The 11 o'clock News

Tony Blair Must Think George Bush “Weird”

Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister and now Middle East envoy for the Quartet group of the US, UN, EU and Russia,  says he thinks every day about the soldiers and civilians who died in the war in Iraq.  He admits he suffers from doubt over Iraq.  “Of course you ask that question the whole time. You'd be weird if you didn't ask that question." 

Blair, does not know whether history will vindicate him over the decision to invade. “I don't know. Nobody knows. I reflect on it, and am troubled by it, and feel a great sense of responsibility for it.”

Blair said that it was not nice to have people distrusting his motives or saying that he had lied “but the most difficult thing in any set of circumstances is the sense of responsibility for people who have given their lives and fallen - the soldiers and the civilians.  If I did not feel that, there really would be something wrong with me, and there is not a single day of my life when I do not reflect upon it.”

In contrast, George Bush says he has no doubts and that history will vindicate him..."after we are all dead.”

But don’t feel too sorry for Tony.  Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war, Blair is still doing well.  In fact, Blair has become comfortably the wealthiest former premier ever, with a $6 million country house in Buckinghamshire added to four other properties, including the $5 million house in Connaught Square and a $1million flat in Islington. 

His earnings from speaking engagements should comfortably top $1 million this year. In the near future he is booked to appear in New York, Atlanta, California and Massachusetts, and he is also working on his eagerly awaited memoir, for which he has been paid a $5 million advance. Then there are advisory roles with J P Morgan Chase and Zurich Financial Services, with a combined salary of $2.5 million.

Who says that crime doesn’t pay?   Just ask Wall Street.

The Ice Queen Cometh – Rice-erroni

The Stanford student body is preparing for the Ice Queen’s return.  Former figure skater and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice is returning to Stanford as a political science professor, rejoining the university where she served as provost for six years before joining the Bush administration.  Word is the students are buying rice in large quantities to throw at her as a good-will gesture.

Rice's selection as Stanford commencement speaker in 2002 was criticized by some campus groups, and her imminent return has irked some.  The Stanford Progressive, a left-leaning campus publication, pointed to the Bush administration's use of torture and questioned: "Can Stanford in good conscience welcome her back without acknowledging or even investigating potential wrongdoing? "

Rice reportedly presided over high-level National Security Council meetings that directly approved so- called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  The most egregious of these interrogation techniques, waterboarding, experts say effectively drowns its subject, stopping just short of death.   In fact, waterboarding is considered so inhumane and reprehensible that after World War II the United States actually convicted high level Japanese military leaders at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of torturing Allied soldiers, using the waterboarding torture as primary evidence.

ABC News further reported that the CIA sought approval from Bush advisors, including Rice, in order to address the legality of the CIA interrogations that were incorporating questionable techniques. One high-ranking official with knowledge of the meetings said, “It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time. They’d say, ‘We’ve got so and so. This is the plan.” Attorney General John Ashcroft even knowingly warned that “history will not judge this kindly.” However, Rice explicitly approved the actions saying to the CIA, “This is your baby. Go do it.” Rice was clearly intimately involved and knowledgeable of the torture taking place.

And then there’s that little mushroom cloud thing.  Miss Rice will go down in history for her role in scaring the American public into supporting the illegal war in Iraq by raising the threat of the smoking gun -“nucular” bomb scenario.  Of course, we all know Miss Rice was misquoted, and her actions misinterpreted in her failure to “do something” to address the CIA’s fears that Bin Laden was determined to strike the US.

Which brings US back to the Stanford student rice gesture:  rice throwing is a common American tradition for good will, closing wedding ceremonies, etc.  But sometime in the mid '90s, a scare surfaced that throwing rice was hazardous to bird brains. The theory was that rice, like false intelligence, once swallowed whole and uncooked by the bird brains, would then swell inside their stomachs and cause the stomach to expand, causing the birds to become very ill or even die.

So, Ice Queen, take a lesson from that infamous bird brain: When they throw it at you, “Duck”.

LOST" is an E.L.E. KISS OFF

If you have nothing better to do this winter, take time and read the amazing blogs that analyze the smallest details of  "LOST".  My favorites are "The Fuselage", My Media-Lost Theories and J.Woods'  blog on Powell Books.

Of course, focusing too much on the "LOST" details one may not see the forest for the trees.   If the "LOST" writers were half as smart as the script analysts one finds in these "LOST" blogs, the series wouldn't have lasted this long because Frankly the average audience would be totally lost by now.

K.I.S.S. and Tell: To help US understand "LOST", consider the time pressure that JJ and the gang were under to develop the series; ABC gave them less than two months to come up with the storyline.

Keep it simple, stupid.  JJ said he learned his lesson with "Alias" and has tried to avoid convoluted story arcs.  Also, consider JJ's style of homage/derivative screenwriting, such as MI-3 and ARMAGEDDON.  Think of "LOST" as "DEEP IMPACT FROM INSIDE", an E.L.E.

 At this point we know from Dr. Chang that the island's power comes from a very dangerous energy source deep below the Orchid. Then Sexy "Elle" shows Daniel Faraday the ultimate story changer: there is a "LOST" H-bomb, "Jughead", that apparently is now "safely" contained deep in the earth or covered with concrete. (which reminds me of "lost" h-bomb off the coast of Georgia, which reminds me of the crossbones on the label of the Jekyll Island (which is off the Georgia coast) beer that Frank Lapidus was drinking on the Searcher.)

The worst (suit)case scenario: If something were to trigger "Jughead", then the dangerous energy source could be released, which could possibly cause an event that could cause a mass extinction of man...and Jacob.

Suppose that something was a suitcase fusion nuke that was smuggled by terrorists on flight 815 and it was ticking. Then it makes sense for the OC-6 to get back to the island or they will all be "LOST".

“LOST" in Space Weapons Race

Lookout below, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman.  Prepare to put those plans for the space-based particle beam weapons on the back burner. President Barack Obama wants a ban on weapons in space to restore U.S. leadership on space issues and a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites. 

We are not alone: Two years ago, China used a missile to destroy one of its own satellites in a test that raised worries about a new arms race in space. The incident may have created thousands of pieces of debris.  Last year, the United States also destroyed one of its own satellites, saying its toxic fuel tank could pose a danger if it fell to Earth.

Work on classified projects involving an "active" military response to attacks against U.S. satellites might be halted in favor of more monitoring and passive protection measures.  The Obama administration also faces tough decisions on many multi-billion-dollar satellite programs facing cost overruns and schedule delays, particularly at a time when rapid increases in military spending are grinding to a halt.

What's the Rush?  When Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, presented a Russian-Chinese draft treaty banning weapons in space to the UN Conference on Disarmament,  it  was quickly rejected by the Bush administration, which asserted there was “no arms race in space and therefore no need for a treaty.” 

Golden Girl Dana M. Perino said such a treaty would also be impossible to enforce.

 “Any object orbiting or transiting through space can be a weapon if that object is intentionally placed onto a collision course with another space object,” she said in an e-mail message. “This makes treaty verification impossible.” Instead, she said, the White House favored “discussions aimed at promoting transparency and confidence-building measures.”

But transparency and confidence building are not terms generally associated with the Bumbling Bushies.

Is Orchid Island Paradise “LOST”?

What’s with those “LOST” names?  Take “The Orchid” and the mysterious Dr. Chang, for example.  As Daniel Faraday discovered, “The Orchid” was the above ground entry point, as Dr. Chang discovered, to a dangerous energy source deep down below.  But why would the writers call it the Orchid?   Perhaps it is a clue about an island named the Orchid where dangerous stuff is buried beneath?

 

 

ORCHID ISLAND:  In 1974, China (ROC) selected Long Men at the southern tip of Orchid Island as the site to build a "temporary" nuclear waste facility. In reality, it was intended to store as much as 340,000 barrels (18,000 tons) of nuclear waste over a period of 50 years. The government deceived the Tao district commissioner, who was illiterate, that the government wanted to build a fish cannery and needed his signature to approve the project. In 2002 over half of the island population protested in front of the nuclear storage facility over the government’s failure to keep its pledge to remove 100,000 barrels of low-level nuclear waste from the island.

Speaking of Tao and Dr. Chang:

 Taoism translates as "way," "path," or "route," or sometimes more loosely as "doctrine" or "principle," it is used philosophically to signify the fundamental or true nature of the world. Tao is often referred to as 'the nameless', because neither it nor its principles can ever be adequately expressed in words. It is conceived, for example, with neither shape nor form, as simultaneously perfectly still and constantly moving, as both larger than the largest thing and smaller than the smallest, because the words that describe shape, movement, size, or other qualities always create dichotomies, and Tao is always a unity.  While the Tao cannot be expressed, Taoism holds that it can be known, and its principles can be followed. Much of Taoist writing focuses on the value of following the Tao - called Te (virtue) - and of the ultimate uselessness of trying to understand or control Tao outright. This is often expressed through yin and yang arguments, where every action creates a counter-action as a natural, unavoidable movement within manifestations of the Tao. This can be seen even in the famous first lines of the text:

tao k'o tao fei ch'ang tao
ming k'o ming fei ch'ang ming

The recently discovered Mawang Dui text suggests that the character is "CHANG" aka the 'CONSTANT' or 'unchanging'.  

Translated literally, the above passage reads something like:

Way wayed not eternal/unchanging way
Name named not eternal/unchanging name

It's Chile Today in the USA

Could the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in the UK on a Spanish warrant for human right abuses, including torture, under Operation Condor, be the fate awaiting some top Bush administration officials?

While the discussion about the torture of detainees during the Bush years as been framed as a domestic matter, and the fate of those involved in torturing has been largely viewed as a question of whether the Department of Justice will take action,  it is likely, as in the Pinochet case,  other countries will take action before the United States does so.

When Vice President Dick Cheney told the Weekly Standard last week, "I think on the left wing of the Democratic Party there are some people who believe that we really tortured," he probably wasn't thinking about Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general.  The Washington Post also published a front-page interview by Bob Woodward, in which Crawford stated without equivocation that the treatment of alleged 20^th Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani at Guantanamo Bay was "torture."

While George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would likely avoid any legal snafu if/when they travel to Old or New Europe, "Homeland Security" would be wise advice for the legal exposure of attorney general Alberto Gonzales,  David Addington, John Yoo,  Jim Haynes, and others for their involvement in the torture of detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA secret prisons. As Susan Crawford has confirmed that torture occurred at Guantanamo, domestic and foreign investigators have ample evidence to commence investigation. 

More than 140 countries may potentially exercise jurisdiction over former members of the Bush Administration for violations of the 1984 Torture Convention and the 1949 Geneva Conventions, including the standards reflected in their Common Article 3.  In the United Kingdom one criminal investigation is already underway, in relation to the alleged treatment of Binyam Mohammed, a Guantanamo detainee who is a British resident.

Perhaps Yoo-who, Addington and the rest should heed Robert Redford character's words in "Three Days of the Condor" when he is advised to leave the USA: "I'd miss the US if I was away too long."

“Incompetent” Really Doesn't Do It Justice

Everybody knew this day would come, when the new owners of the White House took over the foreclosed property/frat house only to discover the place had been trashed by the previous tenets – (Sorry, George).  On "Meet the Press" today,  VP Joe Biden said they are finding that the country's economic situation is far worse the more they look.  Now, according to the Washington Post, President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, and quickly close the military prison there were set back when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there after seven years the cases were incomplete at best.  Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is "scattered throughout the executive branch," a senior administration official said.

Animal (White) House:

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner.  (here we go again) They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were "reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration's focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority." 

Charles D. Stimson, who served as deputy assistant defense secretary for detainee affairs in 2006-2007, said he had persistent problems in attempts to assemble all information on individual cases. Threats to recommend the release or transfer of a detainee were often required, he said, to persuade the CIA to "cough up a sentence or two."  A second former Pentagon official described "regular food fights" among different parts of the government over information-sharing on the detainees. But a CIA spokesman denied that the agency had not been "forthcoming" with detainee information, saying that such suggestions were "simply wrong" and that "we have worked very closely with other agencies to share what we know" about the prisoners. While denying there had been problems, one intelligence official said the Defense Department was far more likely to be responsible for any information lapses, since it had initially detained and interrogated most of the prisoners and had been in charge of them at the prison.

There have been indications from within and outside the government for some time, however, that evidence and other materials on the Guantanamo prisoners were in disarray, even though most of the detainees have been held for years.  Justice Department lawyers responding in federal courts to defense challenges over the past six months have said repeatedly that the government was overwhelmed by the sudden need to assemble material after Supreme Court rulings giving detainees habeas corpus and other rights.

Evidence gathered for military commission trials is in disarray, according to some former officials, who said military lawyers lacked the trial experience to prosecute complex international terrorism cases.

In a court filing this month, Darrel Vandeveld, a former military prosecutor at Guantanamo who asked to be relieved of his duties, said evidence was "strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks."  He said he once accidentally found "crucial physical evidence, like the prisoners, had been tossed in a locker located at Guantanamo and promptly forgotten."

"Prisons, mental hospitals, and other institutions are a thermometer that measures the sickness of the larger society. The treatment society affords its outcasts reveals the way in which its members view one another - and themselves."  - "Accomplices to the Crime"

Barack to the Future of Bush?

Let US assume the Supreme Court - the Men in Black - had risen above politics and stayed out of the Florida Recount, that the Democrats had presided over the fiasco of the past eight years and the Bush Crime family was now the new occupant of the White House, it is highly unlikely the Bushies would be so willing to overlook the damage the Dems LEFT BEHIND.   You can bet the Republicans would be in a RAPTURE demanding the rounding up the Democratic leadership and outlawing the Dems as a clear and danger threat to national security.  So why are the Dems so willing to let bygones be bygones?

There is nothing to investigate. The Bushies have confessed to war crimes (see  Keith Olbermann's special comment on the subject )   Even Sarah Palin can see the damages inflicted by the Bushies, as she has to cut the Alaskan budget to the bone.

Yeah,  the Dems' election strategy to let the GOP skid itself into the dustbin of history, with all the rest of  the half-bright, half-baked ideas of political history, was successful.  But that's in the past.  Barack has to look to the future of US and let the world know we will not let our crimes be "LOST" in the past.
We are better than that, and by renditioning these self-confessed war criminals to face justice, we will send a message to future fanatics in US that we will not forgive --or forget.   

“The “LOST” Years” - The Bush Legacy

George Bush is reportedly writing a book about his years in the White House.  All he needs is a catchy title.  If George W. wants to he honest with himself and not tell a lie like that other George W.,  he should title it “Nucular-head.”  But Frank von Hippel, a nuclear-weapons expert at Princeton University in New Jersey, has a better idea:  “The Wasted Years.”   

"Where do I start? One could write a book," sighs Frank as he rattles off a litany of the ways in which he believes the administration of George W. Bush has harmed the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. "The Bush administration did about as much damage to non-proliferation as one could imagine anybody doing," says von Hippel.

The list includes the Iraq war, the administration's scuttling of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), its opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, its pursuit of missile-defense schemes and a nuclear deal with India, and its foot-dragging on reductions in nuclear weapons.

That gloomy assessment is largely shared by other experts:

 "For non-proliferation, the Bush administration has represented at best stagnation, and in many places retrogression," says Christopher Paine, a nuclear-weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington DC .

"All in all, not a good record." And for Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, the Bush administration has "left the world demonstrably less secure today than it was a decade ago with respect to nuclear-weapons-related threats". Dismantling the multilateral non-proliferation system further, in 2002, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union in 1972, so that it could pursue its plans to build missile-defense shields against nuclear warheads.

The "nucular" situation is depressingly similar to the recent carnage the Bumbling Bushies wrought on the financial markets.   The Bush non-proliferation officials are leaving "office like financiers fleeing busted Wall Street banks, with precious assets squandered on risky ventures, once-solid institutions crumbling, surpluses turned into gaping deficits, and a string of problems mismanaged into crises that threaten to bring down a decades-old global regime".

 "We have an opportunity here in the United States to shift directions, and to repair our nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament strategies," says Kimball. "You can never make up completely for lost time," says von Hippel, "but there certainly is a feeling that we now have to do the best we can to make up for the “LOST” time of the Bush administration."

"Men In Black", Beware the "Black Widow"

As "Black Widow" and the rest of the NSA/Defense Dept's illegal domestic spy programs ala "Enemy of State" come to light, let US not be too hasty ala the "Anderson Tapes" and hit the "DELETE" button.   Perhaps it would be wise to keep the "Black Widow" spy programs to keep tabs on the neo-cons who were a real threat to "National Security." 

 "Only the Brave" whistleblowers who have come forward, such as Russell Tice and Thomas Tamm,  have confirmed everything we have surmised about the illegal spy programs under the Bush administration that established the means to collect all American communications.  And, of course, that is exactly what "The  Professional"  did;  everyone's communications--EVERYONE --were included in the totality of communications that might be tapped. Tice pointed out that they were getting journalists' communications when he realized that they were separating out all the journalists' communications--but then ensuring that those communications were still collected 24/7.  Tice also explained the "Catch 22" how the Bushies evaded oversight by claiming some of this program was an intelligence program, and some was a military program. 

The "Verdict" is that somebody other than the journalists who reported the story and the government employees who valued the Constitution more than their careers should go to jail.  "A Few Good Men" in Congress, such as Russ Feingold, are looking  pretty damn smart for insisting that this is precisely what was going on.

Perhaps this is only a Hollywood fantasy or perhaps, finally, we'll have some accountability on these issues.   One thing is for certain, these crooks were high on "Absolute Power", and like the "Crackheads"  they were, these "Men in Black " Ops were,  you can be sure they're just waiting to get their hands on another hit,  by hook or by crook. 

FADE IN