at-Largely

Fox News puts the lives of seven lawyers in danger...

This is frankly one of the most negligent things Fox News has done. Riffing off the terra-terra hysteria from a bet-wetting far right, led by a fear-peddling and likely criminal Cheney family, Fox News has made public the identities of seven lawyers who provided legal services to and advocacy on behalf of Gitmo detainees:

"A day after a conservative group released a video condemning the Justice Department for refusing to identify seven lawyers who previously represented or advocated for terror suspects, Fox News has uncovered the identities of the seven lawyers.

The names were confirmed by a Justice Department spokesman, who said "politics has overtaken facts and reality" in a tug-of-war over the lawyers' identities."Department of Justice attorneys work around the clock to keep this country safe, and it is offensive that their patriotism is being questioned," said Justice Department Spokesman Matt Miller.The video by the group Keep America Safe, which dubbed the seven lawyers "The Al Qaeda 7," is the latest salvo in a lengthty political battle."

Dick Cheney has admitted to war crimes. So as damage control, his daughter's little political outfit decided to target attorneys who are simply doing their jobs, going as far as to call them "The Al Qaeda 7." Given the level of rabid nationalism, militarism, and violent racism we have seen emerge as the cornerstone of the fringe right, it is entirely irresponsible to make public the identities of DOJ attorneys.

Consider just some of the comments from Shiksa Malkin's blog:

On March 3rd, 2010 at 6:04 pm, Virginia Patriot said:

OUR government is working AGAINST us!

Never thought I’d live to see a communist takeover in this country where the government aids our enemies and wages war on its own citizen.

Elections may not work, what then?

[snip]

On March 3rd, 2010 at 6:19 pm, JT said:

Read to the end of the Fox article. The Bush Administration hired some jihadi lawyers too. Although I suspect that previously entrenched liberals at the DOJ may have had something to do with it.

[snip]

On March 4th, 2010 at 8:06 am, Rorschach said:

I do not question the patriotism of the Obama Administration, there is nothing to question, it is painfully obvious they are not patriots, at least not to THIS country.

How much do you folks want to wager that not only will all of these people receive death threats, but one or more of them will be physically attacked? We are, after all, talking about extreme nationalism, not patriotism.

Oops, Our Bad

Posted by Jeff Huber

Among the worst Orwellian deceptions being exposed by the Pentagon’s Marjah offensive is the ludicrous notion that we’re fighting a war in Afghanistan in order to protect Afghan civilians. The recent U.S. Special Forces air strike in the Marjah area that killed 27 or more civilians, including four women and a child, is a prime example of a cognitive disconnect that has been endemic in U.S. military operations throughout our misnamed war on terrorism.

The Feb. 21 air strike occurred in an area under Dutch control. The Dutch are durn-burnit het up about that, because the day before, the Dutch government collapsed over an initiative to extend the deployment of the country’s 2,000 troops in Afghanistan. (We could learn something from the Dutch on how to throw a peace movement, couldn’t we?)

A Dutch Defense Ministry spokesmodel, who talked to the press at the Hague on what the New York Times described as "customary anonymity," said it wasn’t any Dutch boy who called in that air strike. The Dutch Defense Dude wouldn’t say who did call in the air strike, and unidentified NATO officials didn’t say who ordered the strike in either. Sadly, it’s just possible that nobody knows who called in the air strike. If that’s the case, though, the operations types running the show over there are bigger screw-ups than I thought they were, and I already thought they were colossal screw-ups.

LOST 6.5 - Through the Looking Glass

Okay folks, if you missed my theory up until this point, click here, it is important that you have the background. If you have not seen this episode, skip this entry until later. As usual, these are initial observations. I will tweak this baby later. Also, I apologize for how late this is, I have not been feeling well.

Onwards below the fold

Liz Cheney continues to terrorize daddy's "enemies"

Liz Cheney started a little terror peddling organization called Keep America Safe (sort of sounds like Project for a New American Century, no?) apparently without much irony awareness. After all, the biggest terrorist attack on US soil happened on her daddy's watch while he was the de facto POTUS under George W. Bush. So, no irony there, although there should be shame.

What is really remarkable about Liz Cheney's continued terrorizing of America through fear-mongering is that her motive - although crystal clear - is very little addressed by writers, pundits, and such.

First take a gander at Lizzie's latest, a terrorizing of American lawyers:

I have already written about this attack on lawyers doing their jobs by some on the right who consider the rule of law and the Constitution not flag-pin friendly enough.

The reason Liz Cheney is so interested in demonizing lawyers who represented or advocated for detainees at Gitmo is because her father has admitted to committing war crimes, over and over and over. Using the same old handbook, Liz Cheney is defending daddy by demonizing anyone in a position to shed light on the war crimes committed on her father's orders.

Does anyone actually believe that Liz Cheney wants to keep America safe when her family has spent years profiting from unnecessary and illegal wars? No, Liz is defending her father by attacking those she views as his "enemies."

Finally, I think it is very important to point out that calling lawyers doing their jobs nothing short of terrorists is dangerous. If something should happen to any of these attorneys who have so aggressively been targeted and terrorized by the right, Liz Cheney should be held to account.

Mexican journalist dismembered, burned

Horrible:

A Mexican journalist kidnapped in 2007 was cut into pieces and burned in a barrel, the Tabasco state attorney general's office said.

The determination of reporter Rodolfo Rincon Taracena's fate was based on confessions from people suspected of abducting him, though the remains believed to be his were not preserved enough for a DNA test, according to the office.

The state attorney general's office shared the details of an investigation at a news conference in the southern state of Tabasco on Sunday.

Rincon was killed because of articles he wrote about small-scale drug-dealing in the city of Villahermosa for the Tabasco Hoy newspaper, authorities said in a news release.

ACORNgate, not so much...How about Okeefegate?

It seems right-wing hero James O'Keefe and his merry band of propagandists did indeed edit the infamous pimp-ACORN tape according to prosecutors, who have now cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing:

Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.

While the video by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.

"They edited the tape to meet their agenda," said the source.

Apparently, fabricating a story and editing a video tape to do so is what passes for investigative journalism on the right, including massive support by Fox News and the entire right-wing blogosphere. Since everyone is so big on apologies, will we be seeing an influx of mea culpas from the right? Wagers?

Moreover, there are serious questions that need to be made top priority after the Congressional Republicans pushed for cutting of funds to ACORN as a result. ACORN is a threat to the GOP because it helps organize the community into large voter registration drives, specifically in minority areas. Since minorities tend to vote for Democrats, this entire saga should be investigated aggressively.

As for O'Keefe and friends, I am curious if fraud charges will be filed against them? Editing evidence in order to force a criminal investigation is fraud and any subsequent investigation is a use of taxpayer funds.

Fundraiser

Hey folks, it is that time again. I have not done a fundraiser since December of last year.  As you know, money is very tight for me right now, due to the loss of health coverage and my medical bills. So I don't have a whole lot extra to pay for running this blog. If you have a little extra to spare, please donate at the tip jar (top right corner). Thanks again, as always.

LA

Pentagon spied on Planned Parenthood (blackmail perhaps?)

This just simply blows my mind:

The U.S. military monitored Planned Parenthood and a white supremacist group as part of the government’s security preparations for the 2002 Olympics in Utah, according to new documents released by the Department of Defense.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command liaison collected and disseminated information on U.S. citizens who were members of Planned Parenthood and the white supremacist group National Alliance regarding their involvement in protests and distributing literature, according to an intelligence-oversight report released by the Pentagon. The documents indicate that the JFC liaison was working with the FBI’s Olympic Intelligence Center at the time.

This and other intelligence-activity disclosures appear in heavily redacted documents that were released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They came in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act project the organization is conducting to obtain oversight information from intelligence agencies.

Let me see if I understand this. Medical facilities targeted by domestic terrorists was the focus of the spying, not the terrorists who target them? The National Alliance makes sense if they have engaged in violent behavior or made threats of any sort. But Planned Parenthood? We know that the DOD spied on Quakers, on peace protesters, and now we learn on medical facilities. The National Alliance seems almost thrown in, but that is beside the point.

The issue here is that the military apparatus of our government, not the law enforecment apparatus, engaged in domestic surveillance of highly politicized medical procedures. To me, the first question is what type of information was the military trying to obtain from Planned Parenthood and for whom? Imagine how nice it would be for some power hungry, unethical Bush administration officials to know who has had an abortion-imagine the political weapon this could be?

Scientology Hires Reporters to "investigate" media outlet

Is this a serious ethics breach? Yes:

"The Church of Scientology is deploying a new weapon in its three-decade battle with the St. Petersburg Times: award-winning investigative journalists.

Those reporters completed their own review of the newspaper's coverage of Scientology, but church officials won’t release it.

In 1980, The St. Petersburg Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the secretive religion, headquartered in Clearwater. Since then, church officials have said the newspaper’s coverage is unfair.

So church officials decided to do something about it, according to spokesman Tommy Davis.

“To be honest, I think we just took a playbook from the media,” Davis said. “Media pay reporters all the time to investigate things.

“So we thought it warranted some investigation, and so we hired some reporters to investigate. It’s pretty straightforward, in that regard,” he said.

Those reporters are Christopher Szechenyi, an Emmy-winning television producer from Boston, and Russell Carollo, a Colorado-based reporter who won a Pulitzer for uncovering medical malpractice in the military."

More from an earlier Howard Kurtz report:

"Asked about Brown's view that the study could not possibly be objective, Davis says: "It's easy for the St. Pete Times to pop off and say that, but oh, please. It's a normal thing. It's done all the time." He likened the effort to CBS hiring an outside panel to investigate Dan Rather's 2004 story on George W. Bush and the National Guard, which the network later retracted. That report was a self-examination, however, and was made public.

The reporters hired for the study are Russell Carollo, who won a 1998 Pulitzer for Dayton, Ohio's Daily News for a series on medical malpractice in the U.S. military, and Christopher Szechenyi, an Emmy-winning former television producer who has worked for the Boston Globe's Web site.

Asked about taking on the assignment, the two chose to respond in a joint statement Sunday. "We were hesitant," they said. "That's why we insisted on being paid in full before we started our work, total editorial independence and having someone with the reputation of Steve Weinberg involved. Every entity has the right to receive fair treatment in the press."

As for accepting payment from the church, they said: "We were as objective in doing this job as we were in pursuing all the other assignments we've done for news organizations during the past 25 years."

Here is the obvious flaw in the argument that getting paid by an organization is the same thing as getting paid by a media outlet. The flaw in such an argument is a straw-man which falsely places a media outlet and a church (or cult) on the same level in terms of agenda, responsibility, and ethical obligations. They are not.

A church (or cult) is an agenda-driven body, self-promoting and protecting its interests, and has no ethical obligation to the truth or to the public. A news media outlet is (unless it is Fox News) an entirely different animal. It has an ethical obligation to the truth and to the public.

A news publication takes on great responsibility, while being bound by strict ethics, which trumps all other considerations. For example, a reporter who fabricates a story for a publication will not only discredit themselves, but will also tarnish the reputation of the publication. Yet a publication is still ethically obligated to make public what the reporter has done despite how this will make them look.

Getting paid by a news outlet to cover news ethically is not the same thing as getting paid by the subject of a story to cover that story.

The Church of Scientology should have hired researchers and/or investigators, but not journalists. As soon as those reporters took many from the Church to work on this story, they became compromised. As soon as those reporters agreed to sign a contract where their reporting becomes the property of the subject of their story, they have been compromised.

Russell Carollo, Christopher Szechenyi, and even Steve Weinberg crossed the line. The Church is now peddling the so-called findings in an attack on the The St. Petersburg Times, but not releasing the actual findings. Why?

The reporters cannot discuss the actual findings either as they are contractually bound. How is that honest or even journalism? It is not.

I urge anyone who has access to this report to leak it in full to a legitimate journalist. Make this an actual news report, rather than a privately funded propaganda tool.

I also strongly believe that the Church has crossed the line in this. Had they hired researchers and made the report public, they would have had my full support if the findings showed media bias.

Consider what the Church did instead:

• Targeted The St. Petersburg Times as being biased, but needed proof (so the targeting came before the evidence)
• So they hired journalists, but gagged them contractually
• The journalists reported not to the public, but to the Church
• Then the Church made the rounds, claiming that the report shows media bias as they had suspected
• But the Church won't release the report which they are claiming proves their allegations

So who has the negative agenda here, the St. Pete's Times or the Church of Scientology?

What the Church did is underhanded, dishonest, and sleazy, proving once again that the Church of Scientology has no interest in the truth, only in their version of it. The journalists involved in this should make public the findings, despite their contractual obligations - because the ethical obligations trump all other considerations. That would be journalism. Taking a check from the subject of your story and agreeing to sign over your ethical obligations as a journalist is what PR hacks, propagandists, and tabloid writers do. 

I am a big fan of St. Petersburg Times. This drama has only strengthened my respect for the publication.The Church's behavior, however, has undermined whatever media bias it was trying to expose. At this point, their argument is moot.

Marja Madness

Posted by Jeff Huber

As journalist Gareth Porter said in a recent interview with Real News, Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s offensive in Marjah, Afghanistan, is "more of an effort to shape public opinion in the United States than to shape the politics of the future of Afghanistan." Like so much of what we’ve seen in our woeful war on terrorism, the Marjah effort is short on substance and long on Newspeak, Doublethink, and other Orwellian deceptions.

The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and an unhealthy chunk of the rest of the news outlets are calling the Marjah madness a "test" of "Obama’s strategy" in Afghanistan. Amazingly, nobody is calling it a test of McChrystal’s strategy. Stan the Man is, after all, the maestro who orchestrated the big honking counterinsurgency (COIN) plan with its attendant troop escalation and who then, along with Gen. David Petraeus and the rest of the warmongery, boxed Obama into going along with the scheme through an expansive media campaign that included McChrystal’s September 2009 infomercial on 60 Minutes.

We don’t need to feel sorry for Obama, though. He asked for this during the 2008 presidential race when he decided to show the hawks his baby-makers by saying he’d pull us out of Iraq but he’d "get the job" done in Afghanistan. Pavlov’s dogs of war started frothing when he stepped on that land mine. Obama had a chance to get rid of the war dons – Petraeus, McChrystal, Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, and the Pentagon’s bureaucratic survival savant, Robert Gates – when he took office. But no, President Obama kept them around, despite the fact that they all had publicly criticized Candidate Obama’s plan to establish an Iraq withdrawal timeline. Obama exacerbated things when he named retired Marine Gen. James Jones as national security adviser; Jones had stated for the record in 2007 that an Iraq withdrawal deadline would be "against our national interest."

More Bananastan Bull Feathers

Posted by Jeff Huber

The propaganda continues to pile higher and deeper regarding our war in the Bananastans (Afghanistan and Pakistan, our Central Asian banana republics). The latest piece of manipulation disguised as news comes from Dexter Filkins of the New York Times, who is rapidly supplanting Thomas E. Ricks as the Pentagon’s favorite bull feather merchant.

In a February 15 piece titled "Secret Joint Raid Captures Taliban’s Top Commander," Filkins and co-author Mark Mazetti breathlessly announce, "The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan." The unnamed "American officials" we’ve come to know so well over the course of our woebegone war on terror say that the prisoner, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, "ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder." Details of the raid are, not surprisingly, "murky."

Baradar’s capture was supposedly a "joint effort" between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI). "Officials" say that the arrest "had provided a window into the Taliban and could lead to other senior officials," including and especially Omar. Yeah, right.

Right-wing flips out because lawyers represented defendants...

I am not sure if something in the water is making these people less and less capable of rational thought, but here is the latest from Byron York's parajournalism:

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in.

Wow, I am shocked, shocked that in America everyone is entitled to a fair trial and to representation. Byron York apparently needs that fix that comes with hysteria drills such as this and predictably it works. The match is lit, here comes the fire.

Under the title of "Obama appoints nine terrorists lawyers to Justice" (so now the lawyers are terrorists?), one of these mental-all stars has this response:

You've got to be kidding me.

If Byron York is correct, the CIA needs to start flying Reapers over Eric Holder's terrorist advocate-filled Justice Department

No, I am apparently kidding myself into thinking that the far-right has any interest in a democracy or the Constitution. 

Then there is this response from the Astute Bloggers - a violent image declaring Obama and Holder traitors (at left).

No really, go see for yourself.

But my favorite thus far is the paranoid crazy over at Power Line:

"No one familiar with the legal community will be surprised by Holder's disclosure. Among many liberal lawyers, representing terrorist detainees has come to be viewed as a badge of honor. (When a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department demurred, he was widely condemned.)

For some liberal lawyers who represent corporations, providing free legal services to terrorist detainees is proof that they became lawyers to help the "oppressed" after all; not just to help corporations squirm out of difficulty."

Yes, because only SOME people are entitled to a fair trial and representation, but only the very special. And according to this paranoid theory, anyone who defends, gulp, "terrorists" is either doing to give a middle finger to the Bush administration or to feel really peachy about themselves.

Power Line apparently has not considered the third, and most likely option: lawyers represent defendants (innocent until proved guilty) because everyone is entitled to representation in this system we are so proud of.

Yes, these people seem to prefer the Soviet style of justice: detain suspects indefinitely, then convict them in a show trial, and finally disappear them to a galaxy far, far away.

For people who are so afraid of Commies, it is astonishing to me that they so openly favor the Soviet system of justice.

Stalking, bad journalism and tabloid rumors = Pulitzer Prize candidate...

I am baffled, to say the least:

"The Pulitzer Prize Board has officially accepted The National Enquirer's submissions for breaking the John Edwards scandal, according to sources close to the Board. In a historic move, the Pulitzer Board conceded that the self-proclaimed tabloid is qualified to compete with mainstream news outlets for journalism's most prestigious prize. The Enquirer is in the running for the Pulitzer in two categories: "Investigative Reporting" and "National News Reporting" for The National Enquirer staff."

Let me see if I understand this, stalking, paying sources, tabloid, rumor, and sleaze now qualify as "Investigative Reporting" by the Pulitzer Prize Board? Oh, and focusing on a man who was no longer a candidate for any office was also a stellar move, a story worthy of a Pulitzer Prize?

The prestige of the award just took a nosedive in my opinion. Giving props to this kind of journalism only helps promote the long criticized media focus on sleaze and scandal over significant news reporting. Next time you wonder why networks will spend 24/7 covering a single missing white girl - to the exclusion of every other news story - just remember, the Pulitzer Prize Board endorses this kind of sleaze.

Paranoid journalism round-up - the Texas terror crash edition

As you know, Joseph Stack flew his plane into an IRS building in Austen:

"The man, identified by federal law enforcement officials as Joseph Stack, 53, was a software engineer who had a long-running grudge with the Internal Revenue Service."

Terrorism is usually an act of idealogical, religious, and/or political motivation. Stack left a suicide note that indicates his motive was political/idealogical, specifically targeting the federal tax system in general and the IRS in particular. The note is vehemently anti-government, specifically hostile to the IRS, and paranoid. But it does show a lucid mind and a violent act well thought out, making all of this that much more eerie:

"If you're reading this, you're no doubt asking yourself, "Why did this have to happen?"  The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time.  The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn't enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken.  Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it.

<snip>

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different.  I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed."

Enter sort-of-journalism stage right, left, and way out there

Fox News does not seem to consider this attack an act of domestic terrorism. Presumably, this is because no Muslims were involved.

Then there is the new Republican Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown - also appearing on Fox News (surprise)- seems to sympathize with Stack:

"You don't know anything about the individual," Brown said. "He could have had other issues. Certainly, no one likes paying taxes obviously."

On the other side of the great divide, WaPo columnist Jonathan Capehart  decides that the suicide note sounds like Tea Party talking points:

"But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement."

Is this terrorism? Yes. Is there evidence that this a Tea Party nut? No. There are plenty of possible groups of thought Stack could have belonged to, including anarchists, Libertarians, and yes, Tea Party lunatics. But let's not jump the gun here.

Then there is the ever paranoid (The Commies are coming) NewsBusters - that spends its time hunting Commies in the media when not busy being paranoid about a Socialist media conspiracy:

A trend is beginning to develop in the media reports concerning Joe Stack, the man who allegedly smashed a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas: his disgust for capitalism and support of communism must be ignored at all cost.

As NewsBusters previously reported, both Time.com and a blog posting at the Washington Post have conveniently skipped two crucial sentences at the end of Stack's suicide note:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Clearly, Stack was no friend of capitalism.

So, not being a friend of capitalism automatically makes one a Commie? Yes, Stack included one line about Communism in his note, but that is hardly evidence of his Commie connections, interests, and such. Just as there is no evidence tying Stack to the Tea Party movement, there is also no evidence tying Stack to some grand Commie conspiracy. But telling these people that is like explaining physics to a flea. I urge you to read the comments there as well to get a good understanding of just how deranged, paranoid, and confused these people are.

And finally, there is Glenn Beck, who actually thinks that the POTUS is close to allowing radicals like Stack into his inner circle:

"Later, Beck took to the chalkboard and came thisclose to suggesting that President Obama is very close to allowing radicals like Stack into his inner circle, though he did manage to note that Van Jones “hasn’t killed anybody.” He also emphatically suggested that the country needs to “get away from anybody who’s calling for a revolution…whether it’s a Tea Party revolution or a communist one.” No more Tea Parties for Beck? Not sure I buy that, unless Stack’s anti-government extreme put the scare in Beck (many would argue Beck has a ‘chalkboard manifesto’ of sorts…is he trying to distance himself?). It will be interesting to see how much of this “separation of radicals” is going to make it into his CPAC address this weekend."

Yes, Beck and his glue-sniffing are the stuff of legend. All in all, the term journalist or pundit does not seem to sufficiently depict the type of crazy we are seeing. We need a whole new other word that describes the reporting of news from within a paranoid bunker: parajournalism.

Dubai police reveal amazing detective work in Hamas leader's hit...

It is incredibly unusual for specific details of a government sponsored assassination to be made this public, including footage of the assassination team, disguises, etc. It is remarkable to read just how well oiled the operation that killed Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was:

He did not realise that the two men were part of an 11-strong team that had come to kill him. In just over five hours he would be dead.

Stepping out of the lift, al-Mabhouh was escorted to room 230 by a member of staff at the Al Bustan Rotana hotel, near Dubai airport. Unnoticed, the taller man followed him down the corridor, clocking his room number and that of the room opposite, 237. In the hours that followed, room 237 became the staging post for the audacious murder of the senior Hamas official.

Within an hour of al-Mabhouh checking in his killers had established that room 237 was unoccupied and moved in across the hall. By that evening seven of the team were gathered in the room, waiting for their opportunity.

The killers had lain in wait for al-Mabhouh, whom Hamas admits was involved in the killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, since the previous night. Flying in from Paris, Frankfurt, Rome and Zurich, the team of ten men and one woman arrived within three hours of each other. The alleged mastermind of the operation, a Frenchman using the name Peter Elvinger, was the last to arrive at 2.30am on January 19. The team dispersed for the night to hotels near the airport and to the Al Bustan Rotana.

[snip]

Security footage of the killers’ movements during the afternoon, released by police in Dubai yesterday, underlines the professionalism of the operation. The group switched hotels several times and wore disguises including false beards and wigs, while surveillance teams rotated in pairs through the hotel lobby, never hanging around for too long and paying for everything in cash.

Folliard and another member of the party carrying an Irish passport in the name of Kevin Daveron were operating as spotters on the second floor of the hotel when the murder was committed. Both switched hotels that afternoon and dressed smartly to pose as hotel staff. The bald Daveron donned a dark wig and glasses, while Folliard appears to have removed a blonde wig to reveal dark hair.

Here is the Aljazeera report on this:

The suspects used UK passports, but there is no doubt that this was a Mossad hit. The professionalism; the organization; the success of the mission; and the fact that Mabhouh was on Mossad's top wanted list all points to Israel.

[more below the fold]

Bin Laden: Dead and Loving It

Posted by Jeff Huber

The tallest Arab ever wanted dead or alive by a president of the United States is still at large. Either that or he’s dead. Again. We’ve been hearing from intelligence sources and the media that bin Laden is dead for a long time. How dead can one evildoer get?

In July 2002 the New York Times carried an op-ed piece that led with "Osama bin Laden is dead." Bin Laden died in December 2001, according to the author, Amir Taheri, an editor of the Paris-based journal Politique Internationale. Both Taheri and his journal have been broadly accused of questionable journalism practices. Taheri’s sources – all unnamed except for then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who "repeated" the information – weren’t any more reliable than Taheri is, but he ultimately based his conclusion on logic. "With an ego the size of Mount Everest," Taheri reasoned, "Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive."

And what of all the videos of bin Laden that have surfaced between 2001 and now? David Ray Griffin, whom the BBC identifies as "a former theology professor and member of the 9/11 Truth Movement," says they’re false because "None of them can be proven to be authentic."

These are negative proof arguments, the kind that say, "We can’t prove little green men are flying over Nevada in spaceships, but we can’t prove they aren’t, so it must be true."

Plagiarism, without knowing it?

This a career ending move for the reporter, as it should be:

Five days ago, Robert Thomson, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, wrote a letter to The Times’ executive editor, Bill Keller, about “apparent plagiarism” on The Times’ DealBook blog, in a post by Zachery Kouwe, a 31-year-old business reporter.

The examples laid out by Mr. Thomson were pretty clear-cut: Much of the story, which was about a lawsuit involving Bernie Madoff’s family, was obviously lifted from a Journal piece published a few hours before the Times piece.

But Thomson seems shocked, not recalling having lifted anything:

Shortly thereafter, The Times’ editors notified Mr. Kouwe of their findings. “I was in complete shock,” said Mr. Kouwe in an interview with The Observer. “Then I started worrying and started thinking, how the fuck did this happen?”

The Times’ editors were asking themselves the same thing. Almost immediately, they dispatched a team to a quick scrub of Mr. Kouwe’s work. Within a day, they found half a dozen examples of passages lifted from other news sources. On Sunday night, an editors’ note was published on the Times Web site admitting that Mr. Kouwe had indeed lifted lines from a variety of sources, including The Journal and Reuters.

I find this remarkable. Either you wrote what you wrote or you cut and pasted it (or retyped it). This is not the sort of thing someone forgets. But at least Thomson is willing to apologize and the Times willing to take action, which is more than I can say about the Associated Press, who after having lifted my work, refused to apologize, correct, or credit.

Too big to fail = Corps w/ rights of a person & the power of a nation

Goldman Sachs is "too big to fail" and so it was bailed out. I have always argued that if a company is "too big to fail" then it is clearly too big to exist and poses a national - perhaps even a global - threat.

We have seen how AIG seems to have become the new BCCI. But perhaps this is a two-team dance, which includes Goldman Sachs using AIG as a conduit. They are, after all, very friendly with one another.

While it seems like hyperbole when I say that companies that are "too big to fail" pose a national, and possibly global threat, consider the latest news on Goldman Sachs:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managed $15 billion of bond sales for Greece after arranging a currency swap that allowed the government to hide the extent of its deficit.

No mention was made of the swap in sales documents for the securities in at least six of the 10 sales the bank arranged for Greece since the transaction, according to a review of the prospectuses by Bloomberg. The New York-based firm helped Greece raise $1 billion of off-balance-sheet funding in 2002 through the swap, which European Union regulators said they knew nothing about until recent days.

Failing to disclose the swap may have allowed Goldman, a co-lead manager on many of the sales, other underwriters and Greece to get a better price for the securities, said Bill Blain, co-head of fixed income at Matrix Corporate Capital LLP, a London-based broker and fund manager.

“The price of bonds should reflect the reality of Greece’s finances,” Blain said. “If a bank was selling them to investors on the basis of publicly available information, and they were aware that information was incorrect, then investors have been fooled.”

Yes, you read that right. A company so big that it can hide the debt of a nation. But Greece may not have been the only nation-client to get a dose of Goldman Sachs business practices. Italy also appears to have been dragged into an ever widening scandal with GS:

For the past month, Goldman Sachs has been dragged into a widening corruption probe into the Siemens-Italtel merger dating back to the mid-1990s.

<snip>

The inquiry is just one of several probes across Europe into a €400m (£273m) network of black accounts used by Siemens to grease deals.

Prosecutors in Bolzano, Northern Italy, claim to have unearthed a Siemens payment of DM10m (£3.2m) to a Goldman Sachs account in Frankfurt in July 1997. From there it ricocheted around the world, going to London and Tokyo before returning to Germany in yen - according to Italy's financial newspaper Il Sole.

This makes the Enron/Arthur Anderson scandal look like romper room. But unlike Enron and Arthur Anderson, Goldman Sachs is too big to be held accountable, too big to fail in a free market (the irony is amazing), too important to the stability of the global economy to ever be seriously investigated.

Then there is Refco:

Though of much smaller size, the regulatory impact of the scandal will be larger than for probably any other corporate failure except for Enron. Refco had sold shares to the public in a public offering only two months before revealing the apparent fraud. Their auditors, Grant Thornton, and the investment banks that handled the IPO, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America Corp., all supposedly completed due diligence on the company, and all missed the CEO's hiding $430 million in bad debts. Their largest private investor was Thomas H. Lee Partners, a highly regarded buyout fund, and the reputation of its managers has been similarly sullied.

On October 27, 2005, shareholders of Refco filed class action lawsuits against Refco, Thomas H. Lee Partners, Grant Thornton, Credit Suisse First Boston, and Goldman Sachs. On March 2, 2006, a lawyer representing Refco's unsecured creditors began steps to sue the IPO underwriters for aiding and abetting the fraud, or for breach of fiduciary duty. In April 2006, creditors sued Bawag P.S.K. Group for more than $1.3 billion

You see this pattern now, don't you?

But perhaps Goldman Sachs can pay its way out of being investigated any further, like it has done before:

In the first major settlement involving Wall Street’s role in the subprime mortgage business, the Goldman Sachs Group agreed on Monday to pay up to $60 million to end an investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office into whether the firm helped promote unfair home loans in the state.

How adorable is this? Goldman Sachs uses bail-out money to pay its way out of being investigated. Can all citizens of the US pay their way out of criminal investigations? No. Only the very special corporate "persons."

Maybe the real scandal of the AIG scandal is in fact Goldman Sachs:

Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn't we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren't they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven't we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn't they have accepted a discount, and couldn't they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars—that is, our dollars—flowed?

<snip>

What did Goldman, and all the other counterparties, know about AIG's financial condition at the time they executed the swaps or other contracts? Had they done adequate due diligence to see whether they were buying real protection? And why shouldn't they bear a percentage of the risk of failure of their own counterparty?

How disturbing is it that Goldman Sachs has the rights of a person (thanks SCOTUS), with the power of a nation?

Lost 6.4 - Pieces coming together...

Okay folks, if you missed my theory up until this point, click here, it is important that you have the background. If you have not seen this episode, skip this entry until later. As usual, these are initial observations. I will tweak this baby later.

Onwards below the fold

Dick Cheney knows he will never face charges, so he brags...

Scott Horton makes a really interesting point on Cheney's non-stop PR stunts in which he brags all about the illegal activity he helped make US policy:

"After he was indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton, vice president Aaron Burr fled to South Carolina, to hide out with his daughter. Another vice president, Spiro Agnew, kept completely silent before pleading nolo contendere on corruption charges. Former vice president Dick Cheney, on the other hand, seems proud of his criminal misadventures. On Sunday, he took to the airwaves to brag about them.

“I was a big supporter of waterboarding,” Cheney said in an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. He went on to explain that Justice Department lawyers had been instructed to write legal opinions to cover the use of this and other torture techniques after the White House had settled on them.

Section 2340A of the federal criminal code makes it an offense to torture or to conspire to torture. Violators are subject to jail terms or to death in appropriate cases, as where death results from the application of torture techniques. Prosecutors have argued that a criminal investigation into torture undertaken with the direction of the Bush White House would raise complex legal issues, and proof would be difficult. But what about cases in which an instigator openly and notoriously brags about his role in torture? Cheney told Jonathan Karl that he used his position within the National Security Council to advocate for the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques. Former CIA agent John Kiriakou and others have confirmed that when waterboarding was administered, it was only after receiving NSC clearance. Hence, Cheney was not speaking hypothetically but admitting his involvement in the process that led to decisions to waterboard in at least three cases."

I think the answer to the question of why Cheney brags and brags about his crimes is rather obvious; he knows no American will ever hold him to account in the "greatest country in the world." Spain and possibly other nations that value human rights will hold our government officials to account, but obviously it won't mean much if we continue to give them protection. I used to say we are indeed the greatest country in the world because we had a system of law that did not distinguish between the citizen and the government official. Obviously, that is no longer true to our ever growing shame.

As to Horton's other question about what one does under the law when an instigator openly brags about breaking the law, I have no answer.

But, I disagree Cheney wants to be prosecuted. I think he brags about his crimes like every other drunk-with-power despot has throughout history. Cheney does it because he knows he can.