new Pearl Harbor").

So it's pretty clear that much of Bush's thinking (such as it is) has been strongly influenced by Cheney and the Neocons constantly drumming ideas into his head. And that is the problem. Cheney is probably hoping to get away with "being out of the loop" over the eavesdropping. That would explain why he has not launched his usual snarling attacks on those who criticise it. Since it is almost certain that Bush (like Nixon) will be persuaded to resign rather than be impeached, there will be no evidence arising from an impeachment process to show that Cheney was up to his evil little neck in it.

So, threaten to impeach Bush, he resigns, and you get Cheney. The puppet replaced by the puppet master.

There have been many reports that Bush is out of control, is hitting the bottle again, and is subject to violent mood swings. There have been reports that Bush is paranoid because of all the recent leaks and now trusts only four close confidants. Were Bushs's ill-conceived speeches over the eavesdropping the result of Bush ignoring his confidants and going it alone? In which case Cheney would want to replace his out-of-control puppet. Or had Cheney become worried that the out-of-control puppet might do something really stupid (i.e., something that would drop Cheney in the shit) and managed to persuade somebody Bush still trusted to feed him the idea of giving speeches that would incriminate himself? It doesn't really matter: either way you get Cheney.

I'm not saying that Bush doesn't deserve to be impeached: the whole administration deserves to be impeached. But if you impeach Bush first you get Cheney, and that could be a far harder problem to deal with because Cheney isn't stupid (insane and evil, yes, but not stupid).

I should point out that Prison Planet has a different explanation for why Bush admitted eavesdropping just as the misnamed USA PATRIOT Act was up for renewal. According to Prison Planet, Cheney wants the renewal to fail and the eavesdropping to be stopped. A few months later there will be another "terrorist" attack on the US (as with 9-11, it will be an inside job) and it will be blamed upon the lack of the USA PATRIOT Act and freedom to eavesdrop upon US citizens. A new, improved, far more restrictive version of the Act will be rushed through Congress and it's hello dictatorship.

The Prison Planet idea is not incompatible with Cheney wanting to replace his puppet with himself. For a start, these people love plans which kill two birds with one stone: 9-11 allowed them to not only award the trans-Afghan pipeline contract back to Unocal but to have their long-wished-for war in Iraq. But if you're in the final stages of turning the US into a despotic tyranny you no longer need the puppet to be in line to become Supreme Dictator for Life because you no longer need a puppet to take the flak if things go wrong. In fact you don't want the puppet in that position because he might start to get ideas that he is actually in charge.

In this way the USA PATRIOT Act gets temporarily dropped and the puppet is replaced
by Cheney. After the "terrorist" attack the new improved act destroys all civil liberties in the US and turns it into a dictatorship with Cheney as the dictator. But Cheney's life-expectancy is short, so after Bush is impeached expect him to install a VP who will succeed him as Supreme Dictator when he steps down for health reasons. Whoever that VP is, it will be somebody who faithfully takes orders from the same shadow cabal that Cheney does and that Bush 41 did.

Which Way Will the World End?

2005-12-19T23:48:00.000Z

Roll up, roll up! Which way will the world end? Place your bets!

Of all the scenarios presented below, all but one of them is actually happening right now. All of the scenarios happening right now are very close to the critical point, or on the critical point, or (perhaps) have passed the critical point.

There are some degrees of mutual dependency amongst the various scenarios. For instance, exceeding the carry capacity of the planet and intensive agriculture are almost two faces of the same coin. Yet we could exceed the carry capacity of the planet without intensive agriculture and intensive agriculture could doom us even if we were nowhere close to the carry capacity of the planet. The fact that we are at the carry capacity of the planet and the fact that we use intensive agriculture both contribute strongly to global warming. In the cases of dependencies like these, which scenario we blame for the calamity will depend upon which one is perceived to have the dominant effect.

Bear in mind when you read this that the world population is increasing by 1.1% per year. This may not sound too bad, but it is compound increase: if you start with 1 billion people then 1 year later you have 1.011 billion people; two years later you have not 1.022 billion people but 1.022121 billion people (1.011 × 1.011); three years later you have not 1.033 billion people but 1.033364331 billion people. The discrepancy may seem small, but as the years go by it becomes increasingly larger. If the growth were not compound then it would take 91 years for the population to double; because the growth is compound it will take only 64 years for the population to double.

This means that if you could take any of the resource problems below and magically reduce our consumption by half (e.g., cut oil consumption by half) or double the effective resource (e.g., make agriculture produce twice as much food) in only 64 years we will be at the same point. There is no magic that will allow us to do these things anyway. Also note that Bush has put restrictions on medical and humanitarian aid to under-developed and developing countries so that they cannot use it in facilities which promote birth control or contraception, so the population increase is likely to rise back to the high point it had in the early 1960s of 2.2%. With a population increase of 2.2% the population doubles every 32 years.

Here are the scenarios.

Exceeding the carry capacity of the planet: There are many limits on the carry capacity (how many human beings it can sustain in perpetuity) of the planet and we have exceeded several of these in various geographic locations and are close to exceeding them globally.

Some areas are dependent upon artesian wells drawing up underground water to sustain their population. Underground water that comes from rain falling on mountains hundreds or thousands of miles away and travelling underground. It can take several thousands of years for rain that fell on the mountain to percolate to the well from which it is drawn. As long as you draw off no more than is replenished, all is sustainable. When you go beyond that point eventually you will hit problems.

In fact there is an impending water crisis all over the planet. Freshwater is being diverted to sustain populations and agriculture. But the populations where the water is being taken from are also increasing. There is only so much fresh water to go around and we're using all of it. The population is growing...

The populations of some countries have outstripped their capability to sustainably grow crops. In Nepal the attempts to force greater crop yields have caused topsoil to lose its structure and wash away into rivers. That loss of topsoil, of course, increases the pressure to grow crops on what remains, causing more destruction of topsoil. It takes many thousands of years for topsoil to form.

In parts of Africa the need for fuel (for cooking) has caused people to chop down trees. Trees which prevented high winds from blowing away topsoil.

The Amazon rainforest is being relentlessly destroyed so the ground can be used to feed cattle which end up in MuckDonalds' burgers. The loss of rainforest is contributing to global warming (see a later scenario).

Over-fishing has collapsed fish stocks in the North Sea and around Canada to the point from which they may never recover even if fishing were banned completely (politics means that fishing will continue at ever lower rates until there are no more fish).

And so it goes. Part of the starvation problem in Africa is due to dicatators forcing populations to grow cash crops for export (to countries like the US) instead of feeding themselves. A large part of the problem is our insistence on high meat diets. It takes roughly ten times the crops (and water resources) to feed people meat raised on those crops as to feed them the crops directly. Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, consume a diet which is around 2% meat; their intestinal tract is almost identical to our own so it is likely that we evolved to eat that little meat and many health problems are related to excess consumption of meat. But even if we all switched to diets that are mainly vegetarian that will only delay the problem by a century (not all farmland is suitable for crops, such as the hills of Wales which are suited only for raising sheep).
Intensive agriculture: Intensive agriculture, using artificial fertilizers, artificial pesticides, and oil-powered agricultural machinery has greatly increased the amount of food we can raise per acre. Without it we could not feed the world's population today (unless they went vegetarian). But it comes at a horrendous cost.

Artificial fertilizers and pesticides require large amounts of oil to make. Agricultural machinery requires oil to power it. Transporting food long distance by roads requires oil. Intensive agriculture is a major contributor to global warming (see later) and Peak Oil (see later).

Prior to intensive agriculture most people lived and worked on the land. There were no sewerage facilities so people used cess pits to ferment their excrement which was later returned to the land as fertilizer. Some food was shipped to the cities, where the excrement was lost to the land through sewerage systems. Now we have relatively few farm workers (driving monster farm machinery to replace the manual labour of days gone by) and major connurbations. The nutrition locked up in the soil goes to the crops; the crops go to the city; the city shits the nutrition into the sewers; the sewerage is dumped out at sea where it feeds algal blooms that poison fish.

To replace that lost nutrition we instead use artificial fertilizers. Unlike sewerage, which releases its goodness very slowly, artificial fertilizers get washed away into rivers within days of application. This means they must be applied frequently so that the crops can snatch up a tiny part before it is washed away. The washed away artificial fertilizer poisons streams and rivers before it eventually ends up in the oceans to feed algal blooms that poison fish.

Intensive agriculture is also destroying topsoil which takes many thousands of years to replace.
Global warming: Global warming is happening. It's measurable. There are a handful of honest scientists who think otherwise. There are a larger number of shills paid for by the oil companies who say otherwise whether they believe it or not. The vast majority of scientists are absolutely certain that global warming is happening. The only questions are how fast, how extreme, when will we reach the point of no return and what the exact changes will be.

One effect will be a melting of the icecaps and an increase in sea level. Most major coastal cities arose as ports: land which is close to sea level or near the mouth of a navigable estuary. Most major coastal cities will be flooded. Much low-lying land across the globe will be flooded.

Some of the effects of global warming are paradoxical: the United Kingdom and much of Europe may get very much colder. The UK is at the same latitude as Siberia but is very much warmer. This is due to the Gulf Stream: a warm ocean current starts from the Gulf of Mexico, follows the eastern coastlines of the US and Newfoundland, travels across the Atlantic, splits into two, one part flowing past (and warming) the UK and Northern Europe. It continues towards the Arctic, getting colder and saltier as it goes. At the arctic it is colder and saltier than the Arctic waters so sinks, and then makes a return journey to the Gulf of Mexico at a much lower depth. This "conveyer belt" is slowing down because of the melting of the Arctic icecap.

The change in temperatures around the globe will mean that some currently arable lands will become deserts. Areas which are still capable of growing crops will find that traditional crops are unsuited to the new conditions.

The Alaskan and Siberian permafrost is thawing. Permafrost is soil or marsh laced with ice that never melts and is strong enough to build houses on. Houses in Alaska are now suffering subsidence, or tilting over, or collapsing. The Siberian permafrost is mainly frozen marshland, and as the permafrost melts that marshland starts to decompose and release the greenhouse gas methane, increasing global warming.

The retreat of glaciers across the globe, and the melting of the icecaps, means there is less ice to reflect sunlight and more ground which absorbs sunlight, increasing global warming.

The exposure of Siberian marshland and the melting ice means that even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions right now (we can't) then things are going to get worse before they get better. In fact, they may already have reached the "tipping point" where nothing we can do will stop runaway global warming.

Take a rectangular carton of orange juice. Place your finger in the middle of one of the longer top edges and push a millimeter: the carton tilts. Release your finger and the carton drops back (it may rock a little). Repeat, but push a little further: again the carton tilts and again drops back when you remove the push. Keep going, pushing a little further each time. Eventually you push so far that the carton topples over even though you remove the push as soon as it starts to topple. That is the "tipping point" and we may already have passed that with global warming.
Peak Oil: In 1956 Shell geologist M King Hubbert came to the conclusion that the production rate of an oil field (or a region of oil fields) followed a "bell curve" (a curve which resembles the profile of a bell). Eventually you hit peak production (at the top of the bell curve) and thereafter production declines. Hubbert predicted US oil production would peak in the 1970s and his colleagues laughed at him.

Hubbert was proven right. US production did peak in the early 70s and precipitated the oil crisis when the US stopped being a nett exporter of oil and became a nett importer. The same principle applies globally and even the most optimistic estimates say that global peak oil will hit around 2020. In fact, there is some tentative evidence which indicates it may already have hit (production fluctuations mean it's hard to spot the exact peak). As it happens, we are just managing to fill demand with current production, but demand is increasing exponentially as the population grows and as the developing world becomes more industrialized.

When Peak Oil hits demand will continue to increase but supply will fall, leading to vastly increased prices ($100/gallon may sound high, but that is only decades away and it will get far, far worse in the years after). Driving less and using energy-efficient lightbulbs isn't going to help. Peak Oil doesn't mean that there is no oil left (in fact, there will be about as much left as we have extracted to date) but that there is not enough to go around and prices go through the roof.

Intensive agriculture is very dependent upon cheap oil to produce fertilizers and pesticides; to run agricultural machinery; to transport food long distances. Without cheap oil there can be no intensive agriculture. Without intensive agriculture approximately 90% of the world's population will die of starvation.

We have long since used up all the minerals and resources that could be obtained using a pick and shovel and a mule or two. The days when a small band of people using pickaxes and shovels could dig enough coal, iron ore, and limestone to set up an iron smelter have long gone. Today mineral resources are only accessible through the use of machinery powered by cheap oil. Without that we lose the ability to manufacture the items relied upon by modern civilization (most of which require vast amounts of cheap oil in addition to mineral inputs). In short, after Peak Oil we are headed towards another Stone Age. One from which there can be no escape because there are no longer any resources which can be obtained without cheap oil.

We have many alternative energy sources but none can compete with oil in terms of Energy Return on Investment (EROI). The EROI of oil is currently around 33 (by burning one barrel of oil you can obtain another 33 barrels of oil). Some of the best alternatives have an EROI of 1.5 and many alternatives still have EROIs of less than 1 (it takes more energy to make them than they ever pay back). None of the alternatives has the energy density of oil that would allow them to be suitable for the long-distance transport essential to today's society or even to power farm machinery.

Even if we already had an alternative energy source could provide an alterntive to oil for transportation, none of the alternative energy sources are deployed widely enough to replace more than a fraction of our energy usage. Most of them (solar and wind) cannot produce continuously and would require storage mechanisms we just don't have. The alternatives we have just don't cut it, even if they were far more widely deployed. And developing and deploying better alternatives would require a massive investment of time, money, and (most importantly) energy (in the form of cheap oil).

Had we started to develop alternative energy sources back when Hubbert made his predictions we might now have alternatives that could replace oil. Evn had we started back in the 1970s when US Peak Oil hit we might have the alternatives. The economic pressures that will direct real research towards alternatives will only happen when oil prices go through the roof and by that time it will be too late: any alternatives will require cheap oil to develop and deploy. By the time the economic pressures force politicians to admit that there is a problem we will no longer have the resource (cheap oil) needed to solve the problem.

See Life After the Oil Crash for details. However, I think his post-crash survival scenarios are somewhat implausible. When Peak Oil starts to bite, the starving with guns are going to seek out the prepared. If all those who had not prepared ahead were to just sit down and starve then his scenarios might just work for those who had prepared. The reality of the situation is that there is going to be a lot of fighting and very few survivors.
Global thermonuclear war: By now you might be wondering if Peak Oil is why Bush invaded Iraq (actually, that invasion, and the eventual take-over of all the oil resources in the Middle East, had been on Cheney's and Wolfowitz's hit-list since 1992), and you'd be right. Saddam probably speeded things up a little by trying to switch from selling oil in dollars to selling it in Euros because if the rest of Opec had followed the US economy would have collapsed. But the main reason is Peak Oil.

Had Bush done this to buy time to develop alternative energy sources, and promised to share the oil with Russia, China, India and Pakistan, and had he promised to then use those alternative energy sources to help bring the rest of the world out of the Stone Age, I might have supported him. I live in a country that would probably had gone into the Stone Age and I would not have survived, but I would like to see civilization survive even if I am not part of it (we all have to die some day). But it's quite clear this is not the case. You only have to look at the withdrawal of tax incentives on fuel-efficient hybrids and the tax breaks given to the purchase of gas-guzzling SUVs to know that. Bush just wants to steal the oil so that the US is the last country standing and the last country to collapse into a Stone Age (actually, his motives may not even be that high).

All of the world is dependent upon cheap oil, not just Russia, China, India and Pakistan. But those countries have nukes. Are they going to sit back and let the US steal the world's oil while their citizens starve and their countries descend into a Stone Age? I very much doubt it.

Despite what the Strangelove types in the Pentagon say, a global thermonuclear war is not survivable, even by countries that don't get hit. Atmospheric tests were cancelled when it was realized that the fallout was causing up to a 5% decline in SAT scores, a die-off of 50% of the fish in the mid-Atlantic, and a whole host of other problems. The fall-out from an all-out war would certainly kill all higher forms of life on the planet, if not all the lower forms too.
Depleted Uranium: Depleted Uranium munitions are likely to kill all life on the planet. They are, in effect, "dirty bombs" releasing toxic radioactive material.

They have greater penetrating power than any other type of munition. They have the "advantage" that the uranium burns, and so after penetrating a tank or a building also acts as an incendiary round (resulting in Iraqi tanks containing what the troops refer to as "crispy critters"). As the uranium burns it produces particles of uranium oxide ranging in size from visible particles in cigarette smoke down to far smaller nanoparticles. These particles spread far and wide from the impact point.

Depleted uranium is slightly radioactive, but that is not its main danger. It is a heavy metal and therefore interferes in all sorts of ways with cellular machinery. It is carcinogenic (causes cancer), mutagenic (causes mutations in sperm and egg producing cells) and teratogenic (causes birth deformities). Bush-the-slightly-smarter used only 350 tons of DU in Iraq and the rates of cancers and serious birth defects went up between 8 and 14 times (the number depends on the particular cancer or type of birth defect). Of a group of soldiers who served a few months in the first Iraq war, over one-third went on to father children with serious birth defects. We don't have any figures for how much DU has been used in this war other than a release from the Pentagon saying 2,220 tons had been used in March and April of 2003.

We've probably used up enough to kill all life in Iraq. But the uranium oxide is in the form of very fine particles and Iraq is subject to dust storms which carry it all over the planet. We may be using it in Iraq but it's going everywhere. We may soon use enough to kill all forms of life everywhere on the planet, down to the lowliest bacterium at the bottom of the ocean. We may already have done so.

So those are the scenarios. All of them apart from global thermonuclear war are in progress right now. Of the ones in progress, all are so close to the critical point that we don't know if the critical point is yet to happen or if it has already happened. It's pretty much a race as to which of them is going to have a big enough effect to wipe us out before the others get a chance to.

One day, in the future, your descendents may sit around the campfire flaking flints to make arrowheads while telling their children tales of which of those scenarios predominated in wiping out civilization and most of humanity. Most likely not, because it's unlikely anyone will survive.

More likely, archæologists from another planet will spend decades trying to figure out what happened and what form of collective insanity allowed it to happen. Those archæologists might even be fortunate enough to find enough to let them figure out that the collective insanity was funadmentalist religion which preached that when the shit hit the fan then God would come down from Heaven and save the righteous.

So roll up and place your bets. Note that this game is for fun and amusement only since payment cannot be made if civilization does not survive.

Happy Holidays

2005-12-05T03:41:00.000Z

I hope to earn my place on Bill O'Falafel Vibrator's blacklist by saying "happy holidays" instead of "happy christmas." For Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists and others, the Christmas holidays do not (entirely) coincide with any of their own religion's holidays. Non-Christians may be forced to work when their own religion requires a holy day of rest and not be allowed to work during Christmas. Even worse is to expect them to think of their enforced holiday as christmas by wishing them happy christmas.

So for those who think of this time of year as Christmas, rather than an opportunity for shops to sell us garbage we give to others who don't have any use for it and who feel obligated to do the same to us...

This is the true origin of most of the symbolism that appears at Christmas, hijacked (as was Easter) by Christianity.

Enjoy your drink of hallucinogenic reindeer's piss, and may you climb the world tree...

Pray that Saddam is not executed

2005-12-02T19:32:00.000Z

I know, you're thinking that's a damned strange thing to pray for.

However, we're pretty well fucked in Iraq. Whether we pull out now or later, the place is likely to descend even further into chaos and civil war, and that chaos is likely to spread beyond the borders of Iraq. The only thing we can be sure of affecting by the timing of the pull-out is how many of our own forces get killed and maimed.

No matter when we pull out it's likely we may no longer be able to depend upon Iraqi oil, perhaps oil from much of the Middle East. According to Wilkerson if we pull out at all then ten years down the line we'll have to go back into the region with a far larger force to keep the oil flowing.

We're fucked if we pull out now. We're fucked if we pull out later. We're fucked if we don't pull out at all.

However, the army is stretched to breaking point right now. The army is running short of essential materiel due to wear and damage. It will only get worse the longer we delay pulling out. If we pull out now that gives us ten years to take what's left of the army and build it into the far bigger force Wilkerson thinks we'll need. If we pull out in five years that only gives us five years to take what, by then, will be a further reduced and broken army to the size we need.

There are efforts going on inside Iraq between the Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites to abandon their differences and unite to get the US out of there. That might work. The uneasy coalition might not fragment into civil war a few years down the line (but almost certainly will because the coalition is based on the principle of "the enemy of my greatest enemy is my friend, even though he would normally be my enemy"). But if the US pulls out, if the US hands back the oil infrastructure it (illegally, according to international conventions applying to occupying forces) forced Iraq to sell to US companies, if the US hands money to Iraq for reconstruction instead of paying 100 times as much to the likes of Halliburton to do a crappy job, then maybe, just maybe, things will stabilize. But don't bet on it.

Are there any other possibilities? Only one that I can think of, and it's almost as risky, if not more so. Re-install Saddam. Use US mercenaries (the "contractors" that are doing the seriously illegal stuff there already) to replace Saddam's elite personal guard and to run the torture rooms for Saddam rather than for Cheney. Saddam is the man who can re-estalish his secret police and bring the country back into control. He knows the people he can trust to establish an iron hand over Iraq whereas Chalabi and Allawi do not. Saddam is one of the few people who could achieve this, and possibly only Saddam knows for sure who else could do the job.

Sure, Saddam was a dictator and a tyrant, but until Bush-the-slightly-smarter decided he needed an excuse to plant US forces in Saudi Arabia to protect the corrupt House of Saud from revolution, Saddam was our dictator and tyrant. He happily went to war against Iran using the WMDs that the US sold him (using Donald Rumsfeld to arrange the deal).

Sure Saddam was a dictator and a tyrant, but he was a secular one. Iraq was the most enlightened nominally-Islamic nation in the region. There was no religious persecution (Saddam even had a Christian in his cabinet). Women were free to walk the streets without being raped. There was no civil disorder. Until Bush-the-slightly-smarter's war and the sanctions thereafter, the Iraqi people had the best standard of living in the region. They had food. They had running water. They had electricity. They had cheap gasoline. They were happy. The situation after the first war and sanctions was a lot worse than before, but still tolerable; the situtation now is far worse than ever.

Sure, Saddam was a dictator and a tyrant, who ran a secret police and torture rooms, but he didn't use them indiscriminately (as the US does). The only way you ended up in one of Saddam's torture rooms was for opposing Saddam. As long as you didn't oppose Saddam you were left unmolested, free to enjoy your high standard of living, your running water, your continuous supply of electricity, etc. Iraq was no worse in persecuting potential rebels than Saudi Arabia, but it was a lot more tolerant of religious freedom and the population had a much higher standard of living.

Sure Saddam was a dictator and a tyrant, and had no love of Israel, but he refused to have anything to do with al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization which wished to harm the US (after all, he was a willing CIA tool).

The only real question is not could Saddam fix what Bush has broken, but would he? His two sons, whom he hoped would take over when he died or retired, were killed. Worse than that, in defiance of Geneva Conventions and of Islamic sensibilities, photos of their mutilated corpses were shown around the world. It's hard to like people who do that to you. But, as the Bushies say, business is business (which is why Dumbya's father Prescott Bush happily helped Hitler even after the US entered WWII).

If a tenth of the reconstruction money currently being siphoned off by Halliburton were given directly to Saddam to use to pay local companies, he could achieve more by using just one-tenth of that for reconstruction and keeping the rest for himself. Halliburton overcharge many tens of times above true cost to do a fucked up job of reconstruction. Just one-percent of the money given to Halliburton would allow Iraqi companies to do the job properly. It would greatly reduce the vast unemployment figures (as I recall, somewhere around 60%), put money into the economy and greatly reduce unrest (which is largely about people having no jobs and no money).

Yeah, we'd be effectively bribing Saddam to co-operate with us, but so what? If Wilkerson is right and ten years down the line we'll have to send millions of troops into the region, that's going to cost a lot more (not to mention a death toll that will dwarf Viet Nam).

It's even possible Saddam would live long enough to father more sons and raise them, by example, to be tyrants just like him. Sons who could then continue his dynasty. If not, perhaps he might consider adopting children of some other cruel, despotic, corrupt dictator - Jenna and Barbara come to mind.

So here it is, Merry Fitzmas...

2005-11-28T21:33:00.000Z

...everybody's having fun. Well, everybody apart from Karl Rove.

Yes, Fitzmas is about to come a second time this year. And this time it's going to be Karl Rove facing multiple indictments for perjury and obstruction of justice.

As always, it's the little details that lead to downfall. As one of my favourite writers, Robert Green Ingersoll, said when acting as counsel for the contestants in the "Davis will case":

There is this beautiful peculiarity in nature - a lie never fits a fact, never. You only fit a lie with another lie, made for the express purpose, because you can change a lie but you can't change a fact, and after a while the time comes when the last lie you tell has to be fitted to a fact, and right there is a bad joint; consequently you must test the statements of people who say they saw, not by what they say but by other facts, by the surroundings, by what are called probabilities; by the naturalness of the statement.

Rove's former personal assistant, Susan B. Ralston, had previously testified that Cooper's call to Rove did not appear in the phone logs because Cooper had called the White House switchboard and been transferred, rather than calling Rove directly. Fitz looked through the logs and found other instances of calls being transferred by the switchboard which had been logged (or else he couldn't have found them). Right there you had the bad joint between the truth (transferred calls are logged) and the lie (the call wasn't in the logs because it had been transferred).

With that lie exposed, there is then another bad joint between it and the lie that it had been crafted to fit. Ralston was called to testify again. Faced with a possible indictment for perjury she told the truth: that Rove had instructed her not to log the call.

Another lie exposed. And with that exposure yet another bad joint. This time, Rove's repeated testimony about events. So Rove is now facing multiple indictments for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Who knows? Libby may yet flip and implicate Cheney in order to get a reduced sentence. Rove may cut a deal and implicate Cheney and/or Bush rather than be indicted. Both cases may come to trial, when other lies may be exposed and more bad joints revealed.

Somebody meticulous enough to scour the phone logs in order to expose a small lie, then leverage that up to multiple indictments against Rove, is going to keep researching every little fact until he's indicted everyone he possibly can on every charge he can bring.

Full details of this coming Fitzmas are here.

So here it is

merry fitzmas

everybody's having fun

look to the future now

it's only just begun

Democratic Strategy

2005-11-26T20:17:00.000Z

As we all know, Democratic Strategy is (sadly) inadequate. They don't have a clue. It has been stated by linguistics professor George Lakoff that Republicans are better at framing the issues by choosing their terminology carefully. I'd like to propose a way of framing the issues that (I think) would put the Democrats way out in front. But I'll have to give some technical background first.

An article in this week's New Scientist explains that our sense of morality is a mixture of logical reasoning and emotional reactions and which predominates is dependent upon the precise situation (introduction to article here but you have to be a subscriber to read it in full). In certain situations we evaluate the harms and benefits of various actions rationally but in other situations (particularly where a quick response is necessary) we react emotionally. This is not a hypothesis, it has been verified by brain scans of people presented with various situations and different areas of the brain come into play in different circumstances. The article goes on to say that emotional reactions are conditioned to a significant degree by social interactions: at one time mixed-race marriages and homosexuality were felt by most people to be emotionally disgusting but as attitudes have changed most (sane) people no longer feel a sense of revulsion at those ideas.

An example given in the article is that of a tram (the article used the US terminology "trolley" even though New Scientist is a UK publication) obviously out of control. It is heading down the track towards five people who are stuck on the track and who will surely die. However, you are in a position to divert the tram onto a fork in the track, sparing those five people, but where it will kill one person stuck on the other track. What do you do: walk away and let five people die or throw the lever and have one person die? Most people evaluate this rationally and throw the lever because it is better that one dies than five die.

I'm a bit more critical and would want to know (if possible) the merits of the potential dead: five 99-year-old Alzheimer's sufferers who have lived long, happy lives and are now living vegetables are not worth one five-year-old child with a potentially long life ahead of it. Five brain-retarded infants who will never manage to even go potty by themselves are not worth one Albert Einstein with only a year of life left (in my opinion, of course). One Mohamed ElBaradei (who won the Nobel Peace Prize recently) is worth far more than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and Rice (who lied the US into war). But I'm a realist and know that in an imperfect world I wouldn't have this information available to me, so I'd sacrifice one life to save five.

The article then recasts the problem in a different way. Again, there is a runaway tram (trolley). Again, five people are stuck on the track and will surely die. But this time there is no fork in the track. And this time you are on a bridge above the track. However, this time there is one person in a car that you could nudge off the bridge onto the track using your own car (the article actually posits an incredibly obese person not in a car whom you could push off the bridge and whose body mass would halt the tram, but I found that scenario stretched my credulity too far). So now the situation is that by inaction you can allow five people to die or you can deliberately murder one person to save those five.

Isn't that the same as throwing the lever to shunt the tram onto the other track? If you throw that lever haven't you murdered the guy on the other track? Logically, yes. But that's not how our brains process the information. In the first situation you are confronted with a simple decision between greater and lesser. In the second situation your brain handles things emotionally and it feels like you are murdering somebody. Different areas of the brain are involved and different conclusions are reached.

As the article points out, politicians say it's about winning hearts not minds. The difference in the two situations is whether the problem touches the rational parts of our brain or the emotional parts (the heart is popularly used as a way of referring to the emotions). Same problem, but the reaction depends entirely upon how it is framed. With that in mind, I'll propose a TV advert for the Democrats (undoubtedly it could be greatly improved upon).

The advert uses the visuals and words of Democratic Representative John Murtha from a recent speech to the House of Representatives. There is, of course, also text on the screen.

It starts with Murtha's words calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and that our military has accomplished its task and done its duty, words spoken as Murtha struggled to choke back tears. The text on screen points out that Murtha is a Korean and Vietnam vet with a bronze star and two purple hearts.

It continues with Murthas word's that the US troops have become the primary target for the insurgency; that they have become a catalyst for violence; that all US troops could be withdrawn within six months. The text points out that Murtha is a hawk, a strong ally of the Pentagon and originally supported the war in Iraq.

It continues with Murtha relating that several times a year he visits Iraq to assess the situation and frequently visits troops in hospitals in the US. The text explains that the Bush administration is trying to cut veterans' benefits and funding for VA medical treatment.

It finishes with Murtha's poignant explanation, with his voice cracking and tears flooding his eyes, that one of the wounded soldiers he visited in Walter Reed Hospital was blinded and lost both hands. When Murtha asked his family if there was anything he could do, they complained bitterly that because the injuries were caused by "friendly fire" the soldier had been denied a purple heart. As Murtha said:

I met with the commandant. I said, If you dont give him a Purple Heart, Ill give him one of mine. And they gave him a Purple Heart.

The text on screen points out that Bush has not shed a single tear over the death of more than 2,000 US troops but Murtha weeps because a deserving soldier is denied a purple heart. The Bush administration claims to care about the troops but does not. It is because the Democrats care about the troops that they want to bring them home.

OK, maybe I've had too much wine and am in a maudlin mood, but creating that scenario made me weep as I wrote it. Did a tear come to your eye as you read it? Can you visualize the impact of Murtha saying those words, with his voice cracking and his eyes flooding with tears without weeping yourself? Can you imagine anything more powerful that will wrench the guts of anyone who sees it? Can you imagine Bush's popularity remaining above 1% after it airs?

It's about winning hearts not minds... (and if you can do so by telling the truth rather than lying then it's actually justifiable).

Cheney has fucked himself

2005-11-25T14:26:00.000Z

The Center for Public Integrity reports that Cheney is refusing to comply with travel disclosure rules which apply to all agencies of the executive branch. Cheney's excuse is that the Office of Vice President is not part of the executive branch.

The article quotes Stephen D. Potts (Office of Government Ethics Director under Reagan and Bush-the-slightly-smarter) as saying that the claim for exemption is "unusual." Potts then says he thinks a case could be made for excluding the VP but that such an exclusion would also apply to the pResident. I am not a lawyer, but Potts is talking crap and Cheney is right.

The Constitution does not define any executive-branch rôle for the VP as long as the pResident is able to carry out his functions. If the pResident dies then the VP becomes pResident. If the pResident becomes incapacitated then the VP becomes acting pResident until the pRresident is once again able to carry out his duties or his term of office ends. Therefore the Office of Vice President is not part of the executive branch (as long as the pResident is capable of carrying out his duties).

Does that leave the VP in Constitutional limbo? No, because the Constitution does define a governmental rôle for the VP: he is President of the Senate. That puts the VP very firmly into the congressional branch, not the executive branch. So Cheney is correct, he is not part of the executive branch.

And that is why Cheney has just fucked himself. He has steadfastly refused to make public the minutes of his energy policy meetings. He has argued the case in court, and won, because he claimed executive privilege. But Cheney has just claimed that he is not part of the executive branch, and a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution says that he is correct. Therefore Cheney cannot withold those minutes on the grounds of executive privilege because it cannot apply to him.

Cheney cannot have it both ways. If he is part of the executive branch then he can withold those minutes but is in breach of travel disclosure regulations. If he is not part of the executive branch then he is not in breach of travel disclosure regulations but cannot withold those minutes.

Of course, the Supreme Court may let Cheney have it both ways. But even they must be feeling a little guilt over aiding Bush steal the election in 2000 and what five years of Bush/Cheney maladministration has done to the US.

Jean Shit

2005-11-23T04:17:00.000Z

After Jean Shit's (she spells her surname "Schmidt," but it's pronounced "shit") attack on Murtha, let me remind her of something.

The Republican Party of today, like the UK's Thatcherites of years gone by, wants to return to "Victorian values." The values that say that if you screw up badly, you retire to your bedroom, place your service revolver (what's that - Jean didn't serve but Murtha did?) to your temple and pull the trigger out of fucking shame.

Fucking kill yourself, Jean, just fucking kill yourself. Put yourself out of your misery for being a moronic bitch and save the rest of the world from another Bush supporter. Just fucking do it.

You know it makes sense.

Creation Physics

2005-11-22T23:27:00.000Z

Creationism (the idea that all species were created by God as described in Genesis) has been relabelled as "Intelligent Design" in the hopes of sneaking it into the classroom as a science. So it's time to look not only at Creation Biology but Creation Physics.

During the Englightenment many writers mocked the physics of the Old Testament and poured scorn on the authors of Genesis for such silly ideas. Since I am an atheist, you might expect me to take the same tack, but you'd be wrong. And before you write, I know that Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch is attributed to Moses, but in the Pentateuch you will find a description of Moses' death and funeral and a listing of events that took place after he died, so at least some of the Pentateuch was written by people other than Moses.

The authors of Genesis came up with what they thought was a reasonable explanation of how things were:

The earth was flat.
A hemispherical dome of a solid, non-transparent material, which they called the firmament and which we call the sky, covered the earth.
Atop the firmament was God's throne and Heaven.
The sun and the moon were navigation beacons which travelled around between us and the firmament (sky). Somehow, at night, the sun was transported to a new position ready to rise again in the east.
The sun and the moon gave off light, but were not the source of daylight. Light just was ("let there be light, and there was light") without a specific source.
Holes in the firmament allowed water to fall through as rain. At night those holes admitted light from Heaven and showed up as stars.

Most people with a reasonable degree of intelligence and education know just how wrong those ideas are. Some people may even know that when Genesis was written there were those who believe the earth to be spherical (and in 230 BCE Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the earth). So why am I not mocking the authors of Genesis? Because I remember being a child, and how things appeared.

The earth looked flat to me. Sure there were hills and valleys in the distance, but the ground didn't look curved. Sure I knew when my parents drove me somewhere a long way away I'd see new stuff I couldn't see from home, but things in the distance look very small, so maybe I really could see the new stuff all along but it was so small I couldn't make out the details. It was only when my parents took me on holiday to the seaside and I saw a ship disappear over the horizon that I had evidence from my own eyes that supported the idea of a spherical earth.

Look up at the sky on a cloudless (or near cloudless) day. That deep, baby blue with no hint of anything beyond. Doesn't it look hemispherical to you? Damned right it does, because what you can see of it is a portion of a sphere. It's a good deal less than a hemisphere, but your eyes cannot detect that. And it sure as hell looks like it touches the earth at the horizon.

If the sky is solid and not transparent (and it certainly looks that way because you can't see anything beyond it) then the sun and moon have to be closer than the sky. But suppose you thought the sky transparent, like blue glass, and said the reason you couldn't see anything beyond it was because there wasn't anything beyond it (other than God and his throne, but they're invisible to mortal eyes), you still wouldn't think the sun was further away than the sky. You'd know that if the sky were transparent and the sun were further away you'd see the same sort of effects as if you looked at a candle through blue glass.

Light coming from nowhere seems implausible. But go outside. If the sun is visible you'll see a shadow from the sun. But if the sun is obscured by cloud there will be no shadow but there is light. If the sun were the only source of light then when it was obscured by cloud there would be no daylight. If you don't know about Rayleigh scattering in the upper atmosphere then that's pretty damned obvious. So the sun emits light but it is not the source of daylight.

And that's why I'm not mocking the authors of Genesis. They did a pretty good job of describing what they saw and trying to explain it. Others (like Eratosthenes) did a better job, but given the limitations of a nomadic tribe what they came up with was not stupid. Absolutely, totally, utterly wrong, yes, but not stupid. It was an honest attempt to explain the world about them. They do not deserve scorn for an honest attempt to understand the world about them.

But that is why the religious fundamentalists who claim the ~~Babble~~Bible is the inerrant word of God do deserve scorn and contempt. Because there are only two ways the authors of Genesis could have come up with a theory that was so wrong. The first is that they made it up and God did not tell them all this stuff. The second is that God lied to them to see how gullible they were. Both alternatives prove that the ~~Babble~~Bible is not the inerrant word of God.

Don't give me that bullshit about God having to feed them with stuff they could cope with. He's fucking God. He can work miracles. He can moon Moses. Yes, God really did moon Moses - the radiance of God's face was too much for Moses' eyes so God showed Moses his nether parts. If you can prove you're fucking God (y'know, by doing miracles) then you can say things like "You won't believe this, but the earth is a sphere and the sky is an illusion."

Some fucker performs miracles (and I do mean miracles as opposed to stage magic) in front of me, I'm going to take his word for stuff even if it doesn't make sense to me. Well, actually, I wouldn't, because I'm a cynical bastard. But I'd at least try to check it out. And whether I could prove it or disprove it, I'd document what this dude said.

So, basically, the ~~Babble~~Bible was the attempt of nomadic tribesmen to explain the world around them and the events that had happened to them. It is the words of fallible men, not of God. If it were the inerrant word of God then Creation Physics wouldn't be such a load of crap.

While I'm here, I might as well cover Creation Mathematics. The ~~Babble~~Bible says that π is three. The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is not 3.141592625358979... as modern mathematics tells us but 3.

Somebody will no doubt say that God had to limit what he said to what Moses could understand. That the Jews of the time knew about counting numbers (positive integers, e.g., 1, 2, 3...) and rational numbers (fractions such as one-half, three-quarters, ten-thirds) but not negative numbers, irrational numbers or transcendental numbers. OK, I'm not God, but let me see how well I can explain it given those limitations...

The circumference of a circle is approximately three times its diameter. In fact it is a little greater than this.

If the diameter is one cubit, the circumference is a little over three cubits. If the diameter is ten cubits, the circumference is a little over 31 cubits. If the diameter is 100 cubits, the circumference is a little over 314 cubits. If the diameter is 1000 cubits, the circumference is a little over 3141 cubits. If the diameter is 10000 cubits the circumference is a little over 31415 cubits. If the diameter is 100000 cubits the circumference is a little over 314159 cubits.

No matter what whole number of cubits you choose for the diameter, the circumference will never be a whole number of cubits. One day, perhaps, your descendents will understand enough to be able to prove this for themselves.

In the meantime, three is a good approximation for everyday purposes.

Just imagine if the ~~Babble~~Bible had said that. This was a time when nobody in the world had even the faintest concept that there were irrational numbers (numbers that could not be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers, such as five-eighths) let alone that there were transcendental numbers (not the roots of non-zero polynomial equations). This was a time when nobody in the world knew that π was a transcendental number and in fact thought it was the integer 3. This was a time when nobody in the world had the mathematical tools to prove that π was not an integer, let alone calculate it to five decimal places.

If that were in the ~~Babble~~Bible, I'd find it a compelling reason to believe there was a God. That would be the sort of thing that God would know (he is, after all, omniscient) and the sort of thing those in Babblical times clearly did not know. It would have been the favourite mathematical puzzle for centuries until somebody finally proved it. And they'd have seen that the tools needed to prove it, and to calculate π to five decimal places, were far beyond the abilities of the authors of the Old Testament.

Inerrant fucking word of God? Don't make me laugh.

Fitzgerald, Libby, Woodward

2005-11-18T17:46:00.000Z

The latest revelations out of Plamegate are that some (as yet unidentified) administration official divulged Plame's name to Bob Woodward before Irvine Lewis "Scooter" Libby divulged it to other reporters.

Libby's lawyers immediately spun the issue as blowing apart Fitzgerald's case that Libby was the first official to leak Plame's name to a reporter, which is pure bullshit.

Some of the mainstream media, and a lot of left-wing bloggers, have tried to show why that claim is bullshit, but all of the ones I've seen have missed the obvious.

All of them point out this comment by Fitz (emphasis mine):

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

They all point out that later in his statement, Fitz said this, which is what Libby's Lawyer and the right-wing spin machine pounced on:

He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter.

As the others point out, it should be understood in light of Fitz's earlier comment which included the word "known" that he intended that meaning here too. It was a long statement. Humans often "contextualize": that which is said should be understood in the light of earlier comments. An example is the use of the indirect pronoun "he" in the first sentence of this paragraph, which refers back to Fitz. Another example is the use of "Fitz" in the first sentence of this paragraph, which refers to Fitzgerald. Contextualization can extend back much further.

But here's the point that the others miss. It should go without saying that even if Fitz had not first used the phrase "first official known" and instead had said "first official" that it was the first official known to Fitz's investigation.

Fitz would have to have interviewed every reporter on the planet and be absolutely certain that he had obtained the truth from every last one of them in order to know which reporter was given the information first. He would have had to persuade every last one of them to divulge the identity of their source to find out which official was the first to leak.

God, if there is one, knows which administration official leaked first. The leakers themselves may know which one leaked first, if they have all discussed it with each other. In a Grand Jury investigation, Fitz can know only what the evidence uncovered so far tells him. He can know only which official, according to the evidence uncovered so far, is known to the Grand Jury to have leaked first.

That ought to be so damned obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that Fitz ought not to have needed to emphasise it. But he did so anyway, for the benefit of the hard-of-thinking. And he did so early in his statement, so that there would be no doubt if he later contextualized and omitted the "known."

Look at it another way: how the hell could Fitz tell us what he doesn't know? He can't.

For those who want to have us believe that Fitz should have been more careful throughout his very long statement, they should first demonstrate that President Fucktard can string together two coherent sentences without a single error, and the meaning of which does not contradict reality.

Osama bin Laden - Evil Supergenius?

2005-11-16T22:20:00.000Z

Osama bin Laden is an evil supergenius, so we have been told by the Bush administration (but most people now understand that the Bushies lie about everything). Only a supergenius could have come up with such a plan and carried it out, they say.

If that's the case, why was the plan that was executed on 9-11 so completely fucking crap? The plan should not have worked. The plan was guaranteed to fail, and you didn't have to be even a genius, let alone a supergenius, to know it would fail. The best that plan could have possibly achieved was to force the USAF to shoot down four passenger aircraft carrying US civilians. Indeed, it was a very good plan for forcing the USAF to shoot down passenger aircraft, but that was not the intention of the plan. Why do I insist the plan that was carried out on 9-11 was totally unworkable?

For several decades before 9-11, NORAD (the North American Air Defense Command), ATC (US Air Traffic Control) and the USAF had a set of standard operating procedures. If an aircraft did not make a scheduled contact with ATC, or if an aircraft failed to respond to a contact initiated by ATC, or if an aircract deviated from charted course, or if an aircraft switched off its transponder (which sends out an idenfication code and the altitude of the aircraft), then NORAD and the USAF were immediately alerted. The USAF would scramble one or more jet fighters to intercept the aircraft, and the fighters are expected to be alongside the aircraft within fifteen minutes of being alerted.

The fighter pilot would assess the situation. If he saw structural damage that had caused depressurization and no sign of movement of crew or passengers he'd know they were probably all dead and the plane was travelling on auto-pilot (this was precisely what had happened to the Learjet carrying golfer Payne Stewart). If the (uniformed) crew were in the cockpit and moving, the fighter pilot would try to contact them by radio. If that didn't work, the fighter pilot and passenger pilot would exchange signals by (in daylight) manœuvres such as rocking wings or (at night) by flashing navigation lights. These signals are pre-defined by the USAF and are taught to all pilots who fly in US airspace.

Until a few months after Bush stole the 2000 election, if all on the passenger plane were dead, or if it appeared that the passenger plane's crew were out of action (possibly through food poisoning or illness) and passengers were struggling to control the plane, or if it appeared that the plane had been hijacked, then the fighter pilot was authorized to shoot down the passenger plane if it appeared to pose a threat to life or property. The fighter pilot didn't have to ask up the chain of command because the delays that would entail could mean an answer came too late. It makes sense that it should be that way: if the passenger plane is about to crash into a populated area then all on board will be killed whether it is shot down or crashes, but if it is shot down then people on the ground will be saved.

After Bush stole the election, Rumsfeld (for reasons never explained) decided that the fighter pilot would need to obtain presidential authority for a shoot-down. A life-or-death situation with possibly only minutes to make a decision. Yet the pilot would have to go through his chain of command until reaching somebody with sufficient rank to wake up President Chimp in the middle of the night, or in the middle of a nap (and we all now know how ratty he is if his sleep is interrupted because of the atrocious impoliteness of his in South America because they kept him up past his bedtime).

Anyone who knows how the military chain of command works knows what would really happen. If there was sufficient time the pilot would work his way up through the chain of command and would very shortly hit somebody who would say "I'll try to reach the President but if time runs out then shoot the bastard down and I'll take the blame by saying I lied to you about Presidential authority." If there wasn't even time for that then the pilot would shoot down the passenger plane anyway. Whether the pilot made the decision or one of his superiors did, there would be an expectation that an honourable President (i.e., one who does not have the surname "Bush") would check on what happened, figure out that the right action had been taken, and claim to have given Presidential authorization (one of the few lies I could condone a President for telling).

Would Osama have known about this standard operating procedure? Until 9-11 it was documented on various USAF websites and on the ATC website. The highjackers would have been told about it during the knowledge part of their training. Very early on in their training, because it's one of the things you really need to know about: being shot down because your radio isn't working and you don't know what a USAF fighter rocking his wings in front of you means can really ruin your day. One way or another, Osama would have learned of it and would have adjusted his plans accordingly.

Except he didn't. All four hijacked planes stopped communicating with ATC. All four planes turned off their transponders. They arrived at their targets at different times, with over an hour's gap in some cases, giving ATC plenty to be suspicious about after WTC1 was hit. And all four planes went wildly off-course: take a look at the map below (there are bigger maps which show that flight 11 even had a small semicircular deviation in its course). And they all did so at least 30 minutes' flying time away from their targets, so there was plenty of time to realize something was wrong and scramble a fighter to intercept.

As I said, a good plan for forcing the US to shoot down passenger planes. Of course, if Osama had just wanted to kill the passengers the highjackers could have flown the planes into the ground. But I suppose there is some added benefit in terms of humiliating the US in having the USAF have to shoot down the planes. But as a way of achieving the events of 9-11 it is a totally fucking crap plan. It could not possibly have worked. I'm no supergenius, but even I can figure out a better plan than that. If I were a supergenius I could figure out the answer without needing intermediate steps, so bear with me as I work my way through the alternatives.

All the known targets, and the hypothesised target of flight 77 (Washington, DC) had nearby airports. So why not hijack planes which were destined for the airports near the targets and divert at the last moment? No suspicious gallivanting all over the sky. No suspicious diversion when so far from the target that an interception was possible. Before ATC even had chance to alert the USAF the plane would have struck its target. Perfect! Except for one thing.

It's hard to be sure what Osama did intend with the twin towers. There is a videotape of dubious provenance of somebody who looks a little like Osama saying that he thought the towers might collapse but he wasn't sure. I wouldn't have been sure either because those towers had been designed to withstand an impact from a fully-fuelled 707 (which has almost the same kinetic energy, mass and fuel load as the 767s which actually hit). I'd have been even less sure since no tower of similar construction has ever collapsed as a result of fire, not even fires that were far more intense, were burning on more floors, and which burned for far longer. But whether Osama merely thought there would be a "Towering Inferno" or hoped there was a chance the towers would collapse, he'd want as much fuel as possible. He'd also want as much fuel as possible in case one of his novice pilots hit a tower at an angle and a lot of fuel slooshed out the adjacent side of the building (as happened with WTC2, causing a spectacular fireball).

Planes generally do not start their journies with full tanks. The more weight a plane carries, the more fuel it has burn to carry that weight. So carrying fuel in excess of what is required is just burning money carrying fuel you didn't need (by the same token your car's fuel economy will improve a lot if you don't fill the tank more than half full except when you have a journey with a hell of a long way between gas stations). Planes carry the minimum amount of fuel needed to get the payload to the destination, plus a little extra as a safety margin in case there are unexpected headwinds or the plane is forced to divert to an alternative airport. So there wouldn't be enough fuel for what Osama wanted to do. Can we improve upon the plan and somehow minimize suspicion while maximizing fuel? We can indeed.

Hijack planes departing from airports near their targets. Once you've taken control, report a problem to ATC that requires a return to the airport. There are a good many reasons why this may be required. As long as you take control before the plane is closer to a different airport than the one you departed from, it's going to work. Maximum fuel load because you're near the start of the journey. In fact you can get a lot more fuel for the twin towers if you hijack a transatlantic flight instead of an internal flight. Although ATC might be a little suspicious about you turning back, particularly if they recognize that the voice making the request wasn't the one they originally talked to, they won't be too suspicious. You could say you were a passenger with no experience in that type of aircraft because the flight crew had come down with food poisoning. You could even say you were a hijacker and wanted to hold the passengers hostage until some terrorist prisoners were released and you wanted to be sure there was enough fuel on board that you could use that plane to get those prisoners out of the US. You could even persuade a radical muslim who speaks English with a US accent to join your hijack team. Your plane, with as much fuel as possible, is on its way back to the airport it took off from. At the last minute you divert to your target. Perfect! Well, almost.

Departures are frequently delayed. But ideally you want all your hijacked planes to hit their targets within no more than five or ten minutes of each other. After the first aircraft hits ATC might wonder if the other aircraft that turned back are going to do something similar. After the second aircraft hits they'll be damned sure of it. Fighters will be scrambled, so the rest of the hijacked aircraft have to hit their targets before they can be shot down. Can we cope with that? Yes.

All the planes had skyphones. Shortly after takeoff one of the hijackers would phone an accomplice on the ground saying when the aircraft departed. As soon as the hijackers take control, they would again phone the accomplice saying when it happened. When the accomplice is told of the time the final aircraft is hijacked, he works out when each would have to turn around in order to arrive at their targets close together. Every five minutes the hijackers phone the accomplice to ask him when to turn around. It may seem a complex calculation, perhaps even an impossible requirement to meet. But if you hijack transatlantic flights scheduled to depart NW before the others depart DC, they have plenty of extra fuel anyway. If the DC flights are delayed the NY flights still have plenty of fuel. If the NY flights are delayed that just brings their departure time closer to that of the DC flights. The calculations may seem a little complex, but a supergenius would have no difficulty writing a computer program to perform them.

So there you have it. None of the four planes do anything that would cause a USAF fighter to be scrambled until they divert at the very last moment (when no fighter could reach them in time). All of them have as much fuel as possible so as to cause the most damage. All of them arrive so closely together that by the time ATC has figured out what's going on and fighters have been scrambled then the last plane has hit its target. Now that really is perfect.

And you don't have to be a supergenius to figure it out (because I know I'm not even a genius). So that must have been how supergenius Osama planned it, and it must have been how it was carried out. Right? As we all know, wrong. Osama did it in the worst way possible. A way guaranteed to fail. In fact it was such a totally fucking crap plan that Osama makes Inspector Clousseau look like the world's smartest and most competent man.

But wait, I hear you say. On 9-11, Dick Cheney was personally supervising several exercises designed to test the response to a situation exactly like what happened that day (how coincidental) even though "nobody would ever have anticipated aircraft being used as missiles." Maybe Osama got wind of that and figured out he could do it the way he did, burning off valuable fuel, rather than the sensible way that maximized fuel.

That doesn't fly. In the first place, why would Osama trust such information? It could well be that the CIA had learned of his plans and was feeding him disinformation in the hope of luring him into doing it the stupid way so that the USAF would have a bigger safety margin in the amount of time needed to intercept. In the second place, why waste all that fuel doing it the stupid way? In the third place, he had to have figured that the exercise would be a full end-to-end test involving interceptors because the fighters would have no knowledge of the hijacked plane's altitude once it switched its transponder of and, anyway, part of the exercise would be checking that the fighters scrambled and intercepted within the specified time. In the fourth place he had to have figured out that the military top brass would be observing results and be comparing when a plane was intercepted against when it was scheduled to misbehave: as soon as one of Osama's hijacked planes misbehaved the top brass would realize it was a real hijack.

Ah, you say, but it was an exercise so the fighters would have been fitted with dummy weapons to prevent accidents. Maybe, but a sane exercise would plan for the possibility that a real hijack might occur in the middle of the exercise and plan accordingly. But even if not, the fighter pilots had another option.

Air Force pilots of many countries have found themselves in a crippled aircraft. Normally they eject and let the aircraft crash. But in cases where they are near a populated area and there is a chance that the aircraft will kill civilians, they stay with the aircraft right to the end in order to guide it to an unpopulated (or at least less-densely populated) area. They haven't been given orders that they must do that, they do it from a sense of duty. They knew when they signed up that one day they might have to give their lives to protect their fellow countrymen, so they stay with the aircraft until it hits the ground. With that sort of tradition, do you think there is any USAF pilot who would not have willingly rammed a hijacked plane about to hit the World Trade Center?

The only reason that Osama succeeded is that the Bush administration, the intelligence agencies, ATC, NORAD, and the USAF were all apparently even more staggeringly, bumblingly incompetent than Osama was. Apparently, rather than being a battle between the mighty, competent, smart US and supergenius Osama, it was a battle of the clowns. Or maybe not...

It all makes sense if it was an inside job. One in which Dick Cheney's exercises were designed to confuse the hell out of ATC and delay them reporting to NORAD and the USAF. Those four hijacked planes were assumed to be part of the exercise. An exercise that should have been a full end-to-end test of interception times and that should have made provision for a real hijack occurring during the exercise (especially after the August 6th Presidential Daily Brief warning that Osama was determined to hijack planes and attack the United States) but, as events of that day clearly show us, did not do end-to-end tests or allow for the possibility of a real hijacking occuring at the same time.

And that explains why every shred of evidence points to the twin towers and WTC7 being dropped by controlled explosive demolitions. If Osama had been able to plant such charges he wouldn't have needed the hijacks. But the only way Osama would have been able to place the many charges required throughout the building would be if his brother, Jeb bin Laden, were a senior executive for the company which handled World Trade Center security (by contrast, George W Bush's brother, James Ellis "Jeb" Bush, was a senior executive for the company which handled WTC security). The hijacks were a cover for an inside job.

But why, if it was an inside job, do it the wrong way? Why not do it the way it should have been done if Osama really had been behind it? Why do it in a way which made ATC, NORAD and the USAF look like incompetents and fools? Why do it in a way that means that people like me can point out that Osama wouldn't have done it that way? Why do it in a way that the only plausible explanation for how it happened is that it was an inside job?

Simple. It was a made-for-TV reality horror movie. One that kept the audience glued to its seats. A hijacked aircraft has been flown into WTC1. There are three (or, as some reports said, four) more hijacked aircraft. Where will they strike? Will it be the building I, or one of my loved ones, is in? What will happen next? Oh no! Now an aircraft has hit WTC2. How much longer will it take them to find these other hijacked aircraft? Oh my God! WTC2 just collapsed. What about WTC1? Will it collapse too? What about those remaining two (three?) hijacked aircraft? Oh god! Now it's the Pentagon! Where next? They think Washington, again, maybe.

An emotional roller-coaster that kept everyone (in a position to watch it happening) glued to their seats. Just blowing up the buildings would not have had as much effect. Nor would it have permitted the introduction of the draconian, inaptly-named USA PATRIOT Act. And just blowing up the buildings would have led to questions of how Osama had managed to rig up a controlled explosive demolition (a simple bomb, as used in his first attempt, would have caused the tower to topple). So now you know why it happened the way it did, using a plan that could not possibly have worked.

I know what you're going to say. Osama would have liked that emotional roller-coaster too. So maybe he did do it that way after all. Yes, but Osama would have known he'd have only one shot. After that airport security would be tightened up to the extent that he could never do it again anywhere in the world (actually, US airport security hasn't been tightened up enough to stop him). He'd be gambling everything, being almost guaranteed to lose, to get a little extra shock and horror. If he thought there was a reasonable chance he could get away with it then maybe he'd have taken that risk. But as an evil supergenius he'd know he'd blow his one and only chance to cause serious damage to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and wherever that fourth plane was headed. As a supergenius he'd realize that doing it the wrong way in the hope of getting a little extra shock and horror was about as sensible as playing Russian Roulette with a fully-loaded revolver in the hope of impressing people how brave he was.

As mathematicians and philosophers say: "reductio ad absurdum" meaning "reduced to absurdity" or "proof by contradiction." You set out to disprove something (that Osama was an evil supergenius behind the attacks) by assuming, for the sake of argument, that which you wish to disprove is true. You then show that if the thing you wish to disprove were true it leads to logical contradictions (Osama is a supergenius yet he is also a bumbling, incompetent fucktard). That which you wished to disprove must, therefore, be false.

Osama may or may not be a genius. Osama may or may not even have been involved. It was an inside job, and if Osama was involved the reason it happened the way it did was because his masters in the Bush administration told him to do it that way.

Intelligent Design

2005-11-15T02:12:00.000Z

Koffee Anna just done tol' me that ah wuz intelluhguntly designed!

Abuse of Presidential pardons are the road to tyrrany

2005-11-14T20:53:00.000Z

The founding fathers tried to ensure that no one branch of government (president, congress and judiciary) could dominate the other two. This was the reason for the so called "separation of powers." As James Madison put it in Federalist Paper No. 47:

No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

Sadly, the founding fathers did not spot the loophole in the presidential power to pardon that could be exploited, and has already been exploited by past presidents. The problem is that the Constitution does not allow for a judicial or congressional challenge to a presidential pardon. The President can be impeached by Congress for issuing the pardon, but when both houses are held by the same party as the President, and when those houses are dominated by corrupt, unethical, power-hungry, evil men, that's not going to happen. But even if Congress suddenly came down with a case of ethics and impeached the President, abuse of the presidential pardon may render the impeachment null and void.

Take Scooter Libby. If his case goes to trial, and if he is found guilty, Dubya can issue a pardon without challenge. Therefore if the presidential pardon is abused in this way it follows that anyone in the executive can get away any crime. Of course, if the crime is serious enough, and the abuse of the pardon power egregious enough, Congress might impeach the President.

Of course, if the Libby case went to trial there would likely be testimony and evidence that damns Cheney, Rove and Bush as conspirators in Plamegate. So Dubya may abuse his powers even more by issuing a pre-emptive pardon. That not only gets Libby off the hook, it prevents others such as Rove, Cheney and even Bush himself from being put on the hook as a result of whatever would have come out at Libby's trial. It has been done by past Republican Presidents, so the precedent is there. You can basically have an executive that is composed of a bunch of corrupt crooks and they can get away with anything they want (or the President wants).

It is possible to conceive of cases involving national security (and by that I mean real national security which affects the well-being of the US rather than cover-your-ass stuff) where allowing a case to come to trial would reveal sensitive information to foreign powers, and so a pre-emptive pardon might, in rare cases, be justifiable. I believe that in the case of pre-emptive pardons, Congress should have the power to compel the President to explain his reasons (in closed session, of course); to compel the President to turn over all relevant documents; to compel the President to answer questions under oath; to sub-poena any other relevant person to answer questions under oath; and finally that the pardon will only be allowed to stand if both houses each approve it by a majority vote.

Recent Republican presidents took their abuse of the pardon power even further. They issued pre-emptive pardons not just for charges on indictments to prevent the case going to trial but for all crimes that may have been committed but are as yet unknown to prosecutors, and all crimes that may result in the future as an inexorable consequence of past crimes. The natural consequence of this is that a President can, at the very start of his term, put all of the executive above the law by granting them all pre-emptive pardons for anything they may do.

Again it's possible to conceive of a national security issue where this might be justifiable, one where any charge that might appear against a person would reveal something vital to national security. It would have to be one hell of a justification though. I believe that this, like the "ordinary" pre-emptive pardon, must be challengable by Congress. But that in this case each house must approve the pardon by a supermajority of two-thirds.

Finally, if we allow that the President should be able to issue pre-emptive pardons which cover not just known past crimes not just past crimes not yet known to prosecutors, but also future crimes, then there is one truly frightening possibility for abuse. One so horrible that Nixon, Reagan or Bush 41 didn't dare try it. But with the precedent of pre-emptive pardons against future crimes set by Bush 41, it is no longer unthinkable. What if, at the start of his term or whenever it becomes expedient, the President pardons himself for all future crimes committed while in office? The President truly becomes above the law. It is not even clear that he could then be successfully impeached. Congress might impeach the President, but how could they make it stick if he refused to vacate the office? Sure, refusing to vacate the office after being impeached is a crime, but the President has just put himself above the law. It is doubtful that there could be any legal redress that could be used to force him to step down. But even if the impeachment did succeed, the President has gotten away with all crimes committed and cannot be punished.

It is clear that the founding fathers did not intend the presidential pardon to be used in that way. It is also clear that this type of abuse is just one tiny step up from the precedent set by Bush 41. And the only way to prevent that happening would be to exclude the President from being able to pardon himself and say that only Congress, if each house approves by a supermajority of two-thirds, can pardon the President.

To put all these safeguards in place would require a Constitutional amendment. An amendment, in my opinion, that is required very urgently. Unfortunately, I doubt that such an amendment would be passed by Congress even if the Democrates gain supermajorities in both houses next year (and by then it would probably be too late even if they did pass it).

Hey Jude

2005-11-14T03:47:00.000Z

Hi Ms Miller, I hope you'll forgive my overfamiliarity by referring to you as "Jude."

I see you are still defending your position against all comers, even though the NYT felt the time had come to let you go.

I see your claim that "if your sources are wrong, you are wrong" but wonder how thoroughly you vetted those sources.

I see that you referred to yourself as "miss run amok" indicating that you were a law unto yourself yet you also claim that you were not out of control and resent Maureen O'Dowd saying that you ought to have been put on a leash.

I note a consistent pattern here: it's not your fault - your sources were wrong, but it's not your fault that they were wrong, you just reported what you were told. Despite the fact that I don't trust a single word you say, for the sake of argument I will accept that claim. But here's my problem with it.

Even if I accept your claim that you were an unwitting accomplice in the lies the administration used to lead the US into an illegal war, over 2,000 US military personnel have died. US mercenaries (known as "contractors") have died. Members of the few allies the US has in Iraq have died. Tens of thousands of US military personnel have suffered severe wounds (more severe than anything seen in the Vietnam war), post-traumatic stress syndrome, etc. Many tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. Many, many tens of thousands of Iraqis have been wounded. So much death and destruction based upon lies. Lies that you, unwittingly (you claim) facilitated.

And yet you express not the slightest sorrow that, however unwittingly, you facilitated this. Nary a word to say that you wish you had known the truth earlier so that you could have, perhaps, reduced the suffering and bloodshed. Not the slightest concern for the dead and wounded, only for yourself.

The only way I can express my feelings for you is to paraphrase the words Joseph Welch uttered to Joseph McCarthy: Have you no fucking sense of decency, woman? At long last, have you left no fucking sense of decency?

In an earlier era most newspaper correspondents would have served a term in the military before becoming journalists. In that earlier era, those journalists would have retained their service revolvers after leaving the military. And in that earlier era, any journalist who had, however unwittingly, facilitated the number of deaths and casualties that you had, would have retired to his or her bedchamber, placed the service revolver against his or her temple, and pulled the trigger. They would have done that because they could not live with the shame of even indirectly and unwittingly having facilitated those deaths and casualties.

Do the honorable thing. Kill yourself. Now. No more fucking self-publicity. No more fucking self-promoting web-site. No more fucking multi-million book deal. No more fucking defending the indefensible. No more fucking excuses. Fucking kill yourself, now. Have you no fucking sense of decency, woman? At long last, have you left no fucking sense of decency? You cannot have, because if you did you'd have killed yourself by now rather than live with the shame of what you've done.

This far!

2005-11-11T03:49:00.000Z

Did we torture that Iraqi prisoner? No. Did we interrogate him vigorously? Yes. How far did we shove a broomstick up his ass? We shoved it this far up his ass.

Whaddaya mean?

2005-11-10T21:03:00.000Z

Whaddaya mean oh god, oh god, yes you can hear yesssssss a buzzing sound ahhhhhh, ahhhhh, ahhhhh coming from between my legs?

Asshole

2005-11-10T04:20:00.000Z

For those who find Eric Blumrich's excellent flash animation Idiot Son of an Asshole a little too abrasive, I can thoroughly reccomend the more relaxed (but just as critical) Filmstrip International's American Civics Volume II

Why torture?

2005-11-09T19:13:00.000Z

Dickhead Cheney still wants to be able to torture people. McCain added an amendment to the military spending bill re-affirming the many existing laws and treaties against torture. So Cheney is now trying to get the CIA excluded from the amendment, so that they can still torture people even though Bush keeps lying that the US doesn't torture people. Why?

McCain shouldn't have needed to add that amendment. The US is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit torture, and since those conventions are an international treaty they are constitutionally the supreme law of the land. The US is a signatory to an international treaty against torture, and again because it is an international treaty it is constitutionally the supreme law of the land. The eighth amendment to the US constitution forbids "cruel and unusual punishment." The US army rulebook prohibits torture. But Cheney wants the right to torture anyway. Why?

The CIA and other intelligence agencies know that torture is ineffective at getting information. In many cases the enemy uses "cells" to limit how much any one person knows, so the prisoner may simply not know the information you want. In many cases the enemy runs to a tight schedule, so even if the prisoner knows the information you want he can hold out long enough until the event you sought to prevent has happened. A clever prisoner will deliberately appear to "break" and feed you false information, sending you on wild goose chases and wasting your resources. And finally, even innocent people who were captured in error will eventually "break" and say absolutely anything to make the torture stop. The CIA must have made Cheney aware of all this but he wants the right to torture anyway. Why?

Well, there are three cases where torture is effective. None of them involve obtaining accurate information:

Obtaining a (false) confession from the innocent.

One reason for wanting a false confession is for a "show trial." Korea and the USSR have used this technique against Americans so they could wave the "confession" in front of the world and prove that the US was involved in doing "bad things." The USSR used the technique against its own political and military officials when they seemed on the point of gaining too much power.

Another reason for wanting a false confessions is to steal. When the Vatican altered the rules of the Spanish Inquisition so that inquisitors got to keep a large percentage of the possessions of the people they tortured, they switched from torturing widowed crones living in poverty to torturing the rich aristocracy.

I doubt Cheney wants torture for these purposes.
Suppressing a rebellion.

This has long been standard practise in tyrranies. People learn that anyone who shows the slightest sign of dissent vanishes. Months or even years later a tortured corpse might show up. A small fraction of those tortured are released so they can tell others just how bad it was. This is terrorism, pure and simple.

However, for this to be effective you need a fairly good domestic intelligence agency. If people think you're just torturing people at random then they have nothing to lose by rising up in rebellion. If, however, they know that you are fairly good at identifying those planning rebellion, they'll turn in anybody who even mentions rebellion.

The US does not have good enough intelligence in Iraq for this to work.
Keeping a rebellion going.

As I have stated before, the Bush administration wants to stay in Iraq until the oil runs out. The Bush administration is constructing 14 permanent military bases in Iraq from which it can attack the other oil-producing countries in the region. The Bush administration is constructing the largest ever embassy in Iraq, far larger than is needed, and which is almost certainly intended to become the administrative hub of the new oil colonies. Oil companies, defence contractors, Halliburton and Bechtel are all making money hand-over-fist as long as Iraq is in chaos.

If Iraq became a stable and peaceful country, capable of self-government, then the US would be obligated under the Geneva Conventions to withdraw. OTOH, as long as Iraq is in chaos then the Geneva Conventions require it to stay and fix things (there is a way of avoiding that obligation, by saying that staying is making matters worse and that stability will only occur if the US withdraws).

So the US tortures people in Iraq. Pictures and videos of the torture "leak." Women in Abu Ghraib smuggle out letters begging their relatives to kill them for the shame of being raped by US personnel. Some of the prisoners are released, and they recount their tales and show their scars. Iraqis are enraged, and the rebellion keeps growing.

So that is the reason why Cheney wants to be able to torture. He needs to be able to keep fanning the flames. Of course, the botched reconstruction efforts also fan the flames, but that's really a bonus side-effect of the racketeering by Halliburton and Bechtel rather than the primary purpose. It's the torture that's inflaming passions. It's the torture that's keeping this whole profitable (for the Bush administration and its cronies) exercise going.

It's the torture that is inflaming the entire islamic world against the US, and a very large percentage of the islamic world lives in countries that have a lot of oil. Inciting the people of those countries to carry out terrorist acts against the US will give the US the excuse it needs to invade them (if necessary, terrorist acts will be manufactured by the US itself).

And now you know why Cheney is desperately trying to retain the right to use a barbaric practise that the civilized world condemns. That treaties signed by the US and which are the supreme law of the land prohibit. That the 8th amendment to the US Constitution prohibits. Cheney wants to be able to torture because, for what Cheney wants to achieve, it is extremely effective.

The Federal Reserve

2005-11-06T19:10:00.000Z

Many others have covered this subject, but with Alan Greenspan about to retire as chairman of the Federal Reserve it's worth covering it again.

If you read this post, your first thought will be that I have spun an incredible, incoherent tale, based upon fantasy, to test your gullibility. When you realize that I am being completely serious and mean every word, you will think me insane. If you check out what I claim, you'll realize that the legislators who created the Federal Reserve were crooks of the highest order and that the Federal Reserve is the biggest scam you've ever heard of.

The full name of the Federal Reserve is "The Federal Reserve Bank," but it's more usually referred to as "The Federal Reserve" or just "The Fed." Two words in the full names are out-and-out lies.

The Federal Reserve Bank is not a branch of Federal Government. It is not under the control of Federal Government. A President can replace only a handful of the governors of the twelve constuent banks that make up the Fed during his two terms, so cannot hope to exert influence upon the Fed that way.

The Federal Reserve Bank has no reserves.

However, the Federal Reserve Bank is a bank. A consortium of twelve privately-owned banks.

Aside: A brief history of money.

Trade was originally done by barter: exchanging an object you had for an object you wanted more. But there were problems with that. You might not be able to find somebody who had what you wanted and who wanted what you had. Even if you did, the values of the two objects might be vastly different ("I'd like that knife. Do you have change for a pig?") So money was invented. Originally, money consisted of coins of precious metals that had an intrinsic value. Gold, silver and copper were the usual metals. All had intrinsic value in their own right (gold and silver for jewellery, copper for pipes, tools, alloys).

Storing your coins at home was a problem: they could be stolen. So banks were invented. You could store your coins in a secure bank and they'd record how much of your money they had and let you withdraw it on request (keeping track of how much you'd withdrawn, obviously). But you had to carry the coins you needed on a day-to-day basis around with you, and they were heavy. So banks came up with the idea of "banknotes." Technically, they are one of the many items collectively known as "promisory notes." IOUs are also promisory notes.

The difference between a banknote and an IOU was the fact that the bank honoured the banknote. A bank would only give you a banknote if you gave the bank one of your intrinsically-valuable coins. All banknotes promised that if you surrendered the note to the bank it would give you an equivalent amount in coin. The British one-pound banknote (no longer issued, ironically replaced by a coin, though one of an alloy with little intrinsic value) used to say "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of one pound" and bore the signature of the governor of the Bank of England.

British banknotes still carry that promise (though for different numbers of pounds, depending upon the denomination of the note). The banknotes of most other countries carry a similar promise. Originally, a one-pound note could be redeemed for one (British) pound of sterling silver (sterling meant a specific purity). This is why the full name of British currency is "the pound sterling." But there's no way you can exchange a five-pound note for five pounds of sterling silver (which, because of inflation, would cost a very great deal more). All you can do is exchange banknotes for other banknotes or for coins made of an alloy with little intrinsic value (if you melted them down and sold the alloy you'd end up out of pocket).

Back in the days when you could still theoretically exchange your note at the bank for gold, banks had a reserve of gold equal in value to the number of notes they issued. They were not allowed to issue more notes than they had gold to redeem, so that if everyone suddenly decided they wanted their gold instead of notes they would all be satisfied. The promise on the note was valid.

Years pass and banks persuade their respective governments to allow "fractional reserves." To issue more notes than they could redeem with their reserves of precious metal. Their reasoning was that not everyone would want their gold at the same time. In fact, hardly anyone asked for their gold. So the governments allowed it. Issuing more notes ("increasing the money supply") is one of the major causes of inflation. But the banks and governments were happy. Until the great crash in the US, when suddenly everyone wanted their gold (a "bankrush") and the banks had no possible way of redeeming more than a fraction of their notes.

Back to the story. The Fed has no reserves because some time after "fractional reserves" came into play, the US stopped backing currency with even fractional amounts of gold. It went off the "gold standard." US currency is now what is technically "fiat currency". Worthless bits of paper that can only be exchanged for other worthless bits of paper or for worthless coins. The economy works only as long as we all believe in the fairy tale and collectively agree that we will work an hour for a certain number of bits of worthless paper and that we can buy things like food for a different number of bits of worthless paper. When everyone stops believing the fairy tale you get hyperinflation (as in pre-WWII Germany) where you need a wheelbarrow to transport enough 1-million-deutschmark notes to pay for a loaf of bread.

But that's not the crazy part of the story. The governor of the Fed is the person who decides how much money will be in circulation and what the interest rate will be. The President can certainly ask the Fed to put more money into circulation, but the governor has to approve that request. The US Government is not in control of the US dollar, the Fed is, even though it is the US Treasury (which is a branch of Federal Government) which runs the printing presses that churn out dollar bills. The US Treasury is not permitted to print notes except as necessary to replace worn notes that are withdrawn from circulation and destroyed (by the US Treasury in a big furnace) unless they receive explicit authorization from the Fed. In fact, US dollar bills do not say that the US Government promises to redeem them but that the Federal Reserve Bank promises to do so. The Treasury may print the notes, but that's only because the Fed sub-contracts the work. Those notes are backed and honoured by the Fed.

And even that's not the crazy part of the story. Let's suppose Dick Cheney decides he would like an additional $1 billion in circulation. So he sends his pet monkey, Dubya, to go cap-in-hand to the Fed to make Cheney's case. After a long interview with the governor of the Fed (during which Dubya has to make many phone calls to his boss to ask for help), the governor of the Fed is persuaded that he will allow Dubya to put another $1 billion into circulation. Does the governor of the Fed go down to his vaults and return with a big pile of dollar bills? Nope, because the Fed doesn't have any reserves. What he does is authorize the US Treasury to print up those additional bills and put them into circulation.

That wasn't the crazy part of the story either, although you might have thought so. Here's the crazy part. The part you won't be able to believe because it seems so insane. You won't be able to believe the system really works that way. But it does. As Dubya turns to leave, the governor of the Fed reminds him that the Fed is a private bank and that it has just let Dubya have billion dollars. A billion dollars that the Fed, and the Fed alone, can redeem. In fact, that billion is not a gift from the Fed to the US Government but a loan.

Now you think I'm mad, but it has to be a loan. You can't go into a bank and expect them to simply give you money because that bank has to redeem that money somehow. You have to ask for a loan, and frequently you have to back the value of that loan with collateral (usually of greater value) that the bank can take away from you if you do not repay the loan. And you have to pay interest upon that loan.

Just think that over. Every US banknote in circulation has been borrowed from the Fed by the US Government. Every US banknote in circulation must eventually be paid back to the Fed (which would mean no money in circulation). As long as US banknotes are in circulation, the Fed is charging interest upon them. Suppose that, one day, the US Government said that enough was enough and decided to pay all the notes back to the Fed and issue its own notes. The Fed would then say "pay back the interest too." Which is absolutely impossible, because the US now has no banknotes with which to do so. So the US Government says to the Fed that they're printing their own notes and will pay back the interest with those. To which the Fed responds that it won't accept those notes, only its own notes.

At this point you've concluded either that the Fed is the biggest scam in the history of the US or that I am insane. At this point you should think about the "national debt." You've probably heard of it. You may even know that it only ever gets bigger. But you probably don't know why it exists in the first place. The national debt is all the money the US Government owes to the Fed: the amount of currency in circulation plus all the accumulated interest.

The Fed wasn't the first bank to operate this way. Other countries have long since had what are known as "central banks" running the same scam. One of the first was the Bank of England. They sold this crazy scheme to an inbred, somewhat insane, monarch (similar to Dubya) on the basis that although there would be an ever-increasing national debt, inflation would decrease the value of the notes and everything would balance. Most of us know that banks are like people who will lend you an umbrella, but only if it's not raining. However, this inbred monarch fell for the scheme, and so did others.

Perhaps you've guessed this already, but the same family started all these central banks, from the Bank of England to the US Federal Reserve Bank. Usually, there is a long, twisted, trail of ownership. The twelve constituent banks of the Fed are owned by other banks, which are owned by a small number of families, acting as cut-outs for this one family. At the top of the pyramid is the Rothschilds. At the second level of the pyramid are twelve families such as the Morgans, Lazards, and Rockefellers. See this for the very twisted trail of ownership, which finally culminates in the Rothschilds.

For those who want more detail, see this (a book-length read, and perhaps too much to take in at once.

Actually, the Fed was not the first attempt by the Rothschilds to create a central bank in the US. Although the predecessor central banks failed or had their charters revoked, they kept on trying. And here is the curious thing. Any president who tried to shut down those banks, or have the US issue its own currency, or return to the gold standard, was the subject of an assassination attempt (almost all of them successful):

1832, Andrew Jackson vetoes renewing the charter of the "Bank of the United States." There were at least two attempts upon his life after that.
Lincoln needed finance for the Civil War but the central bank wanted to charge ridiculous rates of interest. Lincoln decided the US Government would issue its own curency (known as the "greenback" because the back of the note was printed in green). He was shot at a play and the greenback died shortly after.
James Garfield ran on a return to the gold standard and a promise to fight the international bankers. Assassinated.
William McKinley wanted a return to the gold standard and to get rid of the central banks. Assassinated.
June 14th, 1963. John F. Kennedy signs executive order 11110 authorizing the US Treasury to issue US Government notes up to the value of the bullion reserves held by the Treasury, bypassing the Fed completely. Six months later JFK left his brains on the back seat of a car in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson (his successor) rescinded executive order 11110.
One person since, although not a president, tried to investigate the Federal Reserve Scam. Robert F. Kennedy, too, was assassinated.

The message is clear. You don't fuck with the Rothschilds and their central bank scam.

If you research my claims (as you should), you're likely to unearth these nuggets:

The Rotshchilds (either directly or through their subordinate families) have fomented every major war in the past few hundred years. They, and their subordinate families, have benefited by speculating on the outcome of the war, and by selling arms and materiel to both sides.
The Rockefellers and some of their associated second-level families bankrolled Karl Marx and the Russian Revolution.
The Venezuelan subsidiary of Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil (as it was before it was split into several smaller companies like Exxon, Texaco and Mobil, although all really still owned by the Rockefellers) supplied oil to Hitler during WW II.
Working for the second-level Brown and Harriman families, the third-level Prescott Bush acted as banker and financier for Hitler during WW II. When the US gov't found out, they confiscated his German assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act. However, the US gov't didn't find all the German assets, so Bush continued to run those he had left. After the war, all of those assets were returned and form the basis of the Bush family fortune.
It was Lord Rotschild who engineered the Balfour Declaration and delivered it to the Zionists. That declaration committed Britain to establishing a Jewish homeland in its Mandate of Palestine.
The US has long given Israel far more in aid, per capita, than to any other country. The US sells Israel arms. The US turned a blind eye to Israel developing nuclear weapons.
Most of the neocons, who are either key players in the Bush administration or exert major influence upon it, are of jewish descent and strong supporters of Israel. They are Zionists who support the "Likkudniks" in Israel. The Likkudniks want all Palestinians out of Israel, and to conquer surrounding countries until they have established "Greater Israel" and returned to the boundaries of the biblical lands of Israel and Judea. This is, supposedly, a precondition for the Jewish and Christian versions of the end times.
The Rothschilds, and their second-level subordinate families, are all of Jewish descent.

Supposedly-democratic Senator Jay D Rockefeller is amongst those calling for an investigation into how the Bush administration abused intelligence over Iraq. Given that Rockefeller-owned oil companies have made record profits as a result of the Iraq war, this is rather surprising. The only conclusion is that the Rothschilds have decided that Bush has departed too far from their plan and has to be replaced before he does more damage.

I promise you...

2005-11-06T00:22:00.000Z

Some people have accused me of flip-flopping because I said that anybody in my administration who leaked Valerie Plame's name would no longer work in my administration but later said that anybody in my administration who committed a crime by leaking Valeria Plame's name would no longer be in my administration.

To those people, I say that there is an old saying in Tennessee, at least it's in Texas, maybe Tennessee too: "fool you twice, I can keep on fooling you forever."

For those who wish me to clarify my position, I can say this (thanks to Unka Karl for the wording). I promise you, hand on heart, that if somebody in my administration leaked Valerie Plame's name, and if that person is indicted for leaking Valerie Plame's name, and if that person is convicted of leaking Valerie Plame's name, and if that person is sentenced to death for leaking Valerie Plame's name, and if that person is executed for leaking Valerie Plame's name, then that person will no longer work in my administration.

I promised, when I was selected in 2000, that I would restore honour and dignity to the White House. Unlike my predecessor, who refused to make this commitment, I pledge not to appoint dead people to my administration. Unless I learn the secret of reanimating the dead as zombies, of course.

Fitzgerald - it will probably get a lot better

2005-11-04T17:03:00.000Z

I've seen many blog articles bemoaning that Fitz isn't going to touch the really important issues behind Plamegate like the lies that led us into an illegal war and whether those lies were the result of incompetence and overenthusiasm or pure malice. I think those articles are wrong.

I can see why those articles say what they do. Most of it comes from interpretations of Fritz's answers to questions at the Press Conference. But Fritz is very cagey and doesn't give anything away. Legally he cannot reveal Grand Jury proceedings nor indicate which individuals may yet be indicted. But Fitz is even cagier than he need because he knows that way people who testify don't know what other cards he's holding and can drop themselves in deep shit on perjury charges (Hi, Scooter).

So now to read between the lines of the press conference. The most revealing bits come in the Q&A session where Fitz had to think on his feet.

I can tell you, the substantial bulk of the work in this investigation is concluded.

That doesn't mean it's all over. It means he's got the bulk of the testimony and physical evidence he wanted, and it took him two years to get it. But all it takes is for Libby to beg for a deal and hand over some additional evidence to give Fitz a winning hand. Not much extra work involved, but a big payoff. So that could mean Fitz has done everything he wants and there won't be any more indictments or it could mean that Fitz is still pressuring people to flip (or flip some more).

The people who think Fitz is not going to dig into the lies behind the war probably get that idea from this question and answer. Note that the emphasis appearing in Fitzgerald's comments has been added by me to bring out salient points.

QUESTION: A lot of Americans, people who are opposed to the war, critics of the administration, have looked to your investigation with hope in some ways and might see this indictment as a vindication of their argument that the administration took the country to war on false premises.

Does this indictment do that?

FITZGERALD: This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person -- a person, Mr. Libby -- lied or not.

The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction.

And I think anyone's who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

The first two paragraph's of Fitz's response make it clear that he is talking about this indictment of Irvin Lewis "Scooter" Libby and of no other indictments. The Grand Jury can issue a superceding indictment of Libby that contains additional charges. The Grand Jury can issue indictments of other individuals that contain charges of other crimes that do not appear on this indictment of Libby.

The third paragraph starts "the indictment" rather than "this indictment, but in the context of the preceeding two paragraphs and the rest of the third paragraph, it's clear Fitz is still referring to this indictment of Libby, not a superceding indictment of Libby nor of indictments against other individuals.

The fourth paragraph refers to "this criminal process," and I suspect many interpreted that to mean the Grand Jury investigation. But "criminal proceedings" refer to a trial. There can be no trial until an indictment has been made. As Fitz stated several times in several ways, the reason for Grand Jury secrecy is to prevent harm to the reputations of individuals who were under investigation but found not to have done anything wrong (or might have done something wrong but the case wasn't strong enough). Those who have not been indicted are not criminals. Therefore when Fitz says "criminal process" he means the trial against Libby, and Libby alone, and based upon this indictment rather than a superceding indictment (should there be one).

Another answer by Fitzgerald shows clearly that all you can conclude from Libby's indictment is that so far Libby is the only one to have been indicted:

I'm not making allegations about anyone not charged in the indictment.

Now, let me back up, because I know what that sounds like to people if they're sitting at home.

We don't talk about people that are not charged with a crime in the indictment.

I would say that about anyone in this room who has nothing to do with the offenses.

We make no allegation that the vice president committed any criminal act. We make no allegation that any other people who provided or discussed with Mr. Libby committed any criminal act.

But as to any person you asked me a question about other than Mr. Libby, I'm not going to comment on anything.

Please don't take that as any indication that someone has done something wrong. That's a standard practice. If you followed me in Chicago, I say that a thousand times a year. And we just don't comment on people because we could start telling, "Well, this person did nothing wrong, this person did nothing wrong," and then if we stop commenting, then you'll start jumping to conclusions. So please take no more.

The reason Fitz won't comment about anyone other than Libby is that if he said Bush had done nothing wrong but refused to comment about Cheney then you'd know Cheney was a target and Cheney's reputation would suffer if no indictment was brought (God knows how Cheney's reputation could be any worse, but that's the law). But if Fitz had already concluded that no further indictments were possible, he would be able to say so: "The only person we will be indicting is Libby and the only charges we'll be bringing are those on this indictment. We've gone as far as possible." The reason Fitz cannot exclude Cheney is because he cannot say he's brought all the indictments he wants to.

Am I parsing that too hard? Nope. The Libby indictment identifies several people (but by official title such as "Vice President" rather than by name) where the evidence of those people's interactions with Libby is probably not indictable. But in one instance, an individual's interaction with Libby may amount to conspiracy, so that individual may yet be indicted on the basis of material that appears in Libby's indictment. That official is referred to as "White House Official A" (and is almost certainly Karl Rove). The material in Libby's indictment referring to Cheney won't be used in an indictment against Cheney, the material referring to Official A may be. But there may be other material, which does not appear on Libby's indictment, that may form the basis of indictments against others (such as Cheney and Bush).

So my take is that Fitz in no way excluded the possibility of digging into the lies behind the war. If that happens, and Fitz can prove the lies were deliberate, that opens up the possibility of war crimes charges! You're probably thinking that I'm basing all this upon an overly-careful parsing of the above question and answer. But there was more in the press conference to justify that interpretation.

Another answer from Fitzgerald:

And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused?

Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?

And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view.

As you sit here now, if you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you; we haven't charged it.

Fitzgerald needs to know deeper motives before he can bring charges for leaking. Some of the (arcane) statues against leaking require very specific circumstances to be met. Most of them require mens rea (intent) and that is impossible to prove unless you can prove what the motive was, because it could have been unintentional or accidental or negligent rather than deliberate. But that last paragraph gives it away. Fitz isn't saying he doesn't know the motives but that he cannot (yet) prove them and bring additional charges.

How do I know that Fitz would actually try to dig as deep as it goes and not stop once he had enough charges to put people away for many years? His behaviour in other cases. He brings every charge he can against every individual possible and he goes as far to the top of the tree as he can. Again, from the press conference:

Agent Eckenrode doesn't send people out when $1 million is missing from a bank and tell them, "Just come back if you find wire fraud." If the agent finds embezzlement, they follow through on that.

What Fitz didn't say, but is evident from his past behaviour, that if the agent finds both wire fraud and embezzlement they follow through on both. They go after anything they find.

Here's another part of the Q&A that may have misled people into thinking Fitz won't go after anything and everything:

QUESTION: Have you sought any expansion of your authority since February of 2004?

FITZGERALD: No.

I do know there was a letter, and I haven't looked back. There was a clarified letter...

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

FITZGERALD: Yes. I think there were two letters in early 2004, and that's it. There's nothing changed since then.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) further issues that you want to look into or anything like that?

FITZGERALD: I'm not looking to expand my authority or mandate and haven't -- I think the second letter is a clarification of the first. Nothing has changed since February 2004 at all.

Note that exchange very carefully. The first question was if Fitz had sought an expansion of his authority, and the answer was that he had not. The second question was if Fitz wanted to look into further issues, which Fitz side-stepped by saying he wasn't looking to expand his authority. Of course he wasn't looking to expand his authority because he already had the authority he needed to investigate any violations of Federal criminal laws related to the "alleged unauthorized disclosure" (see this memo).

As I already stated, in order to prove intent to leak Plame's name Fitz needs to look into the lies that led to the war in order to prove motive. And if that investigation uncovers further crimes (like treason or even war crimes) then Fitz already has all the authority he needs to bring indictments (if he can) for those crimes.

Another answer from Fitzgerald:

That's the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that a CIA officer's identity was blown, it was known that there was a leak. We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it.

And given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts.

Today I came across an article (no link because I think it's a disinformation exercise) that claims Fitz is actually a shill who was brought in to make it seem like there was a thorough investigation and then to indict Libby as a scapegoat, but to hold off the indictment until after the election. Two questions: why indict Libby (known as "Cheney's Cheney" because he was effectively Vice Vice President) rather than somebody lower down? Why does "White House Official A" appear on Libby's indictment?

I think, given all the above, Fitz is doing an honest job. And he's not going to stop until he's indicted everyone that he can indict on every charge that he can. And that could mean some very serious shit going right the way to the top.

The Death Penalty

2005-11-01T04:41:00.000Z

It would appear that the same states that supported slavery, the same states that were in favour of Bush, the same states where the majority of the population votes against its own self interests, the states that hate "nanny government" but get more in federal subsidies than they pay in federal taxes, the states that are most religious, the states that have the most abortions, the states that have the most divorces, the states that have the most violence, the states that have the most murders, the "red states," the shit-for-brains states, are in favour of the death penalty.

I believe that religion and a hankering for the death penalty go hand-in-hand. If you were logical, religiousity would require you to be against the death penalty. But religion means never having to confront reality.

In the religion held by most of those in the "red states," if you do everything right and worship the tooth fairy the right way, you are granted an eternity of bliss (which is like an orgasm but without the messy bodily fluids and the wet spot in the bed). You can be an evil shit (i.e., a Dick Cheney) all your life yet recant on your death bed and earn your eternity of bliss.

Eternity is a fuck of a long time. Compared to eternity, a human lifespan is no more than the blink of an eye. Compared to eternity, a million human lifespans is no more than the blink of an eye. Compared to eternity, a gazillion human lifespans is no more than the blink of an eye. Eternity is infinite, and compared to infinity any number you can think of is so small in comparison that it may as well be zero.

Whether or not you think it better to imprison somebody or to execute them depends entirely upon religiousity. And, worse, if you are religious then your decision is hypocritical.

Consider Timothy McVeigh. Many deaths to his name. He converted to Christianity before being executed, so supposedly goes to Heaven. Suppose that there is a God, and an afterlife, and McVeigh happened to choose the one correct creed of all the thousands of creeds of Christianity, and that McVeigh was sincerely repentent of his sins, and so went to Heaven.

In this scenario, McVeigh has a few years of suffering on death row, then an eternity of fucking bliss. Compared to eternity, a human lifetime is but the blink of an eye, and a few years on death row is even less than the blink of an eye.

Now suppose that McVeigh had been given a life sentence rather than the death penalty, but had still converted. He'd have spent even more years suffering, but compared to eternity those twenty, or thirty, or fourty years would have been as naught.

So, y'know, it's pretty damned clear. If you want somebody to pay for his crimes, even though he later gets an eternal orgasm, you don't execute him. Killing him sends him off for an early bath. It takes him out of the hardship of the game and sends him off to the post-game celebrations early.

In the long run, if there is a Heaven and eternal orgasm. and a criminal converts to the right one of many thousands of Christian creeds and is sincere about repenting his sins, the difference between execution and a life sentence is trivial. The life sentence results in more suffering, and by any standard of logic ought to be preferred by the shit-for-brains people. However, if the invisible easter bunny myth is just another fairy tale, then a life sentence is more of a punishment than execution. Life in prison is not pleasant. It's not meant to be. The more time you spend in prison, the less enjoyable it is. Death is an early release from prison, and even if there is no afterlife you might prefer an early end to your woes. But if you think you're on a fast track to perpetual orgasm, bring that death penalty on!

Of course, when faced with death, even the religious try to avoid it. Deep down they know the tales of the magic tooth fairy are just fairy tales. So they all try to defer execution. But that's when they're on death row. When they're walking around free, it's another matter.

Hey, that guy pissed me off. I'ma gonna shoot him. If God didn't want me to shoot him, God would make my gun jam. But my gun didn't jam. So if that guy was good, God wanted him to go to Heaven early; and if that guy was bad, God wanted him to go to Hell early. I am just an agent of God. And if I get caught and sentenced to execution, that just means I go to Heaven early, which is a bonus.

Is there any fucking wonder the shit-for-brains religious states have the highest per-capita murder rates and endorse the death penalty? When you base your life around a non-existent invisible sky being and ignore reality because it conflicts with your beliefs, crap like that is bound to ensue.

Impressive!

2005-11-01T01:26:00.000Z

Hot fucking damn! That it sooooooooo impressive.

When I get Barney to give me a BJ he spits it out immediately. When I get Harriet to give me a BJ she pretends to like the taste but I'm sure she spits it out when I'm not looking.

But Alito is another thing entirely. He slooshes my jizm around his mouth for hours afterwards. He opens his mouth to show my manly sperm swimming around in there. And then he finally swallows.

No wonder I want mini-Scalia on the Supreme Court. Scalito doesn't just swallow, he plays with it for hours first. Alito doesn't give me a BJ very often, and that's a real shame. Gannon/Guckert used to blow me every day. But Gannon/Guckert never swallowed. He always spit it out. The bitch!!!

There's no way the "loose cannon" was going to get onto the SCOTUS unless he slurped down my manly jizzm as though his life depended upon it. Harriet swallowed, even if she pulled faces, so she was a candidate. But Alito slooshes it around before he swallows it. You have to admire a guy who will do that for you. Admire him, and appoint him to the SCOTUS.

The spin, the spin...

2005-10-29T23:11:00.000+01:00

One of the spins about Plamegate is that the CIA didn't have to pull out any of their undercover operatives abroad, so there was no damage done.

It has been pointed out elsewhere that the CIA would keep this information highly secret, so there has been yet another leak of sensitive information for political purposes. But that misses the point.

CIA operatives abroad fall into three categories:

Non-Official Cover (NOC): These are the people like Plame herself. CIA staffers, they purportedly work for a front company like Brewster-Jennings and Associates. They do not have diplomatic passports so can be arrested for spying. So, if the talking points are right, none of these people (thankfully) have been placed in danger, although they may have been compromised. The difference is significant: if a foreign country figures out that you were a CIA staffer while you're back in the US then you cannot return but the CIA didn't have to recall you to ensure your safety.
Official Cover: These are the embassy staff who are really CIA staffers. A large proportion of the staff of any embassy are spies. But they are nominally embassy staff and have diplomatic passports, so cannot be arrested for spying. By definition, none of these people were ever in any danger, although their positions may have been compromised (as in "Now we're sure he's a spy so we're going to watch him even more closely").
Recruited US Nationals: For operational reasons, the CIA relies upon people working for real (not front) US companies spying in their spare time. These may also have been compromised, but fortunately none of them were at the time of their compromise in a country they were spying upon.

What does that leave? All the poor fuckers Plame personally recruited in foreign countries. These are not CIA "undercover operatives" they are sources. These are the foreign nationals Plame spoke to often under cover of working for the front company of Brewster-Jennings and associates. The foreign nationals who decided that the US was ruled by better people than the petty tyrant of their own country and decided to help the US. The foreign nationals who are now, as a result of the outing of Plame, in jail (and possibly undergoing torture).

Actually, the foreign nationals recruited by Plame may have had contacts with other CIA staffers, or the US nationals used as go-betweens. Or maybe not. "Hmmm, Plame talked to X and Y. John Doe also talked to X and Y. That means John Doe is probably a CIA staffer, or a go-between. John Doe also talked with Z. That means Z is a traitor." The links are going to be traced forwards and backwards, and if Mr Z is completely innocent but implicated by the spiderweb then that is his tough luck.

The CIA cannot protect these foreign nationals at risk. The CIA cannot withdraw these people (to withdraw them would be to return them to their country of origin, which is where they now languish in jail).

So the talking point may be factually correct. US citizens, either employed by the CIA or spying on behalf of the CIA, have not have had to be withdrawn. Many may have been compromised, so will be withdrawn, but they did not have to be (they weren't in danger so didn't have to be withdrawn but they no longer served any purpose so were withdrawn). The fact that the network of foreign nationals willing to provide information to the US has been completely fucked is not addressed by the talking point.

An apolitical post

2005-10-29T21:30:00.000+01:00

For once, an apolitical post.

I remember a time, maybe 20-25 years ago, when the UK was deluged by adverts from a new ready-cooked food company. It was McCain. Their TV adverts were beguiling. But by that time I was old enough to realize the difference between an advert and the product, so I did not immediately try their products.

However, the day came when I had an urge for some black pudding (known in the US as "blood pudding", a mix of congealed pig's blood, other ingredients, and a mix of spices unique to the manufacturer). The local shop, where I was doing my shopping, didn't have any of their usual unpackaged black pudding. But the urge was so strong that when I saw some McCain black pudding I bought it. It was fucking crap. Disgusting, vile-tasting crap. I resolved never to buy another McCain product again.

But, years later, as luck would have it, I was shopping and had an urge for some foodstuff (I cannot remember what) and the only variety available was from McCain. I debated with myself for many minutes. My first thought was that each of us are individuals with our own likes and dislikes. I reasoned that black pudding, the flavour of which is strongly dependent upon the mix of spices unique to the manufacturer, meant that just because I thought McCain black pudding was despicable crap I might, even so, enjoy McCain's other products. But on the other hand, if McCain's resident chefs thought that their black pudding was wonderful when I thought it tasted like pig shit gone sour, their tastes might not precisely correlate with my own. The urge won out. And whatever McCain foodstuff it was that I bought, it was just as fucking vile as their black pudding.

Over the years, this experience repeated itself several times. I had an urge for a particular foodstuff. The shop had run out of all alternatives but the McCain variety. Even though I knew better, I bought it anyway, only to be bitterly disappointed because it turned out to be disgusting shit I wouldn't give to my worst enemy.

Time passes. Once again I found myself with an urge whilst shopping. Once again, the only variety of what I wanted was from McCain. (And, once again, I proved that too much alcohol really screws up your memory because I cannot remember what it was.) I reasoned that if "Once bitten, twice shy." is a valid statement then "Twice bitten, don't fucking try it again." is another valid statement. But, in my urge to be fair, I couldn't see how McCain could have stayed in business for 15 years by selling disgusting, unpleasant, evil fucking crap and that they must have replaced their useless fucking chefs with ones who had a sense of taste. And anyway, the urge was strong. So I succumbed. Once again, this was the most disgusting crap I had ever tasted.

I have learned my lesson. For the past ten years there has been no fucking way that I would ever purchase anything made by McCain, unless it was to give it as a present to my worst enemy. McCain = total fucking crap. If my life depended upon consuming a certain foodstuff and the only manufacturer of that foodstuff I could find in the shops was McCain, I would resign myself to my death.

The McCain adverts are appealing, but the reality is fucking awful. The promises are beguiling but the reality is nothing but abject disappointment.

Note to anyone who thinks I am making a subtle reference to John McCain, Republican Senator for Arizona. McCain foods exists (see the link above). McCain foods have very beguiling adverts. Every McCain product I have ever tried has left me feeling that I have been sold inedible, disgusting crap. Just so I don't get sued for libel, let me point out that this is my personal opinion of McCain products. There is no fucking way on this planet I will ever again buy anything made by McCain because it tastes to me like total fucking crap.

However, to those who are still thinking of Senator McCain and the difference between his words and deeds, and comparing them to the gigantic void I perceive between McCain adverts and their products, if the cap fits, fucking wear it.

Presidential Choice of Pet

2005-10-29T19:55:00.000+01:00

Surprising as it may seem, the presidential choice of pet is important. The choice between a cat and a dog is a key indicator of the relationship between the President and the people.

As we are all aware, cats and dogs differ in almost all respects. But there is one way in which they are identical: you establish the relationship with eye contact.

With a dog, you stare it down. You look into its eyes. You don't look away even if it's snarling and looks about to attack. You don't even blink. Eventually, the dog will look to the side as though bored, but you must keep your eyes on it. After a few seconds the dog will look back at you and it must see that your gaze has not shifted. The dog may look away several more times, and you must remain steadfast. Eventually the dog concludes that you are the boss and will either try to be friendly or run away shitting itself with fear.

With a cat you look briefly into its eyes then close your eyes. Then scrunch up your eyelids really tight. Then turn your head to the side for five or ten seconds, with your eyelids still scrunched shut. Then slowly turn your head back to where the cat was (and may, if you're lucky, still be). Then slowly unscrunch your eyelids. Finally, open your eyes. If all went well the cat is still where it was and it now knows that it is the boss. Actually, the cat knew it was the boss all along, it just wanted to know if you knew that too, in which case the cat might adopt you as a servant/pet.

Now consider what a President is meant to be. The US Constitution says that government is by, of and for the people. The President is a tool the people choose to use in order to deal with boring things that they'd prefer to delegate to a public servant (but only as long as he behaves himself and follows their wishes). The President is there to do the bidding of the people, not vice-versa. Some Presidents have lived up to the ideal and considered the people to be the boss. Other Presidents have let power go to their heads and decided that they know better than the people and they are the boss.

So what does the Presidential choice of pet indicate? A dog means that the person owning it wants a servile puppet who will do his every bidding and treat him as a god. A cat means that the person the cat temporarily adopted as a servant/pet, for only as long as the cat deems it beneficial, is a decent person with a respect for the rights and desires of other beings. Consider the two:

The dog is hungry. It crawls over to its God in supplication because it knows its God occasionally deigns to feed it. Sometimes its God doesn't feed it, but that's because Gods are incredibly busy with lots of other things to do, so that's OK. The dog prays to its God for food by rearing up on its hind legs and drooping its front paws. Sometimes that gets its God's attention, sometimes it doesn't, but that's OK because Gods have lots of things to do. Sometimes it even has the temerity to try to remind its God that it is hungry by licking its God: when it was a puppy and after it had been weaned it would lick its parent's muzzles and they would regurgitate solid food for it, but that rarely seems to work with God. (And why would it? Gods must feed in different ways from mere dogs.)

The cat is hungry. It reminds its servant/pet that it is the servant/pet's duty to feed it by rubbing the servant/pet's legs. If the cat doesn't get fed fairly quickly, it is likely to claw the servant/pet then look for a new servant/pet to adopt.
The dog needs a crap. It knows God gets terribly upset and wreaks fearful vengeance if the dog craps in the house, so it keeps it in. The dog keeps wandering over to the door in the hope that God will divine that it needs a crap, but knows that God is terribly busy doing God-like things. Finally, the dog starts howling in pain, even though he knows that God hates it when he howls. Even though he is busting for a crap, the dog keeps it in until God permits it.

The cat needs a crap. The cat litter hasn't been changed for two days and is too smelly to use. If the servant/pet can't be bothered to change the litter, it needs to be taught a lesson. So the cat craps in the servant/pet's shoe. The servant/pet had better fucking learn or it's going to be replaced.
God hasn't been paying much attention to the dog lately. The dog really hates it when God doesn't pay attention and pet him, but Gods are far too busy to cater to a dog's every whim.

The servant/pet has been a bit slow on the uptake recently. Not getting the right brand of catfood and fobbing the cat off with some cheap crap. Fuck you, servant/pet, you had your chance, now you're history.

George Wanker Bush has pet dogs. Enough said.

What you can expect next Fitzmas

2005-10-29T03:56:00.000+01:00

Some of you may be wondering if there even will be another Fitzmas. It's not guaranteed, but it's probable. See this article. It mentions Fitz's activities in another case. To summarise the other case:

In 1998, the investigation of a fatal accident revealed truckers were purchasing commercial licenses from state official.
Fitz works his way, month by month, year by year, through 66 defendents.
In 2003, five years later, Fitz indicted the 66th defendent, former Illinois Governor George Ryan, on corruption charges

Like the Energizer Bunny, Fitz just keeps on going. And he doesn't stop until he's indicted everyone who is indictable, right the way to the top. He'll compare different testimony against physical evidence and use perjury, obstruction of justice, making false statements and conspiracy to leverage testimony out of people. Once he's driven the wedge in a little bit further, he'll use that to go after others.

I know, I know. You all want to know what you'll be getting next Fitzmas. There's no way of knowing for sure, but there are hints.

All but one of the journalists testified upon first (or maybe second) request. The only hold-out was Miller, and she went to jail for contempt of court. None of the others went to jail for contempt of court.
That means Novak testified.
Novak said, in the column that started all this, that he was told about Plame by two senior administration officials. And since Novak testified, Fitzgerald knows who those two are.
Read the Libby indictments carefully. It mentions his statements to several journalists, but Novak was not one of them.
Novak leaked Plame's name, remember?
I can't remember if it was the indictment, the press release or Fitz's press conference transcript, but one of them specifically stated that Libby had told both Miller and Cooper that Plame was Wilson's wife. He had not said that to Russert, and that was also specifically stated (in fact Russert says that Libby didn't mention anything to him about Wilson or Plame, although Libby said he did).

So either Fitz has some reason not to bring up Libby telling Novak about Plame (that's not impossible) or Libby was not one of the two senior administration officials who leaked Plame's name to Novak. And that would mean that there is not just one other person (almost certainly Rove, as he and Novak have done this sort of thing before) that Novak has implicated but two.

If Libby didn't speak to Novak and Rove did, who could be the other senior administration official who spoke to Novak? How senior? The same level as Libby and Rove? A lower level? A higher level?

Over in the UK we had a stupid TV game show where cards were turned over, one at a time, to reveal their value. Based on the last card turned over, the contestant had to predict whether the next card would be higher or lower. The audience would shout their advice: "Lower" or "Higher." I'll be screaming myself hoarse: Higher! Higher! Higher!

Leaving, on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again

2005-10-29T02:19:00.000+01:00

Holy Fuck! I just heard Fitz is gonna indicticate me next. I'm getting the fuck out of here. I need the pilot to take me to a place where there's no extraperdition treaty.

I wonder if the pilot has enough fuel to get me to Mars.

Yoohoo!!!!! George!!!!!!

2005-10-29T01:29:00.000+01:00

Yoohoo!!!!! George!!!!!!

This is how many fingers you hold up for five.

I still think you're the smartest man I ever met!!!!!!!!

Even if Laura has turned her back on you and won't help you with your counting problem.

Let me try to cheer you up. Here's a poem I wrote about you.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

You're the smartest man I ever met

And you are so cool

Count 'em

2005-10-29T01:23:00.000+01:00

That bastard, Fitzgerald. Five indictments. Count 'em, five.

Hey, Laura, I promised you I'd stopped drinking. It was mouthwash you smelled on my breath. Honest. So now will you please turn around and check that I'm holding up the right number of fingers for five?

30 Years!

2005-10-28T23:34:00.000+01:00

From Fitz's press realease I see that if Scooter is found guilty on all five counts, and if Scooter receives the maximum sentence for each count, and if the judge sentences him to serve those terms sequentially rather than concurrently, that's 30 years in prison!

So much for the right-wing spin machine that perjury is a minor matter (except when it's Clinton lying about consensual sex).

Anybody know what the law is? Does Fitz have to hit Libby with every indictment at once or can he hit him with indictments for other crimes as they are discovered? For instance, if Fitz indicts Rove later, then surely Libby and Rove also committed conspiracy. And quite probably worse. The investigation is continuing, it would appear, so a lot more against Libby may turn up. It would be a great shame if Fitz couldn't indict him some more.

Some advice for Scooter: If you drop the soap in the prison shower then do not bend over to pick it up unless you're in the mood for sex. If you are ordered to give somebody oral sex then do so as though your life depends upon it - it probably does (oh, and be sure to swoosh it around your mouth before swallowing and then tell him how absolutely yummy it was - do not spit it out).

That Bastard Fitzgerald!

2005-10-28T23:04:00.000+01:00

[Libby] That fucking bastard Fitzgerald! He fucking kneecapped me. With a fucking aluminum baseball bat. Both fucking kneecaps.

[Chorus of reporters] You fucking deserved it.

[Disgraced reporter] You're no fucking good to me in bed now, Scooter. So you can take your aspens and stick them where the sun don't shine and see if they still turn then.

[Rove] Does anyone have a change of underwear? I just shat myself.

[Cheney] Suitcase nuke. Fitzgerald's offices. Blame it on Syria so we can invade them next. Right fucking now.

[Bush]What, me worry?

Libby Indictments

2005-10-28T22:49:00.000+01:00

I've just read through the Libby indictments and two quotations spring to mind. The one most people will immediately think of is by Rabbie Burns:

Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive

Although that's not entirely appropriate, for this is far from the first time Scooter has practised deceiving people. Deception always results in a tangled web no matter how much you practise. The better quotation is by Robert Green Ingersoll. He was a lawyer. The first lawyer in the US, and probably in the world, to introduce handwriting analysis. He made an otherwise unimpeccable case with his handwriting analysis but his expert witness botched the ink analysis and the jury went against him (in my opinion, wrongly so). It was in that case that Ingersoll said this:

There is this beautiful peculiarity in nature - a lie never fits a fact, never. You only fit a lie with another lie, made for the express purpose, because you can change a lie but you can't change a fact, and after a while the time comes when the last lie you tell has to be fitted to a fact, and right there is a bad joint; consequently you must test the statements of people who say they saw, not by what they say but by other facts, by the surroundings, by what are called probabilities; by the naturalness of the statement.

All the lies that Scooter told failed to fit with the facts. In many cases, the lies he told one person didn't even fit the lies he told another person.

Next Fitzmas

2005-10-28T19:05:00.000+01:00

Next Fitzmas may come sooner than I thought. From this Washington Post article (registration required, but you can give a completely bogus e-mail address):

Libby was indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. The five-count indictment charged that he gave misleading information to the grand jury, allegedly lying about information he discussed with three news reporters. It alleged that he committed perjury before the grand jury in March 2004 and that he also lied to FBI agents investigating the case.

Despite what the Whitehouse spin machine may say, those are pretty serious charges carrying serious prison sentences.

The article also says:

Sources close to the case said the investigation of Rove is continuing.

So Rove is not out of the woods yet.

The article also says:

An attorney for Rove, Robert Luskin, said in a statement this morning, "The Special Counsel has advised Mr. Rove that he has made no decision about whether or not to bring charges and that Mr. Rove's status has not changed. Mr. Rove will continue to cooperate fully with the Special Counsel's efforts to complete the investigation. We are confident that when the Special Counsel finishes his work, he will conclude that Mr. Rove has done nothing wrong."

But then goes on to say:

Rove provided new information to Fitzgerald during eleventh-hour negotiations that "gave Fitzgerald pause" about charging Bush's senior strategist, said a source close to Rove. "The prosecutor has to resolve those issues before he decides what to do."

That's very significant. It means Rove either came up with something that's going to make it difficult for Fitz to get a conviction or Rove just tried for a plea-bargain by dropping Bush and/or Cheney in the shit. Fitz's known MO is to flip the underlings to get the big-wigs, so if Rove did some more flipping why would Fitz not have made up his mind? Because he needs confirmation from somebody else. Who else? Well, who just got slammed with five indictments...

The final interesting bit:

Although the focus has been on Rove and Libby, Cheney himself has been publicly implicated in recent days in the chain of events that led to the exposure of Plame. The New York Times reported Monday that Fitzgerald possesses notes taken by Libby showing that he learned about Plame from the vice president a month before she was identified by Novak. The White House did not dispute the report.

Two interpretations are possible.

Fitz can prove that Libby has been a really bad boy, whereas Rove came up with something in his defense at the last minute that makes it difficult for Fitz to get a conviction against Rove. Fitz cannot justify indictments against anyone higher up the ladder. This is the worst-case scenario.
Libby cut a deal that dropped Rove in the crap (which is why Rove shortly afterwards was called to testify a fourth time), and Libby's notebook implicated Cheney but wasn't sufficient by itself and held back on other stuff. Fitz then gave Rove his fourth working over and Rove confirmed Cheney was involved and at the last minute came up with even more stuff against Cheney and/or Bush but needs Libby to come out with stuff Libby withheld.

So the deal is Rove might go free (because he implicated Bush and/or Cheney) but only if Libby backs him up, otherwise Rove is toast. And Libby, for holding back stuff that Rove blabbed, is facing five indictments (which could still be plea-bargained away if he confirms what Rove said, and is what Fitz hopes he'll do).

Please, let it be the best-case scenario. Even I'd drop most (maybe even all) of the charges against Libby and Rove in order to get Bush and/or Cheney (preferably both).

Fitzmas

2005-10-28T18:17:00.000+01:00

I expect there will soon be variations of this joke all over the blogosphere, on TV shows, and in newspaper cartoon. But it's too good to resist.

Fitzmas came and went and all I got was this lousy scooter. :(

But there's always next Fitzmas. :)

You have to let your dreams rove where they will. Maybe next Fitzmas I'll get an adult video with some dick and some bush in it.

More seriously, one evil shit down, at least three even more evil shits to go.

A bolt out of the blue

2005-10-26T02:10:00.000+01:00

Some of you may have noticed I have a tendency to post about the insanity that is religion. Since these lunatics want to turn the US into a theocracy, I think my obsession is justified.

So let's talk about thunder and lightning. A powerful force of nature that struck awe and dread into the hearts of man. In just about every religion you can name, it was God (or the chief of the Gods) throwing his lightning bolts at those who upset him. For the Vikings it was Thor and his magic hammer that caused lightning bolts. For the Romans it was Jove. For the Greeks it was Jupiter. Their chief God was an irate bugger who personally went around throwing lightning bolts at people. And for the Christians it was God. As the hymn has it:

His chariots of wrath

The deep thunderclouds form

And dark is his path

On the wings of the storm.

In fact lightning was one of the main reasons for believing that there was such a thing as a God. It caused violent damage (trees can literally explode as their sap turns instantly to superheated steam). It was capricious about who and what it hit, as though it was being controlled by somebody with human failings, superhuman powers and a list of people who had pissed him off. It was accompanied by a fucking loud noise. Twice I've had lightning strike very, very close to me. There is a bright flash which is accompanied at the very same instant by a very loud noise. Like a bomb had gone off. The first time it happened it was the first thunder of the storm, so I hadn't unplugged my modem, so my modem got fried. The second time it happened the storm came towards me slowly so I unplugged my modem before it got fried. Both times required a change of underwear. It's easy to understand why people would think that some invisible sky being was having a hissy fit.

All monotheistic religions also face a common problem: God doesn't behave as expected. The sinful rich often go unpunished while the pious poor often suffer from disease. You can only say "He'll get his comeuppance in Hell" and "She'll get her reward in Heaven" so many times before you start to wonder if God really does exist. But never fear, "God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform." So you're just too stupid to understand God's master plan and while it may seem like God is doing the exact opposite of what you'd expect, it's just that you don't comprehend the full plan. Religion is full of Orwellian doublethink like that - it has to be in order to reconcile theology with reality.

BTW, is it just me, or does anyone else immediately think of the Monty Python sketch The Ministry of Silly Walks when they see the phrase "God moves in mysterious ways"?

Anyway, when Christianity got going it decided to have churches instead of synagogues. The floor-plan of a church was shaped like a cross. Well, not really, because the Roman cross that Jesus was crucified upon was shaped like a T without the short upright by his head. So the floor-plan of a church is in the shape of the fictional cross that we see represented in a crucifix. And these churches had steeples. High towers.

Here's the problem. Those church steeples kept getting hit by lightning because they were usually the highest points around. But lightning is the personal, direct wrath of God. God punishing his own churches. Whoops! A bit difficult to reconcile.

Were the religious even remotely rational, they might take it as a sign that God wasn't entirely happy with their new religion and abandon it. Were the religious even remotely rational, they might take it as a sign that God hated the architectural design of their churches and they should come up with a different design (which, if they had abandoned the steeples, would actually have worked). Instead they decided that it must be demons throwing the lightning at their churches.

When you think about it, that was a major step to take. Previously lightning had been God's own personal way of dispensing wrath. Now not just Satan, but any minor demon, could throw lightning around. Even worse, God, who is omnipotent (all-fucking-powerful) and omnipresent (everywhere at fucking once) could not stop these petty demons blowing up churches! Of course, the way the religious got around this very large problem was (as with any other contradiction in their thinking) to pretend it didn't exist and ignore it.

Over the centuries, the Christians came up with the idea that ringing the church bells would scare the demons away and defend the church from lightning. Mediæval church bells were often inscribed with Fulgura Frango, meaning "I break up the lightning flashes." And a lot of bell-ringers were killed during thunderstorms as lightning hit the tower (which housed the bells) and followed the rope down to the bell-ringer.

The "demon theory of lightning" was about as successful as the "demon theory of disease." I.e., completely fucking useless. But that was all they had. From 1753 to 1786, lightning struck 386 French church towers, and lightning running down the bell ropes killed 103 French bell ringers. In 1786, the French government finally had to outlaw this piece of stupidity.

Ah, if only that were as bad as it got - many thousands of bell ringers across Europe killed except in those countries smart enough to outlaw this particular piece of religious insanity. But there was the problem of gunpowder for weapons and fireworks. Gunpowder factories frequently exploded killing hundreds of people in the area. Fireworks stored for celebrations frequently exploded killing hundreds of people in the area. Gunpowder stored for weapons frequently exploded killing hundreds of people in the area. So somebody got the bright idea of storing fireworks in churches, where they'd be protected by God.

I can hear you saying it: "You're shitting me! No way would they do that!" Yes, way. Even though churches were more likely to get hit by lightning than any other building. Even though the "demon theory of lightning" meant God couldn't protect a church from even minor demons hitting it with lightning. Even after all the dead bell-ringers (who were presumably pious) tugging their ropes for all they were worth. Even with the bells inscribed with Fulgura Frango failing to deflect the lightning flashes. Even with all the evidence that a church was the very last place you should store explosives, they were batfuck insane enough to do so. Religion means never having to admit to reality.

This reached a peak in the eighteenth century. In 1769 they stored 100 tons of gunpowder in the church of St Nazaire in Brescia. Lightning struck the tower and explosion destroyed one-sixth of the city and killed 3000 people. On and on it went. As late as 1856, the gunpowder stored in the vaults of the church of St Jean on the island of Rhodes exploded when lightning hit the church and 4000 were killed.

In 1753 Benjamin Franklin published a description of the lightning rod he'd invented in Poor Richard's Almanac (a publication, despite the name, written and printed by Franklin himself). The clergy went ballistic. Franklin was not a believer, he was a heretic. So they dubbed his invention the "heretical rod" and refused to desecrate their churches with it. They stuck with what they knew worked (except it didn't): prayer, supplication and bell-ringing (and, of course, after the storm burying the dead bell ringers).

Eventually, and at first only slowly, churches installed lightning rods and became far less likely to be hit by lightning. If lightning is still God's personal weapon, a simple metal rod is enough to deflect His wrath. If lightning is in the hands of petty demons, a metal rod can disrupt their plans even though God Himself could not stop them. If lightning is purely a natural event and not a weapon of God or petty demons then maybe there isn't a God after all. Of course, these are conclusions the church pretends don't exist and ignores because to discuss them would admit to inconsistencies in their theology. They just install lightning rods and try not to think of the implications.

Miller Time

2005-10-25T02:03:00.000+01:00

Over at Editor and Publisher, the excellent Greg Mitchell asks, of Judy Miller, What, exactly, does a person have to do to get fired at The New York Times?.

Well, Greg, maybe this cartoon by the also excellent "Tom Tomorrow" will give you a clue.

It's going to take more than biting the heads off live bunnies on TV, declaring allegiance to Satan and nuking Iowa to get rid of this bitch.

Quick, Jeff...

2005-10-22T22:12:00.000+01:00

OK guys, I admit you journalists just caught me getting a hand job from Jeff Gannon.

Quick, Jeff, ask me a softball question. Oh, and could you finish me off quickly so I can put my dick away before they take more photographs?

She loves it...

2005-10-22T02:54:00.000+01:00

Harriet loves it when I take her up the ass. The only problem is that barney gets jealous.

The Selection Process

2005-10-21T21:46:00.000+01:00

Now that it looks like Rove is going to be indicted, the President has tasked me with finding a replacement to act as his "brain." Any of these candidates would be an improvement on his own brain because their heads are empty as opposed to having shit for brains. But I think I'll choose myself instead. If Cheney and Miers can do it, so can I.

Rapture or Rupture?

2005-10-21T17:08:00.000+01:00

Today I read something and wondered just how far divorced from reality the Talebangelicals are. Which is a pretty astounding thought to have considering I already knew they are completely divorced from reality.

I read this Washington Post article (subscription required).

There's a new film being released based on the Left Behind novels by Tim "Raving Loon" LaHaye and Jerry B. "The tooth fairy wants me for a moonbeam" Jenkins. The books are all about Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jeebus and how the Talebangelicals will be "raptured" into Heaven while all the sane people (who don't believe in the Easter Bunny) are tormented and punished.

The thrust of the article was that Left Behind: World at War, which is the third film in the series, would not be shown in commercial theatres but only in "megachurches" and some smaller churches. Which makes sense: the megachurches are where the market for this insane drivel is while the people who frequent commercial theatres want to see entertainment rather than propaganda. The people who frequent commercial theatres are not averse to fantasy (such as, say, Spiderman) but they'd like to "suspend their sense of disbelief" without having to resort to heavy duty pharmaceuticals.

Anyway, I was struck by this quote from the Reverend Richard Edgar, pastor of the hilariously named "Reality Gospel Church" in Alexandria expects to draw 300 viewers (twice his regular membership). He says [emphasis is mine]:

We want to show Hollywood that there are enough people in the churches to support good, wholesome entertainment without all the blood and guts and sex and vile language.

Let's get this straight, the point of the Left Behind books and films is to highlight what will happen to the unbelievers who are left behind after the rapture. It's to make sure that the Talebangelical sheeple continue giving every spare penny they have to the megachurches so they'll be raptured into Heaven and won't be left behind. It's to convince any backsliders that being left behind is not a good idea. And it's to make the Talebangelical sheeple feel fucking smug that they'll be looking down from Heaven watching all the sinners suffer for years before the sinners are finally cast down into Hell to burn for eternity.

So what's involved for us sinners? The exact details depend upon the brand of Talabangelicalism, but here's just the start of what happens according to Revelations.

The "Four Horsemen" are unleashed: Plague, War, Famine and Death. And they spend their time killing people in horrible ways.
There are major earthquakes, killing yet more people.
At this point the "saved" are transported bodily into Heaven. According to the Talebangelicals, they leave their clothing behind as they are magically yanked upwards, so they are all naked.
Hail and fire mingled with blood are cast upon the earth. One-third of all trees are destroyed; all grass is burned. And it's probably not healthy if you get a big blob of fire fall on you.
A great mountain burning with fire is cast into the sea. One-third of the sea becomes blood; one-third of the creatures of the sea die; one-third of the ships are destroyed (presumably killing all those on board).
A star called Wormwood falls from the heavens and poisons one-third of the rivers and fountains. One-third of the waters become as wormwood and many people die of the poison.
And then it starts to get really bad... If you want to know what happens next you can look it up for yourself, but I'm sure you get the general gist from this partial list.

Oh, and let's not forget that some of those who are raptured bodily into Heaven without warning will be merrily driving along a busy freeway at high speed. So expect lots of car crashes, at least in the shit-for-brains states where people are most likely to fall for this crap.

So, to show all that happens to those who are left behind, and to those who are raptured, involves a fuckload of blood falling from the skies or the seas being converted to the stuff; a shitload of violent death (referred to in the movie industry as "blood and guts") and nudity (OK, nudity isn't sex per se but the Talebangelicals refer to movies which show nudity without any sweaty, straining bodies striving for orgasm, as "sex").

So this series of movies, when complete, will necessarily show blood and guts and what the Talebangelicals would describe as sex in abundance. In fact those are the main feature of the plotline. They are essential. Let us again read what Reverend Shit-for-Brains has to say of the movies:

We want to show Hollywood that there are enough people in the churches to support good, wholesome entertainment without all the blood and guts and sex and vile language.

How out of touch with reality can you get? To believe in this crap means you're bugfuck insane. But to then say that a series of films that revolve around blood and guts and sex are wholesome because they don't involve blood and guts and sex transcends insanity. It's one thing to believe in the invisible magic easter bunny without any supporting evidence; it's a whole new level of batshit insanity to read a book (or watch a film) and say it doesn't contain any of the material that is the essential plotline.

Centuries ago, mathematicians thought there was only one sort of infinity. Georg Cantor upset that applecart by showing that there were different cardinalities of infinity. He proved that the number of integers ("counting numbers") is infinite and of cardinality א₀ (Aleph-0). He also proved that the set of even numbers is also of cardinality א₀ (i.e., the same size as both even and odd numbers put together. That may seem, to you, as batshit insane as believing in the "rapture" but at least there is mathematical proof so simple that you can probably follow it (even though you'll end up wondering what the trick is). He also proved that rational numbers (1/2, 2/3, 4/3,...) are of the same cardinality yet again: no bigger and no smaller than even numbers. He then proved that real numbers (ones which potentially require an infinite number of decimal places to describe) are of a higher cardinality: א₁. There really are more real numbers than integers. If you think I'm making all this up, here's a primer on the subject (it might be a good idea to have some aspirin to hand for the inevitable headache).

Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and Tav is the last. When the Tanakh was translated into the Greek Septuagint (which later became the basis for the Old Testament) the phrase "I am the Aleph and the Tav" (meaning "I am the beginning and the end") became "I am the Alpha and the Omega". Since the Talebangelicals look forward to the end times, I could use either Tav or Omega to represent the cardinality of their insanity. To follow Cantor's lead, I'll go with Tav.

So if we can describe LaHaye and Jenkins' brand of bugfuck insanity as cardinality as ת₀ then I think we can justifiably assign Reverend "Crazier than a shithouse rat on crystal meth" Edgar a cardinality of insanity ת₁. I have no doubt that even higher cardinalities of insanity exist amongst the Talebangelicals but I'd expect those who suffer from them to spend most of their day rolling around the floor "speaking in tongues" while being treated as very holy people by those of lower cardinalities.

This ordinarily wouldn't bother me, because I think people should be allowed to fuck up their own life any way they want. If they want to zonk out on drugs, or believe in invisible tooth fairies then that's their problem. The trouble is that these lunatics exert a powerful influence upon the Bush administration. Why preserve the environment when the rapture is coming any day now? War is good because it's a sign the rapture is near. It's wonderful that Bush is an evil fuck because he must be the Antichrist and the rapture will be here any day now.

[Sigh. I followed the HTML and Unicode standards to ensure that the Alephs and Tavs were followed by the subscript numerals rather than being preceded by them. Worked great with two browsers I tried on a test file (without the tweaks I did one of my browsers got it wrong) but still screwed up in the Blogspot editor preview. I now see it's wrong when published too. Must be something in the Blogspot style sheets that's doing it. Maybe it will look OK on your browser (I don't have Internet Exploder), maybe not. I tried my best.]

The Exit Strategy for Plamegate

2005-10-20T19:13:00.000+01:00

More and more people are reporting that Fitzgerald has his eye on Cheney and maybe even Bush as well. I predicted that here but it's nice to get confirmation. Some are predicting that Cheney won't be indicted but will be named as an "unindicted co-conspiritor" but even that might force him to resign.

I find it difficult to believe Bush would let Rove be imprisoned. Bush couldn't function without Rove, for starters. But more important is what Rove knows. Has Rove already been "flipped" to the point of incriminating Bush? Is the recent news that Bush apparently lied to Fitzgerald about knowing Rove was involved enough for an indictment of obstructing justice? I know Bush wasn't under oath at time but that, apparently, is no protection. Even if Rove hasn't incriminated Bush yet, might he be inclined to see if he can cut a deal after a few months in prison? I'm willing to bet that Rove has a lot more he could reveal about Bush and Cheney than just an involvement in Plamegate.

So what's Bush's exit strategy? Well,a "plane crash," a "lone gunman," and an "accidental overdose of sleeping pills" have been employed in the past. But Rove, Libby, and all the others dying within days of each other would be rather suspicious. And since Fitzgerald will already have sworn depositions and other evidence, it wouldn't do much good. It might protect against Rove trying to cut short a prison stay by coming up with juicy stuff unrelated to Plamegate but he might already have done that anyway. A few covert assassinations might prevent others coming forward about other matters but there could already be enough from Plamegate to do Bush major damage.

He could try the "Nixon" gambit of firing Fitzgerald before the indictments are drawn up. Nixon's Attorney General resigned rather than carry out that order; so did the AG's number two. Nixon eventually got his way, but the truth came out anyway. There is reason to believe that Fitzgerald has taken precautions to make this tactic ineffective. Fitzgerald would have explained to the grand jury that they have a legal and constitutional right to pursue whatever they wish, despite the direction the prosecutor may wish to lead them (if they do their own thing they are termed a "runaway" grand jury). So even if Fitzgerald gets fired and replaced by a prosecutor who is in Bush's pocket, the grand jury will carry on with their investigation and present bills of indictment.

He could try the "Reagan" strategy of handing out pardons to everyone convicted. Reagan only got away with that because he was a popular president and was losing his marbles. The Republicans persuaded the Democrats not to take things any further (and so veep George HW Bush escaped without his part in Iran-Contra and all the other nasty stuff coming out) and criminals like Poindexter and (ironically) Libby got away with only short terms in prison before the pardons were issued. But pardons could prove to be too late if some of them have already cut deals and given incriminating testimony.

He could try the "George HW Bush" strategy of giving everyone pre-emptive pardons for any criminal act, past or present, committed by members of his administration. God knows how Bush was allowed to get away with that, but he did. Surely it only makes sense to pardon somebody after imprisonment, or at least after conviction. It was obviously a way of stopping all his nasty secrets coming out at the trials, and for that very reason his pardons should have been overturned by the Supreme Court as obstruction of justice. This sounds like Dubya's exit strategy and is probably why he is so eager to get his adoring puppy Harriet on the SCOTUS.

Then again, his popularity is going downhill fast. Ninety Senators, including many Republicans, voted to insert a measure into the military spending bill that prohibited torture. Some of them no doubt did so cynically knowing that the House is likely to remove the measure and that if, by some miracle, the measure survives then Bush will veto it and the House is unlikely to get the two-thirds majority needed to over-ride the veto. You might even suspect that Bush told them they could vote for the amendment so they can look good to their constituents because the House will kill it. But that's unlikely: Bush looks out for number one and threatening to veto a military spending bill during a time of war because he wants to be able to continue torturing people made him look very bad. I doubt Rove would have sanctioned such a strategy (but then he's been a little preoccupied lately). So it looks like the Senate Republicans, at least, increasingly see Bush and his disastrous policies and scandals as a threat to their re-election.

So if Bush handed out pre-emptive pardons he might just face impeachment. It's a very slender chance, I admit, but it's just possible. The mood of the country is such that those who voted against impeachment would have a hard time getting re-elected. The mainstream media is also speaking out against Bush these days (a sign that they now feel less threatened by Bush and less sure that he has any power to give them any rewards like allowing more mergers). There's also the "feeding frenzy" factor at work: any mainstream media outlet that doesn't jump on a story like that will lose market share to the ones that do.

Once impeached, Bush could then face indictment on whatever charges Fitzgerald turns up. Impeachment only removes him from office and bars him from ever holding public office again. But the Constitution makes it quite plain that impeachment would not protect him from any criminal charges arising from the same issues. There is no "double jeopardy" get-out. So Bush handing out pre-emptive pardons might not get him off the hook. If he is impeached for protecting people with pre-emptive pardons then he is certainly also guilty of obstructing justice even if Fitzgerald has nothing else on him.

Could Bush get around this by giving himself a pre-emptive pardon too? There is nothing explicitly in the Constitution to prevent it. But even then he could still be impeached for doing so (and the mood against him might be a lot stronger if he tried a trick like that). And after that he might face charges of obstruction of justice for pre-emptively pardoning himself. Of course he'd appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, and he's trying to stack it with his buddies. But would even Clarence Thomas put the shreds of his reputation on the line to protect Bush? Would puppy-dog Miers (if she's appointed, and if the appointment happens prior to the appeal) recuse herself? Even if she did not, could she be guaranteed to stick by Bush if things looked really serious? Once she's on the Court she doesn't have to pay back any favours, and she'd have her own reputation to think about. Plus, even Supreme Court justices can be impeached.

He could, of course, resign and hope nobody is vindictive enough to pursue matters. But he's not the sort of man who is likely do that (stay the course). But even if he did there's no guarantee it would stop there. It did with Nixon, despite his unpopularity. It did with Reagan, because of his popularity and dementia. It might work again, because the Democrats seem to lack balls. But what if they realized that with the DeLay scandal, the Frist Scandal, and whatever comes out of Plamegate that going after Bush would be supported by the majority of the US, might turn up even further scandals, and probably result in the Democrats taking one or both Houses? They're probably too wimpy to try, but...

But maybe resignation is an option if he can guarantee that whoever takes over will grant him a pardon. But he cannot be sure who that will be. If Bush is forced to resign then Cheney will have gone too. So might several others in his cabinet. Hastert may yet face corruption charges over taking bribes from Turkey. Whoever is left after all this settles will probably not be close enough to Bush to feel much loyalty. Certainly not close enough to give him a pardon in the face of the majority of the country thinking (correctly) that Bush has been a n absolute disaster.

So how about another "terrorist attack"? It worked before. Boosted his popularity no end. But that was before Hurricane Katrina showed that rather than being the strong defender he claimed to be, he was spectacularly inept at protecting the country. Another "terrorist attack" would not be seen as his finest hour but as yet more incompetence.

Ah, but he now has legislation that would let him declare martial law. General Tommy Franks stated his opinion that if there were another "terrorist attack" all civil liberties would be suspended and there would be martial law. So that's a possibility. Could he gain anything else that way? You betcha!

Imagine a suitcase nuke detonated in Washington. Imagine that the circle of total destruction just happened to include where the grand jury meets, killing them all and destroying all their evidence. Of course it would be pretty damned obvious that it (like 9-11) was an inside job and what its purpose was. Everyone in the rest of the world would know it and say so. But the US would be under martial law and anybody who spoke out would find themselves "disappeared" to Gitmo.

Would Bush try such a thing? He's cornered and desperate and has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Is he evil enough to do it? He lied the US into a war of conquest for oil. Is he bright enough to think of it? Probably not. Rove is, but he may already have been "flipped." Cheney is, and it seems there is more evidence against Cheney than against Bush.

But maybe they both think that with pre-emptive pardons, Congress (currently) in their pockets (most of the time) and Harriet on the Scotus they won't need to do that. Their window of opportunity is closing fast. Fitzgerald might keep things going until the very last day or he might present indictments tomorrow. If they were going to do it they probably already would have because speculation that Fitzgerald was going to issue indictments very soon has been around for the past week.

None of the exit strategies looks good. Pre-emptive pardons is probably the way he'll go, along with hoping that Congress won't impeach him. They probably won't. But without Tom "Hammer" DeLay there to push people around, that's not guaranteed.

The Big Lie

2005-10-17T03:33:00.000+01:00

Adolph Hitler, in Mein Kampf wrote that Germany lost WW I due to a propaganda technique used by Jews which consisted of telling a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe anyone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." Goebbels is rumoured to have later accused the British of using the same technique. More details here The rest of the world credits Hitler's Nazi regime with using the "big lie" in its propaganda.

The Bush regime is certainly using the "big lie" gambit. But it's also using the "little lie, frequently" gambit. There is not a day goes by when the Bush regime doesn't lie about something no matter how big or how small. So it's interesting to figure out why they do it.

The first reason is strategy. They're not going to sell a "Let's give my cronies in the energy industry freedom to pollute the air so they can make bigger profits" bill but they can sell a "Clean Skies Initiative." If they told the truth about what they wanted to achieve they'd be strung up from lampposts. If they lie about it the sheeple will let them do it.

The second reason is tactics. They get caught out in one of their lies so lie about it some more. "So Saddam didn't have WMDs? But he had plans to create projects to explore the possibility of WMD-related program activities." Then that lie gets exposed. "Oh, no vague thoughts of intentions of the possibility of perhaps creating WMD-related program activities? But he was an evil person with torture rooms that we closed down (actually we re-opened them and run them under our management now)." Etc. As the Scots poet put it: "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." Once you tell a lie then you have to tell further lies when the first lie is exposed as a lie.

The third reason is because they can. These people are psychopaths and they get their rocks of by hurting people. Part of their pleasure is in deceiving people long enough for that deceit to get them what they want then laughing like sick fucks when the sheeple realize they've been lied to once again.

But perhaps there is another strategic reason. There are so fucking many lies it's impossible to keep track of them. The daily news cycle means that by the time you've gathered the proof of a lie it is considered "old news" and your proof is ignored. Even worse, there are so fucking many lies that people like you and me get burned out. There is just too much evil. There are just too many lies. We are overwhelmed by it all. 9-11 should have been enough to have Bush and co impeached and imprisoned for their part in it. But while we were looking at that we got distracted by other serious crimes and lies. We're forever playing "catch up" and losing.

Had we concentrated all our efforts on 9-11 then then this bunch would be in jail. Had we concentrated all our efforts on the lies that led to the Iraq war then this bunch would be in jail. Had we concentrated all our efforts on "Plamegate" then this bunch would be in jail. Etc. But we eagerly concentrate our efforts on the latest atrocity and the latest lies and so we lose.

The "lots of little lies" technique is, unfortunately, an improvement over the "big lie." Even though fewer people believe the little lies, they are continually chasing a moving target.

One of the Founding Fathers' Mistakes

2005-10-14T23:13:00.000+01:00

The founding fathers of the US did the best they could. They analysed the governance of countries around the planet and throughout history looking for what they did wrong and how to prevent it happening in the US. The Constitution was a compromise between conflicting viewpoints and it was always intended that it would be overhauled on a frequent basis to correct any problems before they got out of hand.

The founding fathers did not anticipate the inertia in keeping the Constitution unaltered in the face of flaws. They did manage to add the Bill of Rights but after that major amendments were few and far between. But that was a minor mistake.

The founding fathers thought that men of good faith would, in general, rise to positions of power because the people would take an interest in ascertaining the true nature of candidates. That was true back in those days when the citizenry were well-informed and sought to investigate all sides of every issue. These days when people get their opinions force-fed to them by the likes of Limbaugh and O'Reilly, the scum easily floats to the top. That was a bigger mistake but the founding fathers can be forgiven for not predicting the invention of radio and television and how much those inventions would turn the citizenry into sheeple.

Some have claimed that the UK parliamentary system, where the Prime Minister (chief executive) is a Member of Parliament (legislator in the lower house) makes him more vulnerable to his actions being questioned. It is certainly true that the worst abuses of power by Thatcher, Major and Blair occurred when they twisted the rules to allow them to act "presidentially." And yet there is something to be said for the separation of powers.

In any case, the founding fathers didn't have much choice. The geographical extent of just the original thirteen states and the modes of transport available at the time meant they had to have a chief executive separate from Congress. In order to truly represent the views of his constituents, a Representative has to spend time with them, yet to make laws he has to meet in Congress. Given the distances and modes of transport it was impracticable, back then, for Congress to meet three or four days a week and return to their constituency for the rest of the week. The founding fathers anticipated that Congress would meet once or twice a year.

That wasn't a problem because technological and cultural change occurred at a much slower pace back, then so new legislation at the Federal level was not as frequently required (especially as the Federal Government exerted less influence back then). What was a problem was that somebody was needed to ensure that the legislation that Congress passed was executed. Even worse, if the US were to be attacked it would be no good saying "Sorry, Congress isn't due to meet again for another four months so could you postpone your attack until then so they have a chance to authorize defensive measures?" so you needed an executive who was also Commander in Chief in times of war.

In short, the founding fathers needed a President because of transport limitations of the time. Were they to be recalled from their graves to redraft the Constitution they might, seeing fast cars and even faster aircraft, reach a different conclusion. So that's not a mistake either.

The founding fathers were adamant that there should be no king. And that is the foundation of where they made a big mistake, although they didn't have the knowledge to realize that they had.

A king who is an absolute monarch without restraint is a bad idea (I hope that is so obvious I don't have to explain why). A king with life tenure, even if he has the restricted powers of the US president is a bad idea: there is no mechanism to say "OK, George HW Bush, you screwed up big time so we won't re-elect you." Kingship through imprimogeniture (it passes to the first-born) is also a bad idea: George HW Bush was a bad president but Dubya is far, far worse.

So why was it a bad idea to dispense with kings entirely? Because there is no separation between the head of state (figurehead) and the chief of state (chief executive). The Queen of England is supposedly merely a figurehead (legally she has almost no remaining powers that she could exert without causing a constitutional crisis that would lead to her downfall; practically, as the world's richest woman she has far more indirect power than most people suspect) and serves as a psychological counter-balance to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister Blair is a lying, evil, corrupt scumbag? That's OK because at least we have the Queen to look up to. King George is a syphilitic lunatic? That's OK because the Prime Minister makes sure George can't do much harm.

The US President combines head of state (ceremonial figurehead) and chief of state (chief executive officer) in one person. And that's the big problem. Americans venerate the flag. Americans venerate mom and apple pie. Americans venerate the President because he's head of state. That makes it very difficult for them to acknowledge when the President, as chief of state, fucks up big time. "You can't criticise him because he's [tones of awe and reverance] The President."

Americans therefore find it difficult to distinguish between the office of President and the officeholder. The office of President is entitled to certain protocols and courtesies, and those are conferred upon the officeholder. Other than the courtesies due to the office itself, the officeholder must earn respect. I have had great difficulty convincing some people of that. They insist that people should respect the President merely because he is the President and that he is therefore above criticism. Respect must be earned.

The office of President has the courtesy that its holder is addressed as "Mr President" but anything beyond that official courtesy must be earned. You should always say something to the President like "Mr President, why did you invade Iraq?" and not like "Oi, you evil fucking scumbag, why did you invade Iraq?" because the protocols due to the office require that mode of addres. However, it is permissible to say "Mr President, you evil fucking scumbag, why did you invade Iraq?" if, indeed, the President is an evil fucking scumbag.

To quote from part of an article Teddy Roosevelt wrote for the Kansas City Star during WW I:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Unfortunately, because the President is figurehead as well as chief executive, many Americans find it nearly impossible to criticise him. That has been true of all US Presidents, not just this one (who is the worst the US has ever had). Until recently, when his failures became apparent to all and his poll numbers plummeted, a newspaper that criticised Dubya might as well have said that the US flag is ugly, apple pie tastes bad, and the American dream is a nightmare (and then waited for some shit-for-brains Dubya supporter to torch their offices).

Sometimes I get it wrong

2005-10-13T02:27:00.000+01:00

For those few people hanging on my every word when I make predictions about future events based upon my deductions of past events, you fools! :) Sometimes I get it wrong. I don't have a crystal ball. I'm just taking known facts and using logic to make deductions. Sometimes I get my facts wrong. Sometimes my logic is wrong. And sometimes my deductions are wrong because I don't have all the facts.

As an example, many moons ago I had an article published by Democratic Underground in which I predicted that Ashcroft recusing himself from the Plame case meant that there would be no indictments at all. And now I'm predicting that Fitzgerald is likely to indict Cheney and/or Bush. Obviously I was wrong on at least one of those predictions.

In my defense, in the Democratic Underground article I assumed (but did not explicitly state that assumption) that the Bush Family Evil Empire would maintain its chokehold on all legal processes. At the time it seemed impossible that they would lose their grip and that cracks would appear in the façade. No matter how honest and persistent Fitzgerald was, he wouldn't be able to get anything they didn't want him to have.

So you can laugh at me, here's a rough outline of what I wrote back then:

Ashcroft was deeply unpopular and mocked. He lost a senate re-election race to a dead man! Whatever his plans for the future, he needed something to make him look good.

The Bush administration were going to out the real culprit (fat chance); or they were going to put up some sacrificial minion; or nobody would ever be indicted. I tried to predict which of those three options was most likely given Ashcroft's recusal.

If a real culprit or sacrificial minion were indicted, Ashcroft would benefit by not recusing himself. He could then say "You thought I was partisan and incapable of acting objectively but we have indicted the responsible party. Now anoint me with some more Crisco and bow down before me."

If the plan was that nobody would be indicted then Ashcroft would have to protect himself by recusing himself. He could then say "We couldn't find the culprit but you can't blame me for that because I recused myself."

Therefore Ashcroft's refusal indicated there would be no indictments.

I still stand by that logic. It's just that neither I, nor the Bush Family Evil Empire thought that they'd lose control. Ashcroft's recusal was because the Busheviks intended that there would be no indictments. But they, like I, cannot predict the future perfectly. They, like I, thought they had complete control.

There are times when I am very happy that my deductions turn out to be wrong. OK, I'm counting my burning chickens before they cross the bridge here, but I think that Fitzgerald will be the death of the fascist regime that has taken over the US.

You're late, guys

2005-10-12T03:07:00.000+01:00

According to this post over at the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are both working on stories that point to Dick "Crashcart" Cheney as being the next target of Fitzgerald's investigation.

You're late, guys. I figured it out five days ago and posted my reasoning here. And you're also missing something.

Libby has cut a deal to grass up Rove. That ought to be damned obvious because only a couple of days after Libby begged Miller to testify, Rove got called for a fourth time with no guarantees that his testimony would not lead to indictment. Miller's testimony would be, without a deal, damaging to Libby and that's why she went to jail and refused to believe his waiver had been given freely. But Libby cut a deal, and although Miller's testimony will implicate Libby further it will also provide corroboration for other testimony (Libby's or somebody else's) against Rove. Libby will get off on minor charges (despite whatever Miller has to say) or even gain total immunity in return for grassing up Rove. That's why he begged Miller to testify and why she agreed to.

But is Rove the end of it or will Fitzgerald use the same tactics to persuade Rove to let him fry the biggest fish of all? With testimony from Libby and Miller, Fitzgerald already has enough to indict Rove. So the only reason for calling Rove to testify yet again is to use the same tactics upon him. Fitzgerald must already have testimony implicating Bush and/or Cheney and needs Rove's corroboration to go after them. So Rove will be faced with the choice between lesser charges (or even immunity) or dropping Bush and/or Cheney in the shit.

Which is pretty much what I said in my earlier article five days ago. But here's something that didn't occur to me back then. Libby is Cheney's gopher. Rove is Bush's brain. If Rove has been called in to turn State's Evidence then it's almost certain Bush is a target. But the fact that Libby has spilled his guts means that if Cheney was even indirectly involved (and I'm damned sure he was in the thick of it) then Cheney faces the perp walk too.

I'm losing track of who might end up as President. Bush and Cheney are going to do the perp walk. Sibel Edmonds has stated that Hastert (next in line) took bribes from Turkey to drop a motion against Turkey's ethnic cleansing. Frist is facing Martha Stuart land. DeLay is in such deep shit there is no chance of him ever surfacing again (that is something that makes even an atheist like me wonder if there might be a God after all). If Bush and Cheney go down then there will likely be many other secrets come out that will take out most of the others in the line of succession. Who's left? I think that after all the others have been jailed, the guy who cleans the downstairs toilets in the Senate is next in line and might be free of corruption and treason (but he pongs a bit).

Calvinism

2005-10-11T23:14:00.000+01:00

Religions and creeds vie with each other to come up with the stupidest garbage possible. Of them all though, one of the daftest has to be Calvinism.

One of my favourite science fiction authors, Randall Garret, once gave the following quotation (probably invented, since I cannot find any reference to it on google) at the start of one of his stories:

You can and you can't

You will and you won't

You'll be damned if you do

You'll be damned if you don't

Alonzo Todd, Definition of Calvinism

That was from memory of a story I last read over a decade ago, so I may have misquoted slightly.

Calvinism is a dour, sour, religion. No form of enjoyment is allowed. You are not allowed to have pleasure, especially on Sundays. The Calvinist God does not want you to enjoy yourself. As a Calvinist you live a life without joy or pleasure so you might go to Heaven. Except that, according to Calvinism, what you do makes absolutely no difference at all upon whether or not you go to Heaven? As the TV comedy Soap used to say in its intro: "Confused? You will be."

The Calvinist doctrine consists of five fundamental principles which are referred to by Calvinists by the acronym "TULIP":

Total Depravity: This is based upon, but far worse than the doctrine of "Original Sin." The doctrine of "Original Sin" states that we are all born with a negative spiritual bank balance because our remote ancestors Adam and Eve were sinful. The only way you can wipe out that sin is to "find Jeebus." This is like you being imprisoned because your dead grandfather didn't pay a parking fine unless you tell your local sherriff that he is a wonderful guy: purely evil. But Calvinism takes it one step further.

Calvinism says that although God/Jesus/Holy Ghost want you to find salvation through Jeebus, you are so inherently evil that you cannot. The Calvinist Pink said:

As a creature the natural man is responsible to love, obey and serve God; as a sinner he is responsible to repent and believe the Gospel. But at the outset we are confronted with the fact that the natural man is unable to love and serve God, and that as a sinner, of himself, cannot repent and believe.

Sovereignty of God, page 149

So whereas most creeds of Christianity give you a way of escaping "Original Sin," Calvinism says there is no escape. Not unless God decides that, as a sinner, you will be permitted to find salvation through Jesus.
Unconditional Election: At the start of time, God knew everything that would happen throughout time and elected (chose) certain people to go to Heaven and others to go to Hell. God saw it all in advance.

Consider that carefully. Whatever you do, even though you think you have free will (and perhaps you do) God already knows what you are going to do. God has already decided, based upon advanced knowledge of acts you have not yet performed, whether you go to Heaven or to Hell.
Limited Atonement: Christ died only for certain sins for certain people. This crap about "Christ died for your sins" is just that: crap. If you are one of the lucky few then Christ's death atoned for both your "Original Sin" and whatever other sins you may have committed. If you are one of the unlucky many then despite you having committed fewer, less serious, sins than the lucky few, Christ did not die for your sins. Get over it. Move on.
Irrestistable Grace: If you're chosen to be one of the saved, you can't fight it. If God chose you to be saved then you can go around raping and killing virgins and you'll still be saved. If God chose Hitler then Hitler is saved despite his depravities. If God chose Stalin then Stalin is saved despite his deprativities. If God chose Pol Pot, then Pol Pot is saved despite his depravities. If God chose George Wanker Bush, then George Wanker Bush is saved despite his depravities.

You may think that such evil people would not be chosen by God. But you have forgotten the "T" of "TULIP." You are a sinner and you cannot obtain salvation merely through embracing Jeebus. God has to decree that your embracing Jeebus will result in your salvation. No matter what you do, the decision is God's. And, since you start out as a sinner and your embracing Jeebus does not change you from being a sinner, God rewards some sinners and punishes other sinners. Only God knows which sinners get saved.
Perseverance of Saints: If you're one of the lucky few, chosen by God at the start of time to be saved, then you are a saint. And as such your sainthood perseveres, despite whatever you may do that afterwards that is evil. This is essentially the same as the "I" in "TULIP." After God, at the beginning of time, chose you (for whatever reason) then it's inescapable.

OK, so let's think this through carefully. You think you have free will (and perhaps you do) but God already knows what you chose to do throughout your life. And on the basis of those choices God decided whether you go to Hell or Heaven. Even if you have free will, God know what your free will caused you to decide to do.

OK, so you have two choices. You can live the sour, dour, unpleasant life of a Calvinist or you can enjoy yourself. God already knows which choice you made and whichever choice you made your fate is sealed. So you might decide to become a Calvinist and still end up in Hell: a mortal life of punishment followed by an afterlife of punishment. Or you could decide to do a "John Belushi"and end up in Hell not because you were a bad person but because God decided so at the start of time, but at least you got to enjoy yourself in this life. Or, if you are lucky then you live a sour, dour, unjoyful, unpleasurable life as a Calvinist and are lucky enough to end up as one of the "elect" that go to Heaven (not because you became a Calvinist or because you forewent pleasure, but because God had already long since decided that you would go to Heaven). Or, if you are really lucky you might decide to do the "Belushi" thang and live life to the full and God has already decided you go to Heaven so it's a mortal life of pleasure followed by an afterlife of pleasure.

Given that God already knows the choices you'll make, given that God has already decided what to do with you, do you use your free will to choose a fucking unhappy Calvinist life or do you go and party? I shall pour myself another glass of wine and surf for some porn while you think about that. God has (according to the Calvinists) long since made his choice what to do with me in the afterlife irrespective of what I do in this life. So I'm going to fucking enjoy myself in this life. If I take the Calvinist creed as being true then there is no other sensible choice I can make.

Ummm, is any other religion so self-contradictory and so self-defeating as Calvinism?

Tom DeLay - the Buddhist Remix

2005-10-11T01:07:00.000+01:00

[Another item recycled from one of my other blogs]

The young child of a Buddhist family was trying to understand the Buddhist concepts of death and reincarnation. He asked his father what happened when he died. His father explained that if he had followed the Buddhist path and been a good person then he would be rewarded with Nirvana but if he had been a bad person he would be reincarnated as a rat because his soul needed to learn more.

The child thought a while and then asked his father what happened if he died as a rat. His father explained that if, as a rat, he had followed the Buddhist path and been a good rat then he would be rewarded by being reincarnated as a human but if he had been a bad rat he would be reincarnated as a cockroach because his soul needed to learn a lot more.

The child thought yet again and then asked his father what happened if he died as a cockroach. His father explained that if, as a cockroach, he had followed the Buddhist path and been a good cockroach then he would be rewarded by being reincarnated as a rat but if he had been a bad cockroach he would be reincarnated as Tom DeLay.

The child pondered heavily for a long time and then said to his father "Fuck it, if I screw up as a cockroach can I go straight to Hell? That's a lesser punishment than being Tom DeLay." His father smiled, knowing that his child was on the path to enlightenment.

Tom DeLay

2005-10-11T00:54:00.000+01:00

[Recycled from one of my other blogs]

About ten years ago I was in Edinburgh. It was raining heavily. There was a high wind. I had to tilt my umbrella at an angle to stop the rain being blown at me. I turned a corner and the wind was blowing straight at me, so I lowered my umbrella in front of me to keep off the rain, thereby restricting my forward vision.

A few steps later, I trod on something unknown (because I couldn't see what was in front of me). From the feel under my foot, I thought it was a woman's handbag (that's "purse" if you're in the US) containing pens, cosmetics, a purse (that's "pocketbook" if you're in the US) and other objects. It had a squishy feel overall but with solid objects within. I looked down to see what I had stepped on, expecting at any moment to have to apologize abjectly to the woman in front of me for stepping on the handbag (that's still "purse" if you're in the US) that she had just dropped and have to offer to pay for all the stuff I had broken by stepping on it.

When I looked down I saw the biggest turd I had ever seen. Not only that, it was fluorescent orange. It must have come from a dog since there are no larger animals wandering the pavements (that's "sidewalks" if you're in the US) of Edinburgh, so the dog must have been a labrador that had been constipated for several weeks. It was a gigantic turd, and full of undigested objects of different consistencies (hence my belief that I had detected pens under my foot). And it stank to high heaven. It was rancid. The worst turd I had ever smelled (and my own turds can often beat the Guinness Book of Records for stench).

So I walked my way to the bus station scraping my shoe at every opportunity. Since there was heavy rain, the water aided to remove this turd. However, as well as being fluorescent orange and disgustingly smelly, it also had the adhesive powers of superglue. So when I got on the bus (out of the wind that had kept most of the stench from my shoe away from my nose) I was aware of an evil smell - as were those around me who moved to seats well away from me. When I got home I had to scrub the shoe repeatedly under running water to remove the remaining evil supergluey crap and then throw the brush away because it was forever contaminated.

It is only now since pResident George Wanker Bush stole power and I started following US politics that I realize that I had stepped in some Tom DeLay (i.e., a really evil shit).

Why the Abrahamic Gods are Inherently Evil

2005-10-09T22:17:00.000+01:00

Some of you may be wondering why I attack religion so much. In part it is because the Talabangelicals facilitated Bush's rise to power. In part it is because the insane theology of the shadowy figures pulling the strings of those who pull Bush's strings makes the Talebangelicals look lucid, rational and moral. In part it's because I can and it's so easy to do it's a way for me to relax.

The Abrahamic religions are those derived from Abraham of what the Christians refer to as the Old Testament. The Abrahamic Gods are JHVH (also rendered as "Jahveh" and "Jehovah"), the Christian God/Jesus/Holy Ghost who are different yet the same (holy multiple personality disorder, Batman!), and Allah. And it can be proven, from simple facts and logical deduction that if one of those Gods exists as one of those religions describes Him then He is evil. This also applies to any non-Abrahamic monotheistic God who promises an eternal afterlife of bliss to his believers.

We are all born atheists (without religious faith). Religious faith is only acquired when we are old enough to hear and comprehend speech, and it is a process that takes several years. The religion one acquires is almost always that of one's parents to the point where it could be mistakenly perceived as being inherited. In fact religion isn't inherited but is acquired more in the manner of an infection. It is an infection that, like athlete's foot, most people cannot throw off by themselves. It is an infection that blocks different strains of the same infection (so if you are infected with Catholicism you won't be infected with Protestantism or Islam).

Some people do change their religion, but it is rare. A very small fraction lose their faith in one religion and switch to another (or to atheism). A very small fraction convert so they can marry somebody of a different religion. Occasionally a new religion arises (such as Mormonism) or a new religion splits off from an older religion (such as Protestantism from Catholicsm). But for the vast majority of people the religion they have is the religion their parents had. It's not a coincidence: parents indoctrinate their children with religion.

Most people do not wait until they are adults to choose a religion. Richard Dawkins suggested that if they did they might make a list of scores for best hymns, most comfortable pews, etc. Dawkins was being facetiously sarcastic to drive home a point. If one were to choose a religion as an adult one might assign scores based on how likely it was to be true, how moral it was, etc. But the vast majority do not, they follow the same religion as their parents almost as if they inherited it. This is important: in the vast majority of cases a person's religion is not a matter of choice but an accident of birth.

And there are so many Abrahamic religions. There are dozens of flavours of Judaism, dozens of flavours of Islam and thousands of flavours of Christianity. Each of those flavours says that it, and only it is the correct way to worship JHVH/God/Allah and that followers of the other flavours will burn in Hell for eternity for worshipping JHVH/God/Allah the wrong way. By their own arguments, no more than one of them can be the correct way to worship JHVJ/God/Allah. Why do I say "no more than one"? Because it's entirely possible that none of them are right.

However, let's assume that one of them is right. If you have a religion, then it just happens to be your flavour of your religion (WUnited Reformed Universal Seventh Day Adventist Baptists for JesusW, say, rather than the rival "Universal Reformed United Seventh Day Adventist Baptists for JesusW who differ on the important point of whether the left knee or right knee should be the first to touch the hassock when kneeling to pray) that is right. Congratulations! Of the many thousands of flavours of Christianity, yours just happens to be the right one. You've won the lottery, purely by accident.

I can hear the indignation in your voice as you say "It's not a matter of luck, I know my religion is the right one." So let me ask you how you know that.

You'll tell me that you have a Holy Book, the ~~Babble~~ Bible, which is the inerrant word of God. And I'll point out that Judaism has its holy scriptures, the Torah and the Talmud, and Islam has its holy scripture, the Qur'an.

You'll tell me that your priests tell you that the Bible is true, and they are holy men. And I'll point out that the Rabbis say the same of the Torah and Talmud, and the Mullahs say the same of the Qur'an.

You'll tell me that your priests must be right because God has personally spoken to them and told them so. I'll point out that Rabbis and Mullahs say the same.

You'll tell me that you know your flavour of your religion is the correct one because you opened your heart to God and He spoke to you, which He would not do if you were following the wrong religion (except perhaps to tell you to convert to the right religion). And I can point to millions of Catholics, Protestants, Wesleyans, Reformed Jews, Orthodox Jews, Sunnis, Shi'ites, etc. who all say the same thing. JHVH/God/Allah has spoken to them personally and told them that their flavour of their religion is the one true religion and followers of anything else (that's you) will burn in Hell forever for following the wrong religion.

They can't all be right. Like I said, you got lucky through an accident of birth: your parents just happened to follow the right religion. Your parents were lucky because their grandparents just happened to follow the right religion. And so it goes, through your ancestors, until we come to the point where your flavour of your religion branched off from another religion. Some of your ancestors made the right choice (because God spoke to them personally and told them to follow the new religion) and some of your ancestors made the wrong choice (because God spoke to them personally and told them to follow the wrong religion).

So why is it that God speaks to the vast majority of people who follow one of the thousands of wrong religions and tells them they are following the right religion? Here are the possible answers:

It is very common for people to hallucinate that God is talking to them, telling them whatever they want to hear. When Paddy O'Rourke hears God telling him that Catholicism is the one true way, he's imagining it. When Sarah McNeil hears God telling her that the Church of Scotland is the one true way, she's imagining it. When Brian Smith hears God telling him that Mormism is the one true way, he's imagining it. When Osama bin Laden hears Allah telling him that Wahabi Islam is the one true way, he's imagining it. When Isaac Goldstein hears JHVH telling him that Orthodox Judaism is the one true way, he's imagining it.

Only you, and the other tiny fraction of all religious people that share your faith, are not hallucinating when God speaks to you. I find it very implausible that the small numbers of your faith are immune from the hallucinations that afflict the followers of every other faith, but it's not impossible. However, if true, God is evil.

Why? Because of all those other souls that will burn in Hell for eternity for an accident of birth. It's like saying "everyone living in Texas is condemned to Hell" without bothering to tell them that they ought to move out of Texas. It's not their fault they live there - it's where they were born. It's not Isaac Goldstein's fault he's an Orthodox Jew, it's because he was born to parents who were orthodox Jews. It's not Isaac's fault he has hallucinations that God talks to him because they afflict most of humanity.

God could have created us without the propensity to hallucinate that God is talking to us. God could give us all personal signs of miracles. God could suspend a mile-high golden cross over the Vatican (or over the Edinburgh Presbytery of the Church of Scotland, or whatever) to let us all know the one true faith. Of course, if God did that then it wouldn't require faith to believe, which is your excuse for why He doesn't. But because he doesn't, billions of people throughout history are condemned to an eternity in Hell for no fault of their own.

If this is true then God is evil.
When those people of other faiths open their hearts to God, Satan answers because they're following the wrong faith. Mmmmmm, OK. So how do you know that God, rather than Satan, answered you? Because you're following the right faith. How do you know you're following the right faith? Because ~~Satan~~ God told you so. Hmmmm, maybe your faith is strong enough to make you ignore just how absurd your answer is, but I don't believe your answer for a second.

But let's say you're right. By pure fucking accident you were born to parents who happen to follow the right faith so that when you dial the number they gave you for God it turns out to be the right number and not the number for Satan. Through no fault of their own, billions of people throughout history have been given the wrong number.

If this is true then God is evil.
There is a God but he accepts all religions. As long as you follow that religion and are a good person, you get into Heaven. What, any religion? How about Satanism? Of course, you'll tell me that it is impossible to be a Satanist and a good person. OK...

As I've shown here and here it's possible to be a Christian and a bad person and still, according to Christian theology, get into Heaven. Judaism has "Yom Kippur" (the Day of Atonement) in which one must atone (make recompense) for one's sins against one's fellow man (actually, one's fellow Jew). Islam has a similar philosophy: as well as following the religious edicts you must be a good person (actually, the religious edicts say that you must be a good person). Christianity says you can do what the fuck you like as long as you go to confession or get reborn or whatever.

So if you have to believe in any of the thousands of flavours of the three Abrahamic religions and be a good person, Christians are at a disadvantage. Sure, most Christians strive to be good people anyway, but many go with the "I can fix it in confession on Sunday" or "I can get reborn" or whatever. God does not tell Christians that, unlike Jews and Muslims, their faith leads them to think that they can get to Heaven even if they're bad people when they cannot. Billions of people throughout history left believing that their insurance policy covers something that it doesn't.

If this is true then God is evil.

Oh, and what about atheists who are good people? Christians say we cannot be good people yet statistics show that atheists are under-represented in the prison population and the religious (particularly Catholics) are over-represented. Some of that might be down to atheist prisoners falsely proclaiming a religion in the hope it will get them better treatment, but I doubt it.

In any case, if there are a multitude of conflicting religions all claiming to be the one true religion and I decide that it's impossible to choose one since, at best, only one can be correct and I have thousands to choose from, yet I am a good person, why should I burn in Hell for eternity?

If this is true then God is evil.

[Amended 11th Oct 2005 to include the following paragraph]

I forgot an alternative explanation. That everyone (who isn't suffering from schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder) who claims God talks to them is lying. There are reports of people who claim to belong to sects that "speak in tongues" who claim that they faked speaking in tongues because it was expected of them and that (they claim) it is probable that so does everyone else in that sect. It doesn't even have to be everyone who deliberately lies about God talking to them: some could be schizophrenic, some could be suffering from MPD, some could be interpreting their own inner thoughts as words from God and the majority could be lying about it because they want to conform to the expectations of their community. But I'm a charitable person, so I'm going to assume that they're all totally honest and none of them are saying ~~the tooth fairy~~ God talks to them because they feel it is expected of them.

Conclusion: if God really works the way any of the thousands of Abrahamic religions say He works, then God is evil.

Now for an end-note for those who wondered why I stressed that religion is not inherited but behaves like an infection. Richard Dawkins pointed out in his book The Extended Phenotype (warning, unlike most of Dawkins' books this one is heavy reading if you're not scientifically-inclined) is that the difference between a parasite/disease (a life-form in your body that does you harm) and a symbiont (a life-form in your body that does you good) is the mechanism by which they infect others. Something which can only be passed on at birth has to be symbiotic because only if your offspring do well can it do well. Something which can be passed on at any time is a parasite because you can pass it to people you meet as well as your offspring: it doesn't care if you or your offspring do well as long as you manage to live long enough to pass it on to somebody else.

Both parasite/disease and symbiont, because they are inside your body, can exert control over your body. The symbiont "wants" (to those who would say I'm being teleological, this is a short-hand for saying that symbionts which evolve with these objectives do better than those which do not have those objectives) you to survive to have children and for your children to do well. The parasite/disease doesn't care as long as you survive long enough to infect at least one other person.

Take rabies. It is concentrated in saliva. In the early stages, it makes infected animals lick their immediate contacts more than usual, thus making it more likely to spread. In the later stages, after all the immediate contacts have been infected, it makes infected animals wander far from home, thus making it more likely to encounter new targets. And in those later stages it makes the infected animal more likely to attack those new targets (by biting them). Rabies exerts a major influence upon behaviour patterns and that influence is all in favour of spreading rabies at the cost of the infected individual.

There are many other examples of symbiont and parasite/disease induced behaviour in Dawkins' Extended Phenotype. And they all show that if the spread is purely congenital (inherited or during the birth process) then the result is a symbiont (good), but if there is a significant spread by contagion then the result is almost always harmful.

I said earlier that religion is not inherited (though from a superficial analysis it might appear to be so) but is in fact a contagion. Since religion never can be inherited, the chances of it ever, on average, benefitting humanity are so close to zero you can forget about it ever happening. Which means that even if you say "Well, there may not be a God or God might even be evil but religion is a benefit to humanity" you are talking bullshit. Religion is a contagious infection that can never do anything but harm.

Rush Limbaugh

2005-10-08T20:44:00.000+01:00

An adaptation of a joke I first saw in a science fiction story by Dallas McCord ("Mack") Reynolds about 30 years ago (that's when I read it, the story was written years earlier). I don't know if it was original to him or not. The original only had the question and what I have designated as answer "A2." The answer "A1" (original to me) just makes it so much more appropriate to Rush.

Q: Why does Rush Limbaugh sound so constipated?
A1: Rush is still addicted to Oxycontin, which is an opiate (like heroin and morphine). As with all opiates, Oxycontin reduces the strength of peristaltic contractions in the bowel, and therefore causes constipation.
A2: Because he's full of shit.

I'm the Commander, see...

2005-10-08T00:57:00.000+01:00

What do you mean it's wrong to have anal sex with my pet dog in public? I'm the commander, see - I do not need to explain why I walk around in public buggering my pet dog.

Fitzgerald and the Plamegate Chain of Dominoes

2005-10-07T22:57:00.000+01:00

There have been some interesting developments and an even more interesting rumour circulating recently (I'm sure you've all seen them but if not you can always google for the details). Could it be about to play out like this?

The rumour was that Fitzgerald may indict Cheney and Bush. So let's consider the developments.

Ex-criminal "Scooter" Libby practically begs Judith Miller to waive her oath of confidentiality by saying that it in his best interests she do so. Could it be that Libby doesn't wish to spend more time in jail and has cut a deal? Could it be that he needs Judith's corroboration of his testimony or the deal is off? If so, which bigger fish has he grassed up?

Karl Rove has been called to testify for a fourth time, and this time he will be told that he may be indicted as a result of his testimony (the rulebook says Fitzgerald has to give that warning if he hopes to indict). So it's entirely possible that Libby grassed up Rove, but needed Miller's corroboration in order for Fitzgerald to be able to make it stick.

But what if Libby also grassed up Cheney and Bush by telling Fitzgerald about conversations he'd had with Rove that Miller knew nothing off? If that were the case then Fitzgerald would want to be able to apply leverage to Rove. If Fitzgerald has enough (from Libby and Miller) to indict Rove (whether just for perjury or for actual crimes) then Rove faces a decision. He can refuse to testify and end up in the big house for whatever Fitzgerald has on him or he can confirm Libby's testimony about Cheney and Bush. Either way his political career is probably finished (unless another Bush steals the White House and rewards Rove's loyalty for remaining silent), but one way ends up with him serving time in prison. Decisions, decisions...

It could be that Rove is as high as it goes. Or it could be that Rove is as high as Fitzgerald can prove it goes with or without Rove's further testimony. But with that rumour of Cheney and Bush being in the sights, there is a chance that Rove is a stepping stone. And if Fitzgerald doesn't already have enough to indict Rove then calling Rove in for a fourth time is unlikely to change matters (Rove would plead the fifth) so Fitzgerald must have bigger fish to fry. I'd be unhappy to see a fat, evil bastard like Rove cut a deal and go free but I'd give him my entire fortune (not that I have one, but if I did Rove could have it) and a BJ every day for life (which would probably last no longer than a week because I'd slit my wrists after that long if his evil semen didn't poison me first) if it meant Cheney and Bush got what they deserve.

I hope this chain of dominoes goes all the way to the top rather than petering out at Rove.

More on Rove/Plame

2005-10-05T23:32:00.000+01:00

Some months ago I posted this hypothesis that rather than Plame being outed for what Wilson did, Wilson was manoeuvred into going to Africa and then into telling the media about it so that the administration could destroy Plame's network of operatives and sources by outing her (supposedly in retaliation). As time passed I realized there were weak spots in the hypothesis, such as the Bush Family Evil Empire apparently being phenomenally lucky in that Wilson could be exploited to attack Plame, and addressed such matters in amendments which shored up the weak points.

Since the last amendment it has looked (to me) to be entirely plausible. Things most definitely could have played out in the way the hypothesis states but it's not compelling enough to make it extremely likely that things did play out that way. Late last night I realized two things that make it very compelling indeed.

The first thing is that the Bush administration didn't need the "Niger documents" any more than Saddam needed yellowcake from Niger. Saddam already had barrels and barrels of the stuff under UN inspections seals. If he were going to reconstitute his nuke program he'd send somebody with wirecutters to snip the seals and use the yellowcake he already had. The Busheviks needed a big lie about a "nukyular" weapons program but they could have lied and said Saddam had opened the barrels he already had. With no weapons inspectors in Iraq at the time they could have got away with it.

The UN did go back to Iraq before the war started and did verify that the seals had not been tampered with. But by then the public had been convinced that Saddam was a major threat and it wouldn't have mattered. Even now some people remain convinced Saddam had WMDs. Even now that we know conclusively that he did not, "Crashcart Cheney" still trots out the lie occasionally.

The Bush Family Evil Empire did not need the Niger Documents. And yet they never made the obvious claim that Saddam was using his existing stocks. They repeatedly tried to use the Niger Documents, even inserting the yellowcake into the State of the Union speech after they had been forced to take it out of a previous speech because the facts did not support the claim. After being told by Wilson, via many of his administration contacts, that the Niger yellowcake never happened, after being told by their own State Department analysts that the Niger yellowcake never happened, after the CIA made them remove mention of it from one of his earlier speeches, why did they persist in using it? They could have just dropped it and instead claimed Saddam had also been using his existing stocks. The timing would have raised serious suspicions amongst those few of us who think but the media would have glossed over it and the sheeple would have been none the wiser.

Now for the second thing. After repeatedly defending the Niger yellowcake claim and apparently being too dim to switch to the "existing stocks" claim, why was Condi so unconcerned about Wilson letting the cat out of the bag? They were, apparently relying on the Niger yellowcake claim to make their threat of nukes seem plausible. It would have kicked away one of the main supports of their argument for war if Wilson went public. So why is it that when Wilson finally got to speak with Condi directly about it she told him that if he was that concerned about the issue he could go to the press about it. She practically begged him to expose one of the lies that was the main supporting argument for war.

I've said it before: these people are not incompetent or stupid, just evil. But let's assume they're too stupid to have thought of the "existing stocks" claim. That would mean they would be desperate to stop Wilson going public. Here are the options they could have chosen to silence him:

Claim some matter of national security for keeping the lie going. But Wilson wouldn't fall for that without being told what the matter was (and it would have to be convincing).

Not a good option.
Use the provisions of the misnamed USA PATRIOT Act to "disappear" Wilson and Plame. The trouble is her colleagues would wonder why she had vanished and might do some digging. The people at the top of the CIA and Justice Department may have been replaced by corrupt, evil Busheviks but the people lower down are still fairly honest. And it's the people lower down who handle the details and get the job done. So there's a very good chance that somebody within Justice would have told somebody within the CIA what had happened to Plame.

Not a good option.
Get the CIA to do a "wet job" on Plame and Wilson. They have a department just for that kind of work. But they might not like being asked to take out one of their own, and the details might leak out.

Not a good option.
Get a co-operative intelligence agency to do the dirty work. There is no shortage of candidates willing to do the job. But the most obvious one would be Israel's Mossad. Most of the neocons are strong supporters of Israel. Part of the real reason for the war in Iraq is to make Israel feel safer. The US gives a phenomenal amount of "aid" to Israel every year.

So there you have it. A few words in the right ears and a day or two later some crooks burglarize the Wilson household and shoot Wilson and Plame when they are disturbed.

If the Niger yellowcake really was as important as it appeared, and if there were reasons why the "existing stocks" claim could not be used, then that is what would have happened. It didn't happen that way because the whole point of the Niger yellowcake fable was to manipulate Wilson into investigating it. And the reason Condi didn't have Wilson and Plame killed was because the BFEE wanted him to go public so that they could pretend to be retaliating against him when they outed his wife. Not only did she not try to have him silenced, she encouraged him to go public.

The reason they wanted to out Plame was to destroy her network of sources and operatives. They tracked the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. Plame and her network was a threat to the lies the BFEE will tell in the future about Iran and Syria and every other country they want to invade for oil. They got Jose Bustani, head of the UN chemical weapons inspection team fired because he was on the point of getting his team into Iraq. They tried their hardest to get head of the IAEA, ElBaradei fired so that he couldn't expose their lies about nukes.

If you want to believe that Plame wasn't the real target then you have to give convincing reasons why the Bushies didn't say Saddam had opened his existing barrels of yellowcake and why Condi encouraged Wilson to go public. Note that "incompetence" is not a convincing reason.

Welcome UK PATRIOT Act

2005-10-05T01:18:00.000+01:00

I knew the US had descended into fascism even before the fascist, misnamed USA PATRIOT Act was passed. I knew the UK was headed down the same route. I hadn't realized just how bad it had become in the UK. Then I read this by the great George Monbiot in the Grauniad.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

Bush NOT a Christian

2005-10-04T22:46:00.000+01:00

It's damned obvious to all except the sheeple that Bush is not a Christian. If he's getting advice from a supernatural entity then it's not the one who lives in the penthouse but the one who lives in the basement. As a kid, Bush got off by sticking firecrackers into frogs' anuses. As governor of Texas he got off by signing death warrant for poor, black, retards who couldn't afford a decent defence lawyer. He famously mocked one of the people he signed a death warrant for. He's killed almost 2,000 US troops in Iraq, plus US mercenaries, plus the deaths of the military personnel belonging to his "coalition of the willing" plus many tens of thousands of Iraqis. He's shown by the quick response to previous hurricanes in Florida that he cares about what happens to rich, white people, particularly if they're in a swing state; he showed by his "Let me eat McCain's cake" attitude to Katrina that he doesn't give a shit about poor, black people. He's increased the gap between obscenely rich and everyone else: the obscenely rich are better off than they were 5 years ago; the rest are worse off. Those most desperately in need of health care are less likely to get it. He is corrupt and immoral and even though most of the US media covers up these facts most of the US know it.

So why the hell do the Talebangelicals refer to Bush as a good Christian? Can't they see it? Can't they see what an evil turd he is? Of course they can. Allow me to explain...

Back in the 19th Century, the theologian John Nelson Darby invented his own interpretation of the Bible called "Dispensationalism." Essentially, it's eschatalogical: the end times are coming. And when the end times come, the dispensationalists will be carried (nude) into Heaven in "the rapture" while the rest of us get to suffer here on earth for years before being cast down into Hell. A smaller group, the reconstructionists (also known as dominionists) believe pretty much the same thing but are more politically active. If you don't know much about these crazed loons, read this.

There are certain signs, according to these morons, of the coming end times, such as plague, famine, pestilence, death and war. You can see how close they think we are to the end times with their rapture index. Basically, anything that happens which fits in with their ideas of events that indicate impending end times is a good thing even if it causes suffering and death.

Bush is cutting funding for AIDS treatment in Africa and making even what little funding he gives conditional upon the organizations receiving funds not promoting the use of condoms. Bush's funding criteria mean that AIDS will hit an even higher percentage of the African population. But that's a good thing because it means plague and death are on the increase.

Bush took the US into one illegal war and committed many war crimes. But that's a good thing because it means war and death are on the increase.

Bush refuses to do anything about global warming. There is likely to be a major, irreversible climate shift because of that. More, and stronger, hurricanes. Sea levels rising and low-lying areas of many countries flooded. Many areas of the planet will become too hot (or too cold, that's one of the apparent paradoxes that global warming will have) for agriculture so people will starve. But that's a good thing because it means famine and death are on the increase.

Bush is raping the environment? That's a good thing because with the environment fucked up so is life, and death is on the increase. Anyway, the environment doesn't matter because the saved will be raptured up into Heaven and God can tidy up the mess on Earth later.

Bush is actually such an evil piece of shit that he fits the dominionist/reconstructionist definitions of the Antichrist. That's a good thing because just as the opera isn't over until the fat lady sings, the end times haven't started until the Antichrist appears. The more openly evil Bush is, the happier these people are. "Hallelujah! The Antichrist is in the White House. The end times will be here any day now and we'll be raptured into Heaven."

These people know (just like us) that Bush is pure, fucking evil. And that, in their eyes, is a good thing. But if they're wrong about their invisible friend then that means that in a year or two they, and the rest of us, will be well and truly fucked. They, of course, are absolutely certain that their invisible friend will do what they believe. Which is what makes them so fucking dangerous to those of us who inhabit reality.

A joke retold

2005-10-04T22:26:00.000+01:00

A retelling of a joke that did the rounds a year or so ago.

An old man walks up to the military guard outside the White House and says "I'd like to speak with President Bush."

The guard replies "President Bush is no longer the President. After the Democrats took both houses of Congress in the mid-terms, he, Vice President Cheney and several key figures in the administration were impeached for war crimes, corruption, and treasonously outing a CIA covert operative."

The old man replies "Oh, thanks" and walks away.

The next day the same old man walks up to the military guard (who happens to be the same military guard) and says "I'd like to speak with President Bush."

The guard replies "Sir, I explained to you yesterday that President Bush is no longer in office."

The old man replies "Thanks" and walks away.

Next day, same old man, same guard, and again the old man says "I'd like to speak with President Bush."

The guard replies "Sir, I've already explained to you twice that former President Bush is no longer in office. He is now serving life in prison for war crimes. Can you not understand that?"

The old man responds: "I understood you the first time you said it. I understood it when I saw it on the news weeks ago. It's just that I love to hear you say it."

The guard throws his snappiest military salute and with a friendly smile on his face says "See you again tomorrow, sir.

OK, it's unlikely to happen. The US is turning against Bush and the Republicans in Congress who enable him. But most of the Democrats in Congress are too damned stupid, or cowardly, or corrupt, to take the advantage they've been given and actually oppose this administration's disastrous policies. Even if the Democrats in Congress grew spines and balls, the chances are that Liebold, Sickquoia and MESS voting machines will steal the elections yet again. Only if the US overwhelmingly turns against the GOP disaster machine is there any chance that vote-rigging of that magnitude would be impossible to do without the whole world knowing for damned sure that the elections were stolen. And even if that happened, Bush would almost certainly instigate Martial Law and the more repressive measures of the misnamed USA PATRIOT Act to stay in power as President-for-Life Dubya the First.

So the above is a joke, not a prediction. But it's also a dream. A heartfelt yearning. A desire that surpasses all others. The only fucking hope for humanity. Because if Bush doesn't get impeached he'll invade Iran next and probably trigger WW III.

Bill Bennett is Misunderstood

2005-10-01T21:06:00.000+01:00

Bill Bennett is a fascist, racist, bigotted hypocrite, but he's been misunderstood. Those who criticise his latest racist hate-mongering are attacking the superficial flaws in what Bennett said and not tackling the more fundamental flaws behind them. Let's analyse what happened.

Before proceeding, here's a special note for the hard of thinking: at times, if you skim over what I write without following the chain of thought to its conclusion you will come away with the mistaken idea that I support what Bennett said.

Bennett had a caller to his radio show saying that if abortion had not been legalized in 1973 then Social Security would not be in a mess because there would be more workers paying into it. Bennett replied "maybe." Here I can give Bennett a tiny shred of credit for not agreeing with his lunatic caller. Social Security is not in a mess, will not have problems for decades, those problems are not disastrous, and those problems could be fixed by relatively minor tinkering.

But I don't label the caller a lunatic for swallowing Bush's lies about Social Security. I call him a lunatic for his assumption that a higher birthrate would lead to a higher proportion of the population in gainful employment. More people means more consumers which means more people required to produce what is consumed, but whether that leads to a percentage shift in employment in either direction is doubtful. India has a far higher population than the US and a far higher percentage that are unemployed and/or live in poverty. It's not bodies on the ground but social, political and economic policies together with available natural resources that determine the affluence of a society and whether or not it can afford social security for all. It is entirely possible that a higher US population competing for the same amount of natural resources would lead to a decline in affluence and worsen the position of social security.

Anyway, Bennett answered the caller by referring to a book he had read that increased abortion had led to a decrease in the crime rate. Bennet said he disagreed with that hypothesis. Not having seen the book I cannot evaluate its credibility in order to say that I either agree or disagree. Were the statistics the book compiled accurate or inaccurate; were the statistics evaluated correctly or incorrectly? Assuming the statistics are valid, there is the problem that correlation does NOT prove causation. Crime rate may decline as abortion rate increases not because one is a result of the other but because both are determined by a third factor. Even if you can somehow show that there is no other factor involved, you still have to show that a fall in crime rate is the result of an increase in the abortion rate rather than an increase in the abortion rate is the result of a fall in the crime rate (the first of those alternatives seems more plausible but the other is not impossible).

That said, the book gives a plausible hypothesis as to why this may be the case. There are three main reasons for seeking an abortion: the child will be still-born or severely disabled; the mother's health is at risk; or poverty. If you struggle to make ends meet you know that another child will take you over the edge and that your other children will suffer badly as a consequence. You may not want an abortion, you may even think you'll go to hell if you have an abortion, but if the choice is between an abortion and some of your other children starving to death then you'll go for the abortion. Since Bush stole power more people are living in worse poverty. Since Bush stole power the abortion rate has been climbing. All the caveats above about correlation/causation apply, but it does seem that as Bush forces more people into worse poverty they have abortions so that they can concentrate their limited resources on their existing children.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that abortion is largely a response to poverty then those who avoid poverty by means of abortion don't have to struggle to survive. In particular, they don't have to steal a loaf of bread from the supermarket so they can eat. Not only that, a child raised in abject poverty will be more resentful of the system that failed him and less likely to respect its laws. So the book could be right and that increased abortion rates (and hence less poverty) lead to reduced crime rates. Without evaluating the book I cannot say any more than it presents a plausible, but not necessarily true, hypothesis. Bennett committed himself and said he disagreed with the book. Therefore, according to Bennett, the abortion rate has no effect on the crime rate. That could be true, they could both be determined by some third (unknown) factor.

What made people denounce Bennett was for what he said next. Despite effectively saying that the abortion rate has no effect on the crime rate, Bennett then said "you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." That was (almost certainly correctly) interpreted as a racist remark. It was (almost certainly incorrectly) misinterpreted as Bennett blaming blacks for all crimes.

Let me point out (as Bennett himself did in his third or fourth attempt to dig himself out of the hole) that you could abort all babies and the crime rate would go down. It might take ten or twenty years, but with fewer people in the population there would be fewer opportunities for crime and fewer criminals. The per capita crime rate might stay the same but the absolute number of crimes per year would drop. If you doubt that, consider aborting all babies until there is no more human race: how many crimes per year now?

Bennett could have originally said all babies, but he said all black babies. He could have said you could abort all white babies, or all Mexican babies and the crime rate would go down, because all races and ethnicities produce criminals. And so people attack Bennett as being racist (he is) on that basis. They interpret his statement as saying that most criminals are black. But they miss the deeper point.

Blacks appear to disproportionaly commit crimes. I say "appear to" because there is a phenomenon where racist white police disproportionately search black people. So even if blacks were less likely to commit crimes the police would find more black criminals than white criminals because they're spending more of their time looking at blacks. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that blacks really do commit disproportionately more crime. It is also the case that blacks are disproportionately poorer. If you accept that poor people steal in order to be able to survive (while rich people steal so they can become even richer) then the endemic racism in the US that makes blacks disproportionately poor means they are more likely to commit crime.

Where am I going with this? The hard-of-thinking are going to have problems here... Bennett might have had in mind the sort of nuanced argument I just made. He might have been thinking along the lines that if increased abortion does lead to lower crime rates then you get a better "pay back" by concentrating those abortions amongst the populace most likely to commit crimes. Bennett might have been guilty of no more than oversimplification in a time-limited, spontaneous medium. But he's not.

Again, for the sake of argument, assume all the reasoning above is true. Increased abortion rate really does lead to lower crime rate because increased abortion rates reduce poverty and remove the need to steal to survive. Blacks, because endemic racism means they are disproportionately poor (if you doubt that see who got out of New Orleans and who could not afford to) are therefore disproportionately likely to steal. One conclusion would be that if you were to sanction abortion to reduce the crime rate you would target it at blacks. Another conclusion would be that you should fucking well do something about the endemic racism in the first place so that blacks are not disproportionately poor, and that you should fucking well do something about eliminating poverty, instead of trying to ban abortion.

And that's why Bennett is a slimy piece of shit. Not because he is a racist. But because he knows that the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor, and endemic racism, are the cause of crime. But, being one of the inordinately rich (he can afford to blow millions gambling while lecturing others against indulging in vices) he does not consider that he could reduce both the abortion rate and the crime rate by advocating the removal of inequities in society. He may claim he wants the abortion rate to go down, but he and his ilk are pursuing policies that line their own pockets which have the side-effect of increasing the abortion rate.