Honestly, the whole mystique around Apple Computer is lost on me, but I moved to the area about the time the computer industry was beginning to blossom in the mid 1970s and may be biased.
This town was littered with it.
Prophet Synthesizers... Edgar Winters played one on the seminal rock-synth tune 'Frankenstein'... was operating out of a converted bungalow on Ocean Street and Broadway. Mountain Computer and Sirius/Victor in Scotts Valley... some smaller... almost no one may know of them anymore.
'Woz' and the guys used come over-the-hill to The Albatross, a music bar out along Portola Drive near KSCO, the local AM radio station which occasionally 'bled' over the PA system (and all the phone lines within a mile radius)... and they'd hang out at the beach, party to the music... ...after playing with breadboards... ribbon connectors, edge connectors, balky chip sockets, soldering rudimentary circuit boards under bad lighting in 'the garage' for days or weeks on end.
What they were doing was called 'decompression'.
Work hard... Play hard. Try to keep SOME brain cells intact.
In the mid-70s, you could see the occasional bleary eyed burnt out tie-dyed code writer or 'idea person' (whom Apple likes to call "Technological Evangelists" now days. True believers one and all.) wandering around downtown at dawn attracting sour looks from the local police (Dang hippies!) and looking for a cup of coffee after spending some time at one of local watering holes, or roadhouses in the mountains, on a Wild Night... weekend... week... or month Out, and often ended up watching the sunrise over the Monterey Bay, or Big Sur, or Half Moon Bay (Neil Young's stomping grounds).
Those days are long long over. The 'money-men' inexorably moved in. The innovators moved on.
That's why they're innovators. It's not about the money. It can't be.
The two mindsets are mutually opposed and eternally repellent of each other (actually, the money end of the human equation is parasitic... could not exist without the innovators, meaning the innovators are under constant pressure to resist.), as the North end of a magnet repels the South end of another.
Money is needed to develop complex ideas, products, and bring them to fruition, yet money interferes with the creative flow in some base archetypal way.
Apple has admitted that child labour was used at the Chinese factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones.
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai 27 Feb 2010
Trust me... There ain't no "T-shirts and Tennis Sneakers" surfer dudes and dudettes up in Apple's Cupertino offices, and there haven't been any for a long long time.
But the myth of some long-lost Apple 'hipness' lives on.
Legends in their own minds... with HUGE advertising budgets in place to remind YOUR mind of those mythical times when the people running the show in the computer industry were creative in ways other than 'creative marketing strategy'.
As the local surfers like Tapu (the Hawaiian who ran a morning-only omelet-exclusive breakfast joint, he who swallowed fire, literally, in the restaurant for customers when he felt like it, and was liable to be closed anytime the surf was up) and the "Night Fighters" (of Pleasure Point) down at the finer surfing spots around here might have said to the turistas, as a mildly disrespectful reminder that they were considered clueless:
"Pack your trash"
That's what Apple needs to do. Pack it, and move it on down the road to someplace where they tolerate slave labor. Because I for one do NOT believe the word of these greedheads, now pervasive in an industry once dominated by people who did it for the love of it, NOT the money in it, that they WILL police their overseas vendors effectively a day longer than they have to.
Good chart on income inequality in select countries (Gini index):
(In his commentary about it, Barnett is just plain wrong assuming this is good for the other nations and especially the planet due to rising affluence.)
Just wait till the same per-capita percentage of the Chinese population can afford to buy cars and drive them like Americans do.
According to numbers published in Harpers Magazine a number of years back, if the per-capita hypotheses held true, at that time, the global supply of oil would have lasted FIVE DAYS. It's probably a shorter period of time now that the major oil companies have all dramatically re-calculated their reserves downward and they still can't replace current usage with oil-being-pumped-at-the-wellhead.
Further, according to a BBC interview with the Chinese transportation minister a few years ago, that percentage should be reached by 2040 (using simple math).
Just wait till those billions of Chinese citizens find out they've been sold a 'bill of goods' (all the Western trappings of so-called 'civilization') they will never be able to attain.
In The News: Thanks this morning to ChrisM, my MP3Angel, for supplying copies of the new and commentary audio.
Terrorism IS the Idea... Two residential hotels for foreigners in Kabul Afghanistan have been attacked by suicide bombers and at least 17 people have been killed followed by a firefight what what appears to have been Afghan security forces and insurgents dressed in Afghan security forces uniforms. More from Juan Cole at Informed Comment.
Foreign Policy Magazine:
The attacks began with a car-bombing outside a guesthouse used by Indian doctors, then continued with the bombing of a second hotel. At least nine Indians as well as a French diplomat and an Italian national were among the dead. In a statement condemning the attack, Karzai said it would not affect relations between India and Afghanistan. India and Pakistan held their first bilateral meeting since the 2008 Mumbai attacks on Thursday.
A Taliban spokesperson claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the bombers targeted “where the foreign people are staying.” It is the fourth Taliban assault on the capital since last October. [In Full]
Because we're running out of soldiers without drafting US youths and a causing a concurrent youth revolt in the streets of the US - The Pentagon is studying a potential lifting of the ban on women in front line combat positions. They're already dying in logistical support MOS. The US Navy is planning on doing so by next year.
Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY, Harlem), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has been 'Dissed' by a congressional ethics panel for taking trips to the Caribbean allegedly funded by lobbyists, which violates the congressional 'gift law'.
"...the Caribbean trips that Rangel and the handful of other members of the Congressional Black Caucus took were run by a charity, the Carib News Foundation.
Despite the nonprofit's sponsorship, conservative activists found that many leading corporations, including Citigroup, financed much of the conference's events. Signs and posters were displayed in hotel lobbies showing the corporate financers.
The trips were initially approved by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the ethics panel is formally known. The committee said the approvals were based on "false and misleading information" from three people associated with the foundation. [In Full]
Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuelawants to meet Alvaro Uribe, his counterpart from the US supported Narco-state Colombia. They had a rather nasty verbal exchange at the recent Caribbean summit.
You wonder why separation of church and state is a good thing for civil societies? There have been minor disturbances in Switzerland among the Arab population due to the Swiss government's passage of a law banning minarets on buildings. Mommar Gaddafi of Libya has called for a holy war against Switzerland, branding the country "obscene, infidel". He has been "condemned by World Powers" (meaning western governments... the European Union and the 'United Nations'). According to reports, Switzerland has less than five of these architectural features that go back to the begining of Islam.
Let it be noted it HAS BEEN RESEARCHED AND KNOWN that unemployed people need health insurance more than the employed do
Research Indicates Layoffs Affect Life Expectancy from Crooks and Liars by Susie Madrak
A growing body of research suggests that layoffs can have profound health consequences. One 2006 study by a group of epidemiologists at Yale found that layoffs more than doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke among older workers. Another paper, published last year by Kate W. Strully, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany, found that a person who lost a job had an 83 percent greater chance of developing a stress-related health problem, like diabetes, arthritis or psychiatric issues.
In perhaps the most sobering finding, a study published last year found that layoffs can affect life expectancy. The paper, by Till von Wachter, a Columbia University economist, and Daniel G. Sullivan, director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, examined death records and earnings data in Pennsylvania during the recession of the early 1980s and concluded that death rates among high-seniority male workers jumped by 50 percent to 100 percent in the year after a job loss, depending on the worker?s age. Even 20 years later, deaths were 10 percent to 15 percent higher. That meant a worker who lost his job at age 40 had his life expectancy cut by a year to a year and half. [In Full]
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In The News: The 'summit meeting' this morning between the Obama administration and congress over the Heath Care Reform bill began with prayer, and the bill is going to need it as the administration asks for Republican cooperation. There's no hope for anything resembling a 'public option' (ie. insurance for the average American who doesn't already have it). Expect the reform package to shrink even more.
Fortress America. You know about the shoddily constructed $700 million dollar built-by-slave-labor (Congressional testimony, more from the New York Times) Baghdad embassy.. you've heard tell of the $800 million dollar embassy in Pakistan, now the US has unveiled plans for a $1 BILLION DOLLAR embassy in London, complete with a moat (will it have the complementary crocodiles?).
One thing for certain, the Brits LUV it! "Where's Mayne's design (unchosen) is all openness, courtyards, and curves, the comparatively bunker-like KieranTimberlake proposal looks like it can, in a pinch, be fitted with huge American flags and missile launchers."
More from Stephen M. Walt at Foreign Policy:
What troubles me is what this tells us about America's place in the contemporary world, and the tensions between its global ambitions and its willingness to accept the consequences of them. On the one hand, the United States defines its own interests in global terms: there are no regions and few policy issues where we don't want to have a significant voice, and there are many places and issues where we insist on having the loudest one. But on the other hand, we don't think we should get our hair mussed while we tell the world what to do. It's tolerable for the United States to fire drones virtually anywhere (provided the states in question can't retaliate, of course), and Americans don't seem to have much of a problem with our running covert programs to destabilize other regimes that we've decided to dislike. We also aid, comfort and diplomatic support to assorted other states whose governments often act in deeply objectionable ways. But then we face the obvious problem that some people are going to object to these policies, hold us responsible, and try to do what they can to hit back.
So we have to build embassies that resemble fortresses... [More]
Argentina has filed a complaint with the United Nations (NYTimes) (IPS) over Britain's plan to begin leasing for oil drilling operations off of the Malvinas Islands, known by the British as the Falkland Islands, an island chain under territorial dispute for years that caused a short war between the respective countries in the 1982 when the advent of steam injection deep water drilling made it possible to drill in the almost Antarctic freezing waters off the island chain. In the oil & gas extraction industry, the vultures stir.
The House of Representatives, in an almost unanimous vote, strips the anti-trust exemption from health insurance industry on a vote of 406-19.
...and finally, SeaWorld visitors get more than they paid for (subtitled, "If it were a movie they'd all be cheering the Whale...")
I wonder what's going to happen to this abused mammal?
Will the victim be blamed?
Captain Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society:
"Another Sea Shepherd critic is Sea World, whose enslavement of Orca whales and dolphins has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
And now, once again a Sea World captive – Tilikum - has killed his third human being.
I can’t really blame Tilikum. If I was taken from the ocean and plopped into a concrete prison cell for four decades I would be inclined to get a mite angry also.
No reasonable person would walk unescorted across the exercise yard of a maximum-security prison, and it is irresponsible to expect a frail human being to turn his or her back on a stressed-out, angry, captive orca - the most formidable predator on the planet.
By the way, I’ve met Tilikum. Way back in the 80’s, I toured SeaLand of the Pacific as a special guest of Bob Wright, the owner of the facility. He wanted me to see first hand what his business was all about. I sat by the pool and patted the big Orca on the head. I also put my hand in his mouth and put my palm on his tongue so he could taste that I was not afraid of him. I remember looking into the left eye of that magnificent predator, and what I saw there was resignation and sadness. He was not a happy whale." [In Full]
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"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."
February 24 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Bottom Line - It's Not REALLY About Health Care Reform, It's About 'Can Obama Overcome Republican Obstructionism And Accomplish Anything?'
In The News: Running out of volunteers. Secretary of Defense Gates is calling for a reorganization of NATO even as the fighting continues in Afghanistan with new intensity and a number of Afghani Senators get fed up as their constituent civilians die in the ongoing NATO attacks and drone strikes... They're calling for the death penalty for anyone who kill a civilian Afghani national... "An eye for an eye." Juan Cole:
Pajhwok News Agency reports that on Tuesday, the Afghanistan senate deplored the foreign airstrikes that killed 21 innocent civilians in the province of Daikundi on Sunday, and demanded that NATO avoid any repetition of this sort of error.
But some senators went farther, demanding that NATO or US military men responsible for the deaths be executed. Senator Hamidullah Tokhi of Uuzgan complained to Pajhwok that the foreign forces had killed civilians in such incidents time and again, and kept apologizing but then repeating the fatal mistake: "Anyone killing an ordinary Afghan should be executed in public." . . . Maulvi Abdul Wali Raji, a senator from Baghlan Province, called for the Muslim law of an 'eye for an eye' to be applied to foreign troops for civilian deaths... ...Note that those speaking this way are not Taliban, but rather elected members of the Afghanistan National Parliament, whose government is supposedly a close US ally. [In Full]
Also, from that same article by Juan Cole... Only the finest!
As for those nearly 100,000 trained Afghan troops that Washington keeps boasting about, it turns out that the Pentagon sub-sub-contracted the troop training and "a Blackwater subsidiary hired violent drug users to help train the Afghan army." Many journalists doubt that there are actually so many troops in the Afghanistan National Army, citing high turnover and desertion rates, while others suggest that two weeks of 'show and tell' training for illiterate recruits is not exactly a rigorous 'training'-- even if it were done properly, which it seems not always to have been.
A truce has been reached(al Jazeera) between Sudan and two of the three rebel groups in breakaway Darfur. Whether the Sudanese Liberation Army, who have not agreed, will sabotage it, remains to be seen. More from VOA
More Afghanistan. Fifteen hours ago the governor of Kandahar province Afghanistan (Kandahar being the next target on NATO's "Hit List" after NATO 'builds it's confidence' attempting to hold ground with 15,000 troops against what was estimated to be 400 insurgents in Helmand/Marja) said '...he is already preparing to roll out government services in areas that are cleared of insurgents.'...but his "information and culture" department chief won't be around to help... he has been assassinated by a couple of motorcycle mounted insurgents.
Which brings us to... Waziristan, where, in a village, two people were found execute with notes attached to them indicting they were killed because they were informing US forces in the targeting of drone strikes. If it WAS true, they won't be doing that anymore.
Spain is about to take the first of five Guantanamo detainees... A Palestinian. There are still approximately 100 Yemenis awaiting relocation... and despite the fact that they've apparently done nothing, their lives are still at risk until they are moved to some non-murderous, non-concentration camp, facility. Case-in-point from Bill Fisher:
The deaths of the three men at Guantanamo were the subject of a jaw-dropping article in Harper’s Magazine by Scott Horton, an attorney who has written extensively on US detention policy and practice. Horton wrote, “The official story of the prisoners’ deaths was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centerpiece of the report -- a reconstruction of the events -- was simply unbelievable.”
None of these men had any links to terrorism and two of them had already been cleared for release.
Horton went on to explain that, “According to Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.” [In Full]
The $15 billion dollar "Job Bill" may pass a Senate vote today (It has) despite continuing Republican objections... Perhaps there will be some pressure applied to certain Republicans by their respective state governors, who in their annual conference, have begging for job creation funds from the federal government.
In other news...
A bill has been broached in congress that would ban security contractors from war zones.
Two congressional lawmakers have announced legislation that would effectively remove military contractors from war zones.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced the "Stop Outsourcing Security Act" on Tuesday. If passed, the act would force the United States to phase out its controversial use of private security contractors in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The legislation would restore the responsibility of the American military to train troops and police, guard convoys, repair weapons, administer military prisons, and perform military intelligence," the lawmakers' offices said.
"The bill also would require that all diplomatic security be undertaken by US government personnel," they added.
While the bill is likely to meet stiff opposition from the Pentagon and the defense industry, it's certain to be well received among progressives and peace activists, who have watched with alarm as the use of private contractors in war zones has skyrocketed in recent years.
Last month, a report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service found that one-fifth of the US armed forces in Iraq consists of private contractors, while in Afghanistan that number reached one-third by September of 2009.
The report found that there were some 22,000 "armed private security contractors" in the two war zones, and that the number in Afghanistan is likely to keep growing. [In Full]
IMHO, it will NEVER pass, but it's nice to know someone is trying.
But IF it DOES pass, can anyone feel a 'draft'?
(and what WILL these thugs do for a living? Bouncer at bars and security @ 7-11)
A Federal Bureau of Investigations and US Attorney probe follows up a lawsuit filed by parents of students who were given APPLE computers by their Pennsylvania school district, which had rigged the built in webcams to be able to spy on the students at home
In Pennsylvania, audio footage has surfaced of a computer technician discussing the software used by a suburban Philadelphia school district to switch on laptop computer cameras inside students’ homes. The Lower Merion School District issued Apple laptops with webcams to all 2,300 students at its two high schools, but students were never informed the school had the ability to remotely activate the laptop cameras. School officials say the cameras were only remotely activated to find missing or stolen laptops. In an audio recording apparently intended for other software technicians, school district employee Mike Perbix discusses how the technology works.
Mike Perbix: “As soon as the computer gets put on a network outside your home network, the heartbeat tries to come into your existing LandRev server. And once it establishes that connection, it gets told, hey, computer tracking is turned on. And then that computer will start sending back, at regular intervals, will start sending back screen shots. And if you have a built-in iSight camera, it will start sending in camera shots.”
Perbix went on to praise the software’s use in monitoring students.
Mike Perbix: “It’s an excellent feature. Yes, we have used it, and yes, it has gleaned some results for us. [In Full]
...and a correction. Yesterday it was reported by Reuters, and recounted in this news synopsis, that the death toll of US troops in Afghanistan had reached 1,000... courtesy of DemocracyNow!:"Several media outlets reported a US death toll in Afghanistan of 1,000 based on figures from the website iCasualties.org. But the website’s tally includes fatalities from US military operations outside Afghanistan. According to iCasualties, the US death toll in Afghanistan is actually at around 926."
Quote of the day: “President Obama, the former constitutional law professor, is actively defending in court every hideous atrocity that the Bush administration inflicted upon the Bill of Rights, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, international law, and the United States Constitution with the acquiescence and/or approval by Congress.” --Professor Francis A. Boyle, University of Illinois law school
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"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."
February 23 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: You Can Sit In A Mud Hut Watching SAT-TV But What If You Don't Want The TV? On The Social Homogenization Of Global Culture
In The News: GOOD morning! Dick Cheney is in the hospital with chest pains. Perhaps his umpteenth heart attack. It may be time to replace his fully artificial heart (?).
What America needs... A parliamentary Democracy - There will be elections in Holland on June 9th, to replace the collapsed coalition government. It collapsed because the ruling party had made a deal to not extend the stay of Dutch troops in Afghanistan and then reneged on it causing one of the parties to immediately withdraw itself, collapsing the government.
Meanwhile, those Dutch troops, who WERE in a relatively quiet area, Uruzgan, might find themselves un-loved, and under fire, after a NATO Hellfire strike kills three vanloads of civilians
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s government has condemned a NATO air strike on a convoy on Sunday that killed twenty-seven civilians, including four women and a child. NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal went on Afghan television to apologize for the attack. [In Full]
Let it be noted there is NO REFERENCE to this incident in the mainstream US media (AFP and AOL only, and AFP is French)... Just boilerplate reports on how careful the invading troops are to avoid civilian casualties... Apparently the US media has fallen in line with the Pentagon... A SURE SIGN of desperation, and defeat.
The Australian government seems panicked about the incident: "ADF not responsible for fatal air strike" assuring it's citizens that NONE OF THEIR PERSONNEL was involved (whether they are lying or not is unknown), although the blurb under the picture on their site indicates they were nearby... because they 'assisted' in the aftermath of the attack. Historical note on from whence the panic may derive... During Vietnam, the Australian longshoremen went on strike and refused to load the ships bound for Vietnam, forcing the Australian government to pull out of that war. The US West Coast longshoremen were not so successful.
This brings the civilian death toll in and around Helmand recently to approximately 50... and that's with NATO forces (in Helmand that's mostly US and UK troops) allegedly being careful.
Lara M. Dadkhah, an intelligence analyst, in a New York Times op-ed says troops under heavy attack in Marjah have had to wait for an hour or more for air support so that insurgents were properly identified. “We didn’t come to Marjah to destroy it, or to hurt civilians,”
According to THIS analyst (Me) that could be interpreted as meaning they need the civilians alive to lend 'legitimacy' to their urban assault on a dis-armed civilian population, and OF COURSE they want the city's infrastructure intact.
There Has Been An American Milestone In Afghanistan...
The US Senatevotes to close debate on the "Job Bill" gutted from $50+ billion to $15 billion dollars on mostly partisan lines, but perhaps indicating the severity of the economic DEPRESSION in the US there were five defectors from the Republicans allowing for it's passage. The new senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, was among them.
That bill contained NO UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE EXTENSION, leaving unemployed American workers without benefits for the next month, and perhaps longer. In Florida alone 20,000 every week stand to lose their benefits.
Although the Republicans are moaning about 'the early release of an all new Obama administration Health Reform plan', it turns out to be only eleven pages of modifications to a bill already approved by the Senate in December... and no... It STILL DOES NOT contain a public option.
You know where they're going as soon as NATO forces are driven out of Afghanistan - The Northern Alliance Opium Grower/Smuggler affiliated Karzai family is bullish on Afghanistan's ostensible "National bank", "Kabul Bank", 'founded by the Islamic nation's only world-class poker player', which has loaned them large sums of money to purchase suites in some of Dubai's finest accommodations. More on nepotism and corruption in Afghani finance, with $40 billion US dollars invested in the country (and 900-1000 US deaths) @ The Washington Post
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"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now."
February 22 2010 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Power Of The The Media May Change Everything - Obama's Dilapidated Health Reform Plan Will Be Debated On Television
In The News: The White House has released their health care reform proposal to the public three days before it's due to be debated live on Tell-Uh-Vision and some Republicans are crying 'Foul'.
The Governor's Convention is in progress but the big news is still the CPAC convention where a straw poll chose Ron Paul for the next presidential candidate by a count more than Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin combined.
Meanwhile, at the convention of Governors, a number of topics will be discussed including the understanding that worse state deficits are coming, and, noting that congress just passed a job bill with ZERO funding for states to actually create the jobs the governors are also saying "More Stimulus Please!". But First Lady Michelle Obama feels the REALLY important issue is childhood obesity (and it IS important, but...)
The 'lawyers' responsible for writing the "torture Memos" advising the Bush administration that torture is legal under the US Constitution have been cleared of ethics and misconduct charges by a single individual after a DOJ panel of lawyers and judges unanimously decided they had been in breach of them.
Further, John Yoo, one of the authors apparently advised the Bush administration that is also perfectly acceptable to massacre civilians.
More, sourced from NewsWeek:
"The chief author of the Bush administration's "torture memo" told Justice Department investigators that the president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be "massacred," according to a report by released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility.
The views of former Justice lawyer John Yoo were deemed to be so extreme and out of step with legal precedents that they prompted the Justice Department's internal watchdog office to conclude last year that he committed "intentional professional misconduct" when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects.
The report by OPR concludes that Yoo, now a Berkeley law professor, and his boss at the time, Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, should be referred to their state bar associations for possible disciplinary proceedings. But, as first reported by NEWSWEEK, another senior department lawyer, David Margolis, reviewed the report and last month overruled its findings on the grounds that there was no clear and "unambiguous" standard by which OPR was judging the lawyers. Instead, Margolis, who was the final decision-maker in the inquiry, found that they were guilty of only "poor judgment." [In Full]
In the war... "Afghanistan" (quotes intentional... most indigenous don't believe in such a thing) 'takes out' the Dutch government. The Dutch government collapses with the resignation of the Prime Minister already a done deal after one of the coalition parties pulls out over Dutch troops continued presence in Afghanistan. The troops are in a relatively quiet area but that may change soon as a NATO airstrike intended for the Taliban in the area kills 27 civilians. More from the Washington Post
"So we lied about the 'cakewalk' thing again" - In Marjah Afghanistan, 15,000 NATO troops are encountering 'stiff resistance' and are saying it will take six to eighteen month to accomplish the operation despite the fact that, in the run up to the 'clear and hold' operation, there were estimated to be 400 alleged Taliban in the area.
But that's ok, Now NATO in saying it's just a "confidence building action" leading to an invasion of Kandahar, a major city in Afghanistan
Still More:
A week or so ago, we were hearing a lot about how decisive the current surge over Marja in Afghanistan would be. Of course, we were hearing all sorts of things – including a lot of happy talk about how well things were going. This week we learn that the fight is not so easy with US forces still facing “strong resistance” even though the US/NATO/Afghan force is 15,000+ while the reported “Taliban” presence before the attack was estimated at 400. US officers are now saying that the military component of the campaign will take at least a month. They have also told the Guardian that Marja is just a “confidence building” action leading to the new “decisive” battle which they are beginning to plan for Kandahar. [In Full w/ Linkage]
Check your mailer inserts. The federal government has issue new credit card regulations ostensibly favoring the consumer. Don't forget to read the fine print...
In OTHER news:
What Martin Luther King Jr. MeantWhen He Said: "...the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- My country".
The numbers are in, and again, America is #1, as the Global Merchant of Death:
In 2008, according to an authoritative report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), $55.2 billion in weapons deals were concluded worldwide. Of that total, the United States was responsible for $37.8 billion in weapons sales agreements, or 68.4% of the total “trade.” Some of these agreements were long-term ones and did not result in 2008 deliveries of weapons systems, but these latest figures are a good gauge of the global appetite for weapons.
It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to recognize that, when one nation accounts for nearly 70% of weapons sales, the term “global arms trade” doesn’t quite cut it.
Consider the “competition” and reality comes into focus. Take a guess on which country is the number two weapons exporter on the planet: China? Russia? No, Italy, with a relatively paltry $3.7 billion in agreements with other countries or just 9% of the U.S. market share. Russia, that former Cold War superpower in the “trade,” was close behind Italy, with only $3.5 billion in arms agreements. More from ProfMarcus @ And Yes I DO Take It Personally: ["The U.S. - making sure that purveyors of death and destruction have the latest and best tools for the job"]
Worse than your mom camping on your FarceBook Profile - Not only did your sister find your stash, but now your school knows too!
Lawsuit: School gave kids laptops to spy on them at home
A Philadelphia based class action lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District (PDF) alleges that students and parents weren't told that school administrators had the ability to activate the laptop webcams... remotely, even when the student is at home or away from the computer. [In Full]
...and when you do graduate don't fret the lack of jobs opportunities paying enough to allow you to move out of your parents house... The Air Force has JUST the job for you!
“Part of the job is to try to identify body parts." --Air Force captain Sam Nelson, a drone pilot at drone operations at Creech Air Force Base, the command center for seven Air Force bases in the continental U.S. where crews fly drones over Iraq and Afghanistan. [In Full]
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, the news clippings and images used in this posting are made available without profit for research and educational purposes.
In 2008, according to an authoritative report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), $55.2 billion in weapons deals were concluded worldwide. Of that total, the United States was responsible for $37.8 billion in weapons sales agreements, or 68.4% of the total “trade.” Some of these agreements were long-term ones and did not result in 2008 deliveries of weapons systems, but these latest figures are a good gauge of the global appetite for weapons.
It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to recognize that, when one nation accounts for nearly 70% of weapons sales, the term “global arms trade” doesn’t quite cut it.
Consider the “competition” and reality comes into focus. Take a guess on which country is the number two weapons exporter on the planet: China? Russia?
No, Italy, with a relatively paltry $3.7 billion in agreements with other countries or just 9% of the U.S. market share.
Russia, that former Cold War superpower in the “trade,” was close behind Italy, with only $3.5 billion in arms agreements.
More from ProfMarcus: "The U.S. - making sure that purveyors of death and destruction have the latest and best tools for the job" @ "And Yes I DO Take It Personally"
Basic history... Operation Gladio, BBC video special on NATO's post-WWII 'stay-behind army' of vetted Nazis in Europe who destabilized Italy and Belgium all the way into the 1960s, (James Angleton of the OSS/CIA was the ringmaster)
Operation Gladio lives on today in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Saturday, February 20, 2010 Guest Post: Governments From Around the World ADMIT That They Carry Out False Flag Terror
Preface: Please skip to the end of this essay (entitled “Why Should I Care?”) if you want to see why this issue is important to the economy, civil rights, and the political causes which are most important to you. Yves does not necessarily agree with this essay. Indeed, she may dislike it so much that she bans me from the site. Please send any hate mail to me, not Yves, as I am solely responsible. So why am I posting this? Because if I don’t have the courage of my convictions to speak unpopular truths, then why should I write at all?
"U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased.
The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers.
Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts (also) speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA." [In Full]
More information about potential US false flag ops @ Razed By Wolves
This post contains links to the Blackwater's Glock pistol smuggling operation in Iraq amongst other things.
Congressman Henry Waxman's Blackwater investigation (with the Nisoor Square massacre of Iraqi civilians as a (media driven) focus) was supposed to investigate, with witnesses from the organization's testimony, Blackwater's gun-running operations. "Shrink wrapped pallets" of Glock pistols intended for delivery to the Iraqi police from the CPA. They ended up being used in Turkish street crime. One of the weapons was turned over to Austrian manufacturer, Glock who ID'd the original purchaser... The Coalition Provisional Authority.
This could have been an attempt to destabilize the Turks and cause a backing off of their military presence at the time on the Kurd-Iraqi border by necessitating more domestic policing and intelligence resources.
The outcome of the Waxman investigation?
It's a secret.
This one is about Blackwater's German assassination operation for the CIA where they "Went Dark".
Blackwater, now Xe, was 'outed' recently for attempting an assassination of an alleged 'al Qaeda' financier in Germany at the behest of the CIA.
The kicker... They, as a US sponsored ASSASSINATION OPERATION, 'went dark'... AKA "Rogue".
That means they never informed the CIA station (the US government agents responsible for what little oversight might be applied) they were in-country no less the German government. It's just a short step, and the same personnel MOS/materiel from this sort of op to accomplish false flag operations.
This post exemplifies, in an illegal arms trade way, Yogi Berra's expression "It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again.
1/4 million weapons missing in Afghanistan, Just like Russian mobster/gunrunner/ex-KGB operative Victor Bout's 'airline' loss of 1/4 million Pentagon AKs in Iraq.
Victor Bout had already been 'apprehended' by INTERPOL by this time, but there's never a shortage of "Death Merchants" as long as someone is willing to pay.
The Victor Bout/Iraq incident is covered in the first link.
General David Petraeus responded, in that case, with the statement "It must have been a bookkeeping error". Even Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper thought it laughable.
In The News: The siege of Marjah Afghanistan is turning into a 'long grind' as US soldiers go door-to-door attempting to clear the city of insurgents without destroying the houses or the civilians. Residents have moved to the rooftops, which CERTAIN pundits believe is proof of the Taliban's inhumane use of 'human shields', as was said of Saddam Hussein's alleged use of civilians to protect military targets (another unproven charge against his Iraqi regime) but, as Marshall McLuhan pointed out after the first airline skyjackings in the 1960s, desperate people do desperate things.
His words... exactly: "Terrorists? Why they're people seeking to be noticed. They are people who have lost theirlacking identity.". In other words, as Bob Dylan so aptly put it: "When you've got nothing you've got nothing to lose".
The people of Afghanistan, their homes, families, and culture are under siege (see here for more on the LONG TERM Western cultural assimilation of Afghanistan), and this may very well be a last ditch attempt at survival, or extinction, as much as Herero African women attaining a negative birth rate under Dutch and German rule (and eventually, according to Thomas Pynchon in his novel Gravitys Rainbow, developed elongated Fallopian Tubes making insemination and birth more problematic.) or for that matter, civilians in post-Yugoslavia's embattled city of Sarajevo taking a suicidal stroll down one street affectionately called 'sniper alley' after watching their city and country destroyed.
In MY Humble Opinion, the Talib may have suggested the civilian of Marjah take to the rooftops, but NO ONE told them they HAD TO or threatened them, or coerced them. Our invasion took care of all the threats (of destruction) and coercion (to cooperate or be considered insurgents) that the Taliban would EVER need.
In Pakistan, according to reports, the Pakistani authorities are claiming our much talked about captured "second-in-command of the Afghan Taliban" knows nothing and IS nothing. They intend to return him to Afghan authorities.
Another IMHO... The Talib IS NOT, despite the best analysis by Western so-called military experts, and statements by misinterpreted/misunderstood captured fighters, a vertically organized conglomerate with defined leaders and chain-of-command. Horizontally organized affinity grouping is closer to it, with NO LEADER ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for the group to operate. Got That? NO LEADERS! The captured Mullah obviously knew about his own group's operations, but even by the time he was taken to an interrogation/torture chamber, any information he possessed was too stale to be acted upon in any manner that would affect the outcome of any strategy, tactic, or battle plan the West was intent on in the Afghan theatre of operations.
More intrigue on this 'capture':
Baradar, the second-in-command, is reported to have brokered a Taliban meeting in Dubai in January, with the UN’s top representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide. To jog your memory, Dubai is one of the United Arab Emirates over in the Persian Gulf (the insolvent one with the man-made island chain and the famous al-Burj Hotel). And while there is contrary word about this – Baradar reported as denying it, some sources saying he was detained because he refused to meet with Eide [In Full]
There are statements by North Korea implying they and the US will engage in meetings between high level government nuclear negotiators later this month or early March. The US is denying it.
President Obama has used an executive order to create a "Deficit Commission" (or panel) to work on ways to reduce the mindbogglingly large national deficit. Unfortunately congress has already rejected it, and a commission created by executive order without their approval has no power. But the members will undoubtedly enjoy good salaries, further increasing the US budget deficit.
Yesterday, a disgruntled middle class man in Austin Texas, with a home... and a private plane, wrote a rambling screed on his web page blaming the IRS and any number of people and organizations for his financial problems, and then torched his house, and went to the local airport, where he got in his airplane and flew it directly into an office building containing the local branch office of the IRS. He also blamed 'Greedy People' but it's notable that he killed himself and others because he couldn't keep his 'toys'. A very sick man.
In Other News:
Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society responds to a critic about his operation's "Piracy":
The latest editorial verbiage in The Australian has Associate Professor of Law Natalie Klein putting herself in the position of a Judge to condemn Sea Shepherd activists as pirates.
“Duh” Professor Klein, why don’t you tell us something we did not know? Perhaps you may have noticed our flag? I think our black and white color scheme with the skull and crossed trident and shepherd’s staff pretty much defines our pirate status.
So yes we’re pirates. So was Captain John Paul Jones, the founder of the U.S. Navy. So were Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. Did you notice the “Sir” bit Natalie? . . . So I have no problem with the headline of your article that “Whaling protesters are behaving like pirates”, except with the word “protesters.” We may be pirates, but we are not protesters.
I hate that name actually, it sounds so submissive, “please, please don’t kill the whales.”
I’ve never seen a banner, petition, or a hunger strike that has saved a whale - not a one. We on the other hand have cut Japan’s kill quota by a quarter to a half each year for the last five seasons.
No Natalie, we don’t protest. We intervene... [In Full]
Next week the Supreme Court will consider one of the most consequential cases to arise from the “global war on terrorism.”
The nine justices will hear lawyers’ arguments in a case known as Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which challenges a portion of the USA Patriot Act. That act was hastily passed by Congress soon after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, with only one dissenting vote.
The Supreme Court case, originally brought in 1998, challenges the constitutionality of the law that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to groups the administration has designated as “terrorist.” It will test whether a person in the U.S. may be held criminally liable for speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity that supports an organization on the government’s terrorist list.
The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday (March 23). [In Full]
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As the local surfers like Tapu (the Hawaiian who ran a morning-only omelet-exclusive breakfast joint, he who swallowed fire, literally, in the restaurant for customers when he felt like it, and was liable to be closed anytime the surf was up) and the "Night Fighters" (of Pleasure Point) down at the finer surfing spots around here might have said to the turistas, as a mildly disrespectful reminder that they were considered clueless: 
