Protest zones: “…(I)f we wind up with another 2000-style deadlock–if election results are contested in Ohio or Florida, or if Republicans try to stop people from voting in any state–that’s where the real action will be. Protestors with guts should head to those states to make their voices heard. And if Bush manages to steal the election, then we’ll see you in D.C. in January. Bring some eggs.” (The Stranger )
Daily Archives: 30 Oct 04
"God help us if the Democrats ever read these"
“GeorgeWBush.org (a Democratic parody site) recently noticed that its mail server had been quietly gathering erroneously addressed Bush campaign e-mails for several months. The letters are now viewable on their site. Some were used by Greg Palast in his Oct. 26 BBC Newsnight investigation on Republican plans to obstruct voting…” [via Declan McCullagh’s Politech mailing list]
The Blogger and the Secret Service
A Cautionary Tale from the imminent police state: “From the world of personal blogging comes a word of caution about what you write. On her LiveJournal blog, ‘Anniesj’ recently wrote some quite nasty things about President George W. Bush (since removed). Annie writes:
‘We laughed, we ranted, we all said some things. I thought it was a fairly harmless (and rather obvious) attempt at humor in the face of annoyance, and while a couple of people were offended, as is typical behavior from me, I saw something shiny and forgot about it, thinking that the whole thing was over and done and nothing else would come of what I said.’
It wasn’t over. One evening this week, a Secret Service agent showed up at her mother’s door in South Carolina ‘to talk to me about what I said about the president, as what I said could apparently be misconstrued as a threat to his life.’ While the agent quickly determined that she was no threat, it clearly spooked the amateur blogger.
The agent told her that the reason she was investigated was because the FBI received a report about her blog post.” (Poynter E-Media Tidbits )
FmH readers — do me the courtesy, at least, of sending me an anonymous email telling me you when have turned me in to the secret police service, okay?
TiVo Hackers Tweak Together
“The hard-drive technique is simple. TiVo enthusiasts have developed computer programs that can initialize a hard drive so it will be recognized by the device. Hook the drive up to your computer, run the program, connect the hard drive to the TiVo and you’re basically done.” [more…] (Tech News World)
Outrage in Kenmore
My earlier post on the Red Sox World Series victory did not deserve to go up without mention of Victoria Snelgrove’s killing by the Boston Police during the post-pennant celebration. Here is a belated commentary on her death from Russ Stein, a Boston paralegal, at Lew Rockwell’s libertarian site.
“Early on Thurs. morning Victoria Snelgrove, a 21-year-old journalism student at Emerson College, was killed by Boston Police terrorists randomly firing pepper spray rounds and beanbags of lead shot from ‘Less-Than-Lethal’ lethal Beanbag guns into crowds of people celebrating the Boston Red Sox victory over the New York Yankees.
Just hours after that, after the police had murdered a college girl, damage control was under way. Some old bag of a police politician named Kathleen O’Toole held a press conference to diplomatically concede responsibility (no duh!) at the same time spouting lies and spin to the brainless, tame local media that echoed all over the Internet and across the globe.
It’s sickening, watching the government/media propaganda process in action.
Every account of the murder on the Internet includes some version of Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole’s statement: ‘I also condemn in the harshest words possible the actions of the punks who turned our city’s victory into an opportunity for violence and mindless destruction.’
I don’t know, but if I was the spokesperson for a police department which just murdered a 21-year-old journalism student with brand new, untested, ‘Less-Than-Lethal,’ lethal pepperball guns, I wouldn’t be holding press conferences denouncing anybody for anything. No, I’d be keeping my fat ugly mouth shut, that’s what I’d be doing, if I was Kathleen O’Toole.
She’s lying. She’s spinning us to make us think this was just some unavoidable tragedy caused by a sports fan riot.”
This certainly should not be swept under the rug as it appears to be, especially given that no one wants any inconvenient interference with their celebration of the subsequent World Series win.
Can It Be Stopped?
New York Times overview of the Identity Theft Epidemic
The Coming Post-Election Chaos
A Storm Warning of Things to Come If the Vote Is as Close as Expected: “Look at the swirling, ugly currents currently at work in this conspicuously close race. There is Republicans’ history of going negative to win elections. There is Karl Rove’s disposition to challenge close elections in post-election brawls. And there is Democrats’ (and others) new unwillingness to roll over, as was done in 2000. Finally, look at the fact that a half-dozen lawsuits are in the works in the key states and more are being developed.” — John Dean (Findlaw)
‘A reparation, of sorts’: MMR, autism and politics:
Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick reviews MMR: Science and Fiction: Exploring the Vaccine Crisis by Richard Horton:
“In his decision to publish in the Lancet in February 1998 the paper in which Andrew Wakefield suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, the editor Richard Horton played an important role in launching one of the great health scares of recent years. No doubt, as Dr Horton argues in his apologia for his role, the subsequent furore reflects many of the problems of contemporary society. But it raises a much more specific question: how did Dr Wakefield persuade a leading journal of medical science to publish a paper that was both bad science and damaging to public health?” (spiked)
The Planets Have Made Up Their Mind:
Kerry Wins: “Surveys in the United States may be showing the race for president as too close to call but top Indian astrologers say the planets have clearly made up their mind: John Kerry will win.” (Reuters)
Take 2 of these and change the world in the morning
Review of Diarmuid Jeffreys’ Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug: “we take it for granted. After all, aspirin’s been a fixture in medicine cabinets since before we were born. So why would Diarmuid Jeffreys write an entire book about a subject as techno gee-whiz and sexy as, say, the toothbrush?” (SF Chronicle )
It’s Not Just Al Qaqaa
“Al Qaqaa illustrates in a particularly graphic way the failures of Mr. Bush’s national security leadership. U.S. soldiers passed through Al Qaqaa, a crucial munitions dump, but were never told that it was important to secure the site. If administration officials object that they couldn’t have spared enough troops to guard the site, they’re admitting that they went in without enough troops. And the fact that these explosives fell into unknown hands is a perfect example of how the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat.
The story of Al Qaqaa has brought out the worst in a campaign dedicated to the proposition that the president is infallible – and that it’s always someone else’s fault when things go wrong. Here’s what Rudy Giuliani said yesterday: ‘No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough?’ Support the troops!
But worst of all from the right’s point of view, Al Qaqaa has disrupted the campaign’s media strategy. Karl Rove clearly planned to turn the final days of the campaign into a series of ‘global test’ moments – taking something Mr. Kerry said and distorting its meaning, then generating pseudo-controversies that dominate the airwaves. Instead, the news media have spent the last few days discussing substance. And that’s very bad news for Mr. Bush.” — Paul Krugman (New York Times op-ed)
Group Says It Warned U.S. About Explosives
“An official with the group Human Rights Watch said Saturday he alerted the U.S. military in May 2003 to a cache of hundreds of warheadsin Iraq containing high explosives but that the weapons still hadn’t been secured when he left the area 10 days later.
Peter Bouckaert, who heads the New York-based group’s international emergency team, told The Associated Press he was shown a room ‘stacked to the roof’ with surface-to-surface warheads on May 9, 2003, on the grounds of the 2nd Military College in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
Bouckaert said he gave U.S. officials the exact location of the warheads, but that by the time he left the area on May 19, 2003, he had seen no U.S. forces at the site, which he said was being looted daily by armed men.” (Associated Press)
Abu Ghraib was assuredly not the only place military abuses of Iraqi detainees occurred; rather, it was only the place it happened to come to light. Similarly, it is a no-brainer that al Qaqaa was not the only place the US failed to secure weaponry and explosives which have been looted and used in the insurgency. What distinguishes al Qaqaa is simply that the deficits had to be reported to the IAEA and came to light.
Osama’s Election Editorial
The issue to grapple with is what impact the new bin Laden tape will have on the election — both what bin Laden might intend and what unintended consequences it might have. Both campaigns produced dignified resolute responses affirming a commitment to prosecute the War on Terror with maximal effectiveness, but both were scrambling to figure out how to position themselves (Washington Post ) after this bombshell, as was the press (Slate ). Certainly, Daniel Schorr’s analysis this morning on NPR, that (paraphrased) “any mention of Iraq helps Kerry and any mention of the war on terror helps Bush”, is reductionist and pat. (I think it is becoming evident that Schorr, one of my favorite commentators in days of yore, has long passed his prime.) William Rivers Pitt’s reflections at TruthOut grapple with the issues in more detail. Certainly, it appears that bin Laden is alive and, as Pitt observes, “tanned, ready and rested”, in no way on the run. It appears that will reinforce concerns about Bush’s failure to capture him. Pitt, of course, reminds us in this context of Bush’s resurrected March 2002 comment about just not being that concerned about bin Laden anymore. And Pitt argues that the Bush administration must have worried about the impact of the tape, given that the US ambassador to Qatar reportedly tried to prevent al Jazeera from broadcasting it.
Bin Laden tells us that our security depends on not threatening Muslim security, in essence to stop prosecuting the War on Terror. And, as Nicholas Kristof points out in his New York Times op-ed piece today, Bush knows it:
“I often criticize statements by President Bush, so today let me praise some of his real wisdom:
” Oct. 11, 2000: “If we’re an arrogant nation, [foreigners] will resent us. If we’re a humble nation but strong, they’ll welcome us. … We’ve got to be humble.”
It’s a good thing Mr. Bush tried to be humble, or the U.S. would have an approval rating even lower than 5 percent in Jordan, and Osama bin Laden’s approval rating in Pakistan would be higher than 65 percent.”
But is bin Laden really hoping that the American electorate, to whom his message is addressed directly, are receptive and informed people who will understand that they ought to turn Bush out of office to prevent another 9/11? Does he think anyone will actually believe this, in the fear-ridden fall of 2004? In essence, will the voters be more pissed off at Bush or at bin Laden, as Tom Grieve put it in Salon? Will the tape make it easier or harder for those who voted for Bush in 2000 to look back and admit they were wrong? (And don’t forget that this is an American electorate roughly half of which still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the WTC attack, that the invasion of Iraq had something to do with al Qaeda and that it has improved their security in the world.)
Or does he hope to sway a segment of the public into the Bush fold by stimulating their jingoistic anger and fear? It has been argued that bin Laden’s aims are facilitated by polarization and having a belllicose, ignorant Bush administration in power. In this vein, William Gibson argues that Bush and bin Laden are symbiotic, and that bin Laden knew full well that the tape would nudge the voters toward the man who “has always proven so wonderously adept at doing everything (ObL)’d most want him to do.”
In fact, could that misadministration’s frantic efforts to suppress the tape be little more than a charade? The embassy in Qatar might have been directed to attempt to prevent the airing of the tape even in the face of certainty it would be useless. It is not reasonable to think we could stop al Jazeera from broadcasting it once it had been received; I doubt al Jazeera gave the US embassy a courtesy call alerting them to the arrival of the tape before the news was in the broader grapevine, and it is not as if we have any special cachet with al Jazeera.
This appears to be bin Laden’s October surprise (BBC ). The pundits are saying (Guardian.UK) that it comes in place of the terrorist attack they expected to disrupt the election process — the threat of which I have thought arises not so much from intelligence about al Qaeda’s plans as the fear-mainpulating agenda of the RNC. Bin Laden may have diminished capacity to mount further massive attacks, and may be resorting to a propaganda battle instead out of necessity. Billmon (welcome back!) agrees with me, calling this “virtual terrorism” on bin Laden’s part, and smarter than an actual attack would have been.
Those who grow frustrated with seemingly outlandish conspiracy theories can stop reading here (although, with the Bush cabal, truth can certainly be stranger than fiction…); I speculate that the bin Laden tape could also be be the rumored October surprise we have been waiting for from the Bush administration as well. Karl Rove told Hannity the other day, asked about an October surprise, that he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. You know it. FBI analysts have assessed the tape as probably genuine and probably recent; should we take this at face value? (If bin Laden, savvy as he is, is aware of continued doubts about whether he is still alive, and interested in establishing that he is, why doesn’t he hold up something like a recent New York Times front page in his tape, by the way?) The tape was reportedly dropped off anonymously at al Jazeera’s Islamabad offices. Isn’t it even remotely possible — — that it is a sophisticated counterfeit planted by the Bush administration themselves? [Is anyone else discussing this possibility on the web? — FmH. Addendum: Yes, he is.] Given the administration’s failure to deliver bin Laden to the voters dead or alive and, indeed, its failure to prevent Bush from being caught in that embarrassing lie about his March ’02 comments, could they be calculating that the next best thing is to use a bin Laden ‘campaign appearance for Kerry’ to tip the remaining undecided’s back into the fold? The conventional wisdom is that the cowboy-in-chief is vulnerable around not having brought bin Laden to ground, but the Bush campaign may actually be ecstatic that he is still out there, or that the public can be convinced that he is.
Whether or not it is a Bush cabal production, as Billmon puts it the tape “allows the GOP to turn every remaining campaign event into a bin Laden hate rally”. After all, the basis of the Republican campaign strategy has come down to manipulating the voters’ fear quotient and little more, and Tom Ridge’s shenanigans with various coloring-book alerts have long since stopped being credible. In the process, the bin Laden tape also serves another Republican purpose by bumping the issue of the missing explosives off the front page. Watch how they spin.
It is also important to realize that bin Laden, in sharing with us that the genesis of the 2001 attack lay as far back as his 1982 thinking, is warning us how longrange his thinking is, no matter how next week’s election and the next four years go. And, while a particular contempt is reserved for Bush, whom he teases for his indecisive paralysis in the classroom after learning of the WTC attack and whom he lumps in with other corrupt regimes (“half of which are governed by the military and the other half of which are governed by the sons of kings and presidents… in both categories, you find many who are characterised by hubris, arrogance, greed, and unlawful acquisition of money”), he warns the American voters that Kerry’s views on security are not that much better. “Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands.”
“Republicans have long insinuated, and occasionally asserted, that bin Laden favors Kerry’s election, so it must have come as a relief to Kerry’s campaign that bin Laden ended his denunciation of Bush with a dismissal of the Democrat as well.” (Washington Post)
Whoever wins next week (or whenever the post-campaign litigation is finally settled), bin Laden may be correct that it is up to right-thinking people to reject the misguided and dangerous premises of the permanent WoT®…and the sooner the better for the peace and security of both the US and the entire world.
