Farting around a lot over at Twitter, much to the detriment of gratuitous postings here. The blog ain't dead but it's a dirty job getting on top of all the internal coup d'etats under pOtus. W/O the perusual & lazy inside track, we prefer to stick to BS chatter. Twitter fits the bill meat in ball.

Feel amply obliged to join the non-graphic frivolties of MB2MB.

No frickin' way.

This is disinfo.

A former CIA officer who managed intelligence reports on Saudi Arabia has sent an uncleared manuscript to congressional offices claiming that China supplied nuclear missiles to the kingdom early in the George W. Bush administration.

"I believe the People's Republic of China delivered a turn-key nuclear ballistic missile system to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the course of several years beginning no later than December 2003," writes Jonathan Scherck in a self-published book, "Patriot Lost," which he provided to SpyTalk on Monday.

He also e-mailed copies to the offices of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Scherck, who became convinced that the White House was covering up the China-Saudi nuclear connection so as not to damage relations with a major U.S. ally and oil supplier, said he formed his conclusions while reading intelligence reports from Riyadh during his 18 months on "the Saudi account" in the Near East Division between 2005 and 2007, as well as talking with other CIA personnel in contact with the Bush White House
-WaPo SpyTalk

Repost from arguably the best blog in the world. Requiescat in pace.

This is exactly what one lone analyst has been saying ever since the Bush administration began getting its panties all bunched up about the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.

Right down to the "rational actor" argument.

Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday.

John Abizaid, the retired Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years, said he was confident that if Iran gained nuclear arms, the United States could deter it from using them.

"Iran is not a suicide nation," he said. "I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon."

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

Those cousins keep delivering. Particularly interesting is their application of the dominant Strategic PSYOP on the home pitch. Leave it to the Brits (and Krauts for that matter) to (dare) [strike] think/work outside the box. Matrix-muddying dissonance out - Shuttle-PSYOP up!

Jacked & Hacked BBC (London) 2 April 2010 (H/T R. Sense)

Their faces etched from years of conflict in the war-torn deserts of Helmand Province, four senior Islamic scholars step into a pod on the London Eye.

As the giant wheel turns they stare in silence at the city spread beneath them; the River Thames, the Houses of Parliament and miles beyond.

It is their first time ever in Britain. As they soak up the sights, they know this visit is about much more than tourism.

It marks a new initiative in British government strategy; the recognition that military progress in southern Afghanistan will not hold unless international forces also win the battle for hearts and minds.

In the intense propaganda war on the ground, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office now hopes to improve communication with ordinary Afghans by targeting their religious leaders.

Jacked & Hacked BBC (London) 10 March 2010

There was a man from the other side of the world telling an audience that included Parliamentarians and other government officials what they had been wanting to hear. A clear, concise and quotable denouncement of al-Qaeda's worldview.

Canada-based Dr Qadri spoke for more than an hour on his reasons why the Koran forbids the murder and mayhem of suicide bombings.

"This fatwa is an absolute condemnation of terrorism. Without any excuse, without any pretext, without any exceptions, without creating any ways of justification," he said.

"This condemnation is in its totality, in its comprehensiveness, its absoluteness, a total condemnation of every act of terrorism in every form which is being committed or has been committed wrongly in the name of Islam."

[...]

Dr Qadri is a classically-trained Islamic scholar and his organisation, Minhaj ul-Quran International, has spent 30 years building a strong following in Pakistan.

SOME 300 journalists and other staff at IslamOnline, a popular website on Muslim affairs, have been staging a three-week sit-in that has captivated Arab media. Broadcasting it live over the internet, they have been getting support from prominent intellectuals and ordinary fans alike. Every turn of the affair is assiduously shared on Twitter. Their ordeal has been described as a battle for the soul of Islam.

That is an exaggeration. At a less spiritual level, IslamOnline's mostly Egyptian staff has been wrestling for control of the website with its Qatari owner, the al-Balagh Cultural Society, which is based in Doha, Qatar's capital, and wants to cut jobs in Cairo and move some of its editorial offices back home. The Cairo staff claim that this is a ploy to take the website in a more conservative direction. The managers in Doha counter that IslamOnline has become too parochially Egyptian and has been straying from its mission to reach out to all Muslims.

But this labour dispute also reflects an Arab cold war that pits Egypt against more radical states. Qatari-owned media such as al-Jazeera and IslamOnline have relentlessly criticised Egypt in recent years, notably for its complicity in Israel's blockade of Gaza. Some suspect that toning down IslamOnline's news coverage by reining in its staff, some of whom are close to the Muslim Brothers, who in turn are close to the Islamist Hamas movement that controls Gaza, is a Qatari gesture to Egypt's government. Others point to longstanding rivalry between Saudis and Qataris, who, it is mooted, may be eager to reduce the influence of a Saudi company that has been helping to run the Cairo website.

IslamOnline began in 1997 as a student project at the University of Qatar with cash from Sheikha Mozah, an enterprising wife of Qatar's emir, and with an endorsement from the prominent and sometimes controversial Egyptian-born scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. At IslamOnline's launch, speaking on his extremely popular al-Jazeera religious talk-show, "Sharia and Life", Mr Qaradawi said its mission to guide Muslims is "the jihad of our era."

On the whole, this jihad has been a soft one. IslamOnline has to some extent been a lifestyle publication, focusing on how to mix modern life and religion. It offers religious advice without fire and brimstone, tackling sensitive topics such as sexuality conservatively but straightforwardly. Bettina Graf, who writes about the media in the Muslim world, calls it "moralist-conservative and missionary, though not dogmatic." But it was also, in the words of Khaled Hamza, a reform-minded Muslim Brother, a place were "great intellectual battles" were waged over the future of Islamism, mostly influenced by Mr Qaradawi's wasatiyyah (centrist) current.

Mr Qaradawi, 84, is sometimes said to be the most influential living Sunni Muslim scholar. He has stirred controversy in the West for endorsing suicide bombings in certain circumstances and for his homophobic views, and has been banned from Britain and the United States. For siding with his Egyptian compatriots against the Qatari management, he has lost his chairmanship of al-Balagh. Some see this as a fall from grace, and wonder if Qatar, which has hosted him for most of his adult life, will now freeze him out. His ideas, notably for tackling Sunni angst over the erosion of traditional religious authority and his attempt to counter millennial strands of Islamism [26-page pdf] with a conservative reformism, may have lost a resounding voice if he is now kept off IslamOnline.

-Jacked& Hacked The Economist

Narrowly avoided unabashed cock-a-hoopyness well intent on devoting post to civil-unrest. Afterall, some geek dared accuse us of nailing the if & when of tipping-point de Bangkok's shindig. So in spirit of Tiger Woodsean modesty: here instead a nice piece--found most significant by the esoteric weight per origin that it lends to a gathering zeitgeist of sorts.

Before things get completely out of hand, it's time to examine what is happening in American society today. [...] It goes beyond Joe Stack and his plane flying into a building housing the IRS in Austin Texas.

Clearly, we have entered a new era in American society. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post makes the point that the Hutaree cannot be "Christian" because of their intent to murder.

The arrests of members of a Michigan-based "Christian" militia group should convince doubters that there is good reason to worry about right-wing, anti-government extremism -- and potential violence -- in the Age of Obama. I put the word Christian in quotes because anyone who plots to assassinate law enforcement officers, as a federal indictment alleges members of the Hutaree militia did, is no follower of Christ.

But the Hutaree aren't the full story. According to Professor Jeff Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at the St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, this marks a significant change in the landscape of domestic terrorism. It has been nearly fifteen years since the attacks on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

"This is the first far right wing, anti-government terrorism case since the 1990s. That's at least 15 years," Addicott said.

One of the important questions is whether the Hutaree are a radical right wing militia, a conservative Christian movement or a group of "citizens" calling for change in America? Of course when Brittany Bryant , who is engaged to David Stone Jr., son of the Hutaree's leader , one of the Hutarees arrested in Michigan says, "that if group members had had plans for violence, they would have done it already" it places a cloud of the ominous onto the situation. After all, the Hutaree are accused of threatening use IEDs to kill local law enforcement officers. Like the lady said, they were harmless:

Going after a group like the Hutaree can be dangerous, ABC News consultant and former FBI agent Brad Garrett said. "This crowd tends to be heavily armed and they are all conspiracy theorists that the government is trying to take over," he said. "And so you have to be very careful and cautious when starting arresting people like this because you can walk right into an ambush."

Of course, then you need to consider the Guardian of the Free Republics, a group that compares themselves somehow to Gandhi and mailed ominous letters to governors. They actually sent letters to over 30 governors that in essence told them to "Straighten up and fly right" and without specifically threatening them, the letters clearly concern the F.B.I. who believe that the letters could prompt violence.

The FBI is warning police across the country that an anti-government group's call to remove governors from office could provoke violence. The group called the Guardians of the Free Republics wants to "restore America" by peacefully dismantling parts of the government, according to its Web site. It sent letters to governors demanding they leave office or be removed.

It is pretty hard to misconstrue the intent of "leave office or be removed."

And finally, we are faced with the threats made against Congressman Eric Cantor by Norman LeBoon who has already been declared incompetent to stand trial.

Threats against Congressmen, White supremacists, "constitutionalists," tax protesters and religious soldiers determined to kill people to uphold "Christian" values. We have a problem. Indeed, this is as Eugene Robinson wrote, "The Age of Obama." But it is more than that because some of this has been building for some time. There is high unemployment, while others find themselves following the rules and paying their bills, yet watch as people who are defaulting on their mortgages and facing foreclosure are being bailed out. We are even about two weeks away from the airing of a news special by MSNBC's "The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist."
[...]

-Hacked &Jacked Jay Fraser @ ThreatsWatch,Org

This Friday's edition of Whiskey Break!(TM) was brought to this fair clan by an intrepid though mysterious fellow who shall remain unnamed yet much appreciated.

OPERATION: BIG MACK ATTACK
DATE: 2009:09:23T00:00:00.000 UTC-01:00:00H
DURATION: 48:00:00H
ASSET: XXXXXXXXX
DEPARTURE: STOCKHOLM
ARRIVAL: AMSTERDAM
CARGO: CLASSIFIED, "EYES ONLY"
TARGET: XXXXXXXXX
OP-OUT: T

Mackmyra is Sweden's first and fine entry into the single malt brewing regime. A golden nectar that oil-slips 'cross tongue; the liquid, languid and wan, verily wafts through thorax. A trail of chest warmth lingers as if to reassure.

So, yeah. Pretty good stuff. We here at Whiskey Break!(TM) were in firm agreement. Perhaps lacking the depth of flavor of a healthy Scotch, the finish of this single malt is superb.

And then one day, the depth will come. After all, the Swedes only started distilling whiskey in 1999. One wonders what wonders are too follow. Naturally, the Whiskey Break!(TM) had to make the trek back to Sweden, and take up arms to those Swedes! Damn you! How do you get this good, this fast?!

Dude seems to realize where the money is these days.

IT is not often that you see an old comrade in arms of Osama bin Laden hoisting the American flag outside his home.

Yet there on the videotape was Tareq al-Fadhli, the hero of jihadist campaigns in Afghanistan and South Yemen, raising Old Glory in the courtyard of his house, not far from here, earlier this month. As the tape continues, Mr. Fadhli can be seen standing solemnly at attention, dressed in a khaki shirt and a cloth headdress, as "The Star-Spangled Banner" blasts from a sound system nearby.

You've probably already seen this piece in this AM's NYT, and some of the info is old news (the Canucks uncovering the purloining of the Dalai Lama emails), but this bit is good stuff.

Spying on Computer Spies Traces Data Theft to China

The Canadian researchers stressed that while the new spy ring focused primarily on India, there were clear international ramifications. Mr. Rohozinski noted that civilians working for NATO and the reconstruction mission in Afghanistan usually traveled through India and that Indian government computers that issued visas had been compromised in both Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan.

Remember this story from last month?

U.S. Is Reining In Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan

Now we know why. U.S. Admits Role in Killing of Afghan Women

The first story even included the cover story that is exposed as BS in the second article.


Clusterfucks all around. (Not to mention an IO nightmare).

Don't worry--history will prove us right. ( I hear Middle Kingdom chuckles as I type. Damn longer-view slopes)

This classified CIA analysis [6-page pdf] from March, outlines possible PR-strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan. After the Dutch government fell on the issue of dutch troops in Afghanistan last month, the CIA became worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post the third and fourth largest troop contingents to the ISAF-mission.

Just came upon this: 'Sinister' German Spy Plan Aimed at Hedge Funds, Analysts Say.

You probably have seen this report already, but if not, you may get a kick out of it. The piece also mentions Spain's national security concerns about economic "attacks" on them by speculators (which we intended to touch on in a recently neglected posting - see below).

We've always been under the impression that economic intel gathering was more common in Europe than elsewhere. We're pretty sure that it is, and it is the target here that makes this newsworthy.

Oh,and here's that related post we prepared but forgot to hit the Publish button.

A Media Plot against Madrid?: Spanish Intelligence Reportedly Probing 'Attacks' on Economy

Madrid is rushing to calm concerns that Spain could be the next Greece. Now, there are reports that the country's intelligence agency is looking into whether the Anglo-Saxon media has sought to undermine confidence in the Spanish economy.

Methinks it is the Japs that really have grounds for this suspicion. (And originating from culprits other than the media.)

Buzy friendz,

You may/should have already seen this, but the NYT has gotten copies of AMB Eikenberry's cables* to State complaining about McChrystal's COIN plan. From that morning's paper.

In November 2009, Karl W. Eikenberry, the United States ambassador to Afghanistan and retired Army lieutenant general, sent two classified cables to his superiors in which he offered his assessment of the proposed U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. While the broad outlines of Mr. Eikenberry's cables were leaked soon after he sent them, the complete cables, obtained recently by The New York Times, show just how strongly the current ambassador feels about President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan government, the state of its military, and the chances that a troop buildup will actually hurt the war effort by making the Karzai government too dependent on the United States.

Story: U.S. Envoy's Cables Show Concerns on Afghan War Plans

*The cables: Ambassador Eikenberry's Cables on U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan

In this morning's Health section of the NYT, page one features a M.D.'s critique of the FDR death theory (melanoma) that we discussed recently.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt died unexpectedly on April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Ga., the White House lost no time announcing a cause of death.

The 63-year-old president, the shocked and grieving nation was told, had died of cerebral hemorrhage. ("Last Words," read a front-page headline in The New York Times: " 'I Have a Terrific Headache.' ")

That Roosevelt died of a stroke is undisputed. But what caused it is a medical mystery that has persisted to this day, a mystery heightened by the secrecy in which he, his aides and his doctors always insisted on shrouding his health.

Now a new book -- "F.D.R.'s Deadly Secret," by a neurologist, Dr. Steven Lomazow, and a journalist, Eric Fettmann (PublicAffairs) -- revives an intriguing theory.

Look closely at Roosevelt's portraits over his 12-year presidency. In his first two terms, there is a dark spot over his left eyebrow. It seems to grow and then mysteriously vanishes sometime around 1940, leaving a small scar.

Was the spot a harmless mole? Or a cancerous melanoma that spread to contribute to, or even cause, his death? Melanomas, after all, are known for causing strokes from bleeding when they spread to the brain.

This hypothesis is not new. In 1979, Dr. Harry S. Goldsmith, then a surgeon at Dartmouth, wrote a widely publicized medical journal article focusing attention on the possibility that the spot was a melanoma. (I wrote an article about it at the time.) In 2007, after more medical sleuthing, Dr. Goldsmith published a book, "A Conspiracy of Silence" (iUniverse), fleshing out the theory.

What is different in the new book is the categorical claim that the killer was melanoma that "metastasized to his brain, causing the growing tumor that would take Roosevelt's life a mere six weeks later."

But no matter how confidently the authors may assert it, the claim is still speculation -- unproved and far from convincing.

Roosevelt's death was shocking in part because the White House and his doctors had kept secret how sick he was. For example, though it was widely known that he had developed polio in 1921 at age 39, he and his aides disguised the fact that he could not walk unaided and used heavy metal braces to stand on paralyzed, withered legs. He used a wheelchair and demanded that photographers not show his disabilities.

His terminal illness came during wartime, and in an era when leaders' health and other personal matters were considered strictly private.

More at the NYT

Remember the SMC maxim: "Any time a U.S. official publicly refers to chatter, you can be sure that some variety of bullshittery is afoot."

The SMC maxim cited here has only a slight direct relevance to the overall story (the part where DHS issued the upgraded threat level based on "chatter"), but it is an indication that the dude's program was a stinker and that people knew all along that it was crap.

The weeks before Christmas brought no hint of terror. But by the afternoon of December 21, 2003, police stood guard in heavy assault gear on the streets of Manhattan. Fighter jets patrolled the skies. When a gift box was left on Fifth Avenue, it was labeled a suspicious package and 5,000 people in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were herded into the cold.

It was Code Orange. Americans first heard of it at a Sunday press conference in Washington, D.C. Weekend assignment editors sent their crews up Nebraska Avenue to the new Homeland Security offices, where DHS secretary Tom Ridge announced the terror alert. "There's continued discussion," he told reporters, "these are from credible sources--about near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11." The New York Times reported that intelligence sources warned "about some unspecified but spectacular attack."

The financial markets trembled. By Tuesday the panic had ratcheted up as the Associated Press reported threats to "power plants, dams and even oil facilities in Alaska." The feds forced the cancellation of dozens of French, British and Mexican commercial "flights of interest" and pushed foreign governments to put armed air marshals on certain flights. Air France flight 68 was canceled, as was Air France flight 70. By Christmas the headline in the Los Angeles Times was "Six Flights Canceled as Signs of Terror Plot Point to L.A." Journalists speculated over the basis for these terror alerts. "Credible sources," Ridge said. "Intelligence chatter," said CNN.

But there were no real intercepts, no new informants, no increase in chatter. And the suspicious package turned out to contain a stuffed snowman. This was, instead, the beginning of a bizarre scam. Behind that terror alert, and a string of contracts and intrigue that continues to this date, there is one unlikely character.

The man's name is Dennis Montgomery, a self-proclaimed scientist who said he could predict terrorist attacks. Operating with a small software development company, he apparently convinced the Bush White House, the CIA, the Air Force and other agencies that Al Jazeera--the Qatari-owned TV network--was unwittingly transmitting target data to Al Qaeda sleepers.

An unusual team arrived in Reno, Nevada in 2003 from the Central Intelligence Agency. They drove up Trademark Drive, well south of the casinos, past new desert warehouses. Then they turned into an almost empty parking lot, where a sign read "eTreppid Technologies." It was an attractively designed building of stone tile and mirrored windows that had once been a sprinklerhead factory.

ETreppid Technologies was a four-year-old firm trying to find its way. Some of its employees had been hired to design video games. One game under construction was Roadhouse, based on the 1989 movie in which Patrick Swayze plays a bouncer in a dive bar. Other programmers worked on streaming video for security cameras.

(...)

He is an unusual man. In court papers filed in Los Angeles, a former lawyer for Montgomery calls the software designer a "habitual liar engaged in fraud." Last June Montgomery was charged in Las Vegas with bouncing nine checks (totaling $1 million) in September 2008 and was arrested on a felony warrant in Rancho Mirage, California. That million is only a portion of what he lost to five casinos in Nevada and California in just one year. That's according to his federal bankruptcy filing, where he reported personal debts of $12 million. The FBI has investigated him, and some of his own co-workers say he staged phony demonstrations of military technology for the U.S. government.

Montgomery has no formal scientific education, but over the past six years he seems to have convinced top people in the national security establishment that he had developed secret tools to save the world from terror and had decoded Al Qaeda transmissions. But the communications Montgomery said he was decrypting apparently didn't exist.

Since 1996 the Al Jazeera news network had been operating in the nation of Qatar, a U.S. ally in the war on terror. Montgomery claimed he had found something sinister disguised in Al Jazeera's broadcast signal that had nothing to do with what was being said on the air: Hidden in the signal were secret bar codes that told terrorists the terms of their next mission, laying out the latitudes and longitudes of targets, sometimes even flight numbers and dates. And he was the only man who had the technology to decrypt this code.

As strange as his technology appeared to be, it was nevertheless an attractive concept. Montgomery was as persuasive as some within the intelligence community were receptive. Al Jazeera was an inspired target since its pan-Arabic mission had been viewed with suspicion by those who saw an anti-American bias in the network's coverage. In 2004 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accused Al Jazeera of "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable" reporting. Will Stebbins, Al Jazeera's Washington bureau chief, told The Washington Post, "There was clearly an attempt to delegitimize Al Jazeera that came during a period of a lot of national hysteria and paranoia about the Arabic world." ("It is unfortunate," an Al Jazeera spokesperson told Playboy when asked for comment, "that a select few people continue to drag up these completely false conspiracy theories about Al Jazeera, which were generated by the previous U.S. administration.")

Over the years Montgomery's intelligence found its way to the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, Special Forces Command, the Navy, the Air Force, the Senate Intelligence Committee and even to Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Back in 2003, just before the terror alert caused by Montgomery's technology, eTreppid held a Christmas party in a ballroom at the Atlantis Casino in Reno. Employees gathered at round tables to dine and drink. Even a CIA man showed up, a lanky fellow wearing a button-down shirt with an oxford collar. By the end of the night, employees noticed Montgomery and eTreppid chief executive Warren Trepp talking closely. A photo snapped by an employee shows Montgomery with his jacket off and a Christmas ribbon wrapped around his head like a turban with a rose tucked into it. He was hugging Trepp, who sobbed into his shoulder. The festivities were a rare break for Montgomery, who had been busy churning out terrorist target coordinates for the CIA.On Sunday, January 4, 2004 a British Airways flight out of Heathrow was delayed for hours for security reasons, and FBI agents demanded that hotels in Vegas turn over their guest lists. It was also the day a top CIA official flew to the eTreppid office in Reno. There, on eTreppid letterhead, the CIA official promised the company's name would not be revealed and that the government would not "unilaterally use or otherwise take" Montgomery's Al Jazeera technology.

Back in Washington, few insiders in government knew where the intelligence was coming from. Aside from Tenet and a select few, no one was told about eTreppid's Al Jazeera finds. Even veteran intelligence operatives within the CIA could only wonder. "These guys were trying to hide it like it was some little treasure," one former counterterrorist official told me.

The reason the whole thing worked was because Montgomery's CIA contact was with the agency's Directorate of Science and Technology. That's the whiz-bang branch of the intelligence service, where employees make and break codes, design disguises and figure out the latest gadgets. S&T was eventually ordered by CIA brass to reveal its source to small groups from other parts of the agency. And when some experienced officers heard about it, they couldn't believe it. One former counterterrorism official remembers the briefing: "They found encoded location data for previous and future threat locations on these Al Jazeera tapes," he says. "It got so emotional. We were fucking livid. I was told to shut up. I was saying, 'This is crazy. This is embarrassing.' They claimed they were breaking the code, getting latitude and longitude, and Al Qaeda operatives were decoding it. They were coming up with airports and everything, and we were just saying, 'You know, this is horseshit!' " Another former officer, who has decades of experience, says, "We were told that, like magic, these guys were able to exploit this Al Jazeera

SIXTY-EIGHT years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father -- one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima -- was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place?

In search of an answer, I read deeply into the diplomatic history of the 1930s, about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policy on Asia, and his preparation -- or lack thereof -- for a major conflict there. But I discovered that I was studying the wrong President Roosevelt. The one who had the greater effect on Japan's behavior was Theodore Roosevelt -- whose efforts to end the war between Japan and Russia earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

When Theodore Roosevelt was president, three decades before World War II, the world was focused on the bloody Russo-Japanese War, a contest for control of North Asia. President Roosevelt was no fan of the Russians: "No human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant -- in short, as untrustworthy in every way -- as the Russians," he wrote in August 1905, near the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese, on the other hand, were "a wonderful and civilized people," Roosevelt wrote, "entitled to stand on an absolute equality with all the other peoples of the civilized world."

Roosevelt knew that Japan coveted the Korean Peninsula as a springboard to its Asian expansion. Back in 1900, when he was still vice president, Roosevelt had written, "I should like to see Japan have Korea." When, in February 1904, Japan broke off relations with Russia, President Roosevelt said publicly that he would "maintain the strictest neutrality," but privately he wrote, "The sympathies of the United States are entirely on Japan's side."

In June 1905, Roosevelt made world headlines when -- apparently on his own initiative -- he invited the two nations to negotiate an end to their war. Roosevelt's private letter to his son told another story: "I have of course concealed from everyone -- literally everyone -- the fact that I acted in the first place on Japan's suggestion ... . Remember that you are to let no one know that in this matter of the peace negotiations I have acted at the request of Japan and that each step has been taken with Japan's foreknowledge, and not merely with her approval but with her expressed desire."

Years later, a Japanese emissary to Roosevelt paraphrased the president's comments to him: "All the Asiatic nations are now faced with the urgent necessity of adjusting themselves to the present age. Japan should be their natural leader in that process, and their protector during the transition stage, much as the United States assumed the leadership of the American continent many years ago, and by means of the Monroe Doctrine, preserved the Latin American nations from European interference. The future policy of Japan towards Asiatic countries should be similar to that of the United States towards their neighbors on the American continent."

In a secret presidential cable to Tokyo, in July 1905, Roosevelt approved the Japanese annexation of Korea and agreed to an "understanding or alliance" among Japan, the United States and Britain "as if the United States were under treaty obligations." The "as if" was key: Congress was much less interested in North Asia than Roosevelt was, so he came to his agreement with Japan in secret, an unconstitutional act.

(...)

Roosevelt had assumed that the Japanese would stop at Korea and leave the rest of North Asia to the Americans and the British. But such a wish clashed with his notion that the Japanese should base their foreign policy on the American model of expansion across North America and, with the taking of Hawaii and the Philippines, into the Pacific. It did not take long for the Japanese to tire of the territorial restrictions placed upon them by their Anglo-American partners.

Japan's declaration of war, in December 1941, explained its position quite clearly: "It is a fact of history that the countries of East Asia for the past hundred years or more have been compelled to observe the status quo under the Anglo-American policy of imperialistic exploitation and to sacrifice themselves to the prosperity of the two nations. The Japanese government cannot tolerate the perpetuation of such a situation."

In planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto was specifically thinking of how, 37 years earlier, the Japanese had surprised the Russian Navy at Port Arthur in Manchuria and, as he wrote, "favorable opportunities were gained by opening the war with a sudden attack on the main enemy fleet." At the time, the indignant Russians called it a violation of international law. But Theodore Roosevelt, confident that he could influence events in North Asia from afar, wrote to his son, "I was thoroughly well pleased with the Japanese victory, for Japan is playing our game."

It was for his efforts to broker the peace deal between Russia and Japan that a year and a half later Roosevelt became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize -- and one of only three presidents to do so while in office (the other two are Woodrow Wilson and President Obama, who will accept his prize this week). No one in Oslo, or in the United States Congress, knew the truth then.

But the Japanese did. And the American president's support emboldened them to increase their military might -- and their imperial ambitions. In December 1941, the consequence of Theodore Roosevelt's recklessness would become clear to those few who knew of the secret dealings. No one else -- including my dad on Iwo Jima -- realized just how well Japan had indeed played "our game."

-NYT

Happy Thanksgiving.

Here is a pretty interesting speculative piece about a historical medical mystery (I saw it referenced in the NYT).

Roosevelt's Last Days: Did cancer kill FDR?

Is it conceivable that Franklin D. Roosevelt's doctors knew he had widespread cancer in 1944 and still let him run for his fourth term as president? New research makes this astounding argument--and claims that the physician who supposedly told the truth about Roosevelt's death in 1970 was in fact continuing the deception he had helped create.

Curious factoids for friendz tasked with shaping (lol!) those most pesky of Eastward minds. ("Redeploy domestic 911 IO Brigades. Red'ploy!")

Muslim scholars around the world are increasingly rejecting Darwin's theory of evolution as an "unproven".

Muslim students and academics also said they felt they were being asked to make a "binary choice" between Darwinism and creationism, rather than both having a place.

The claim was made by Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, at a conference organized by the British Council to celebrate the bicentenary of Darwin's birth.

He told his audience that in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia, only 15 per cent of people surveyed believed Darwin's theory was "true" or "probably true".

A poll he conducted at his own university showed that 62 per cent of Muslim professors and students believed evolution to be an "unproven theory", compared with 10 per cent of non-Muslim professors.

"The rate of acceptance of evolution and of the idea of teaching evolution was extremely low," he said. "I wondered, who are all these educated people rejecting evolution? They are even rejecting the fact that it should be taught as scientific knowledge."

Telegraph

`Dis much we SMC hacks know: Received wisdom has it down as-- if da´shit hits the fan -- we have the knowledge and capability to secure Pakistan's nukes.

A new piece by Seymour Hersh questions this assumption.

Last year, the Washington Times ran an article about the Pressler Amendment, a 1985 law cutting off most military aid to Pakistan as long as it continued its nuclear program. The measure didn't stop Pakistan from getting the bomb, or from buying certain weapons, but it did reduce the number of Pakistani officers who were permitted to train with American units. The article quoted Major General John Custer as saying, "The older military leaders love us. They understand American culture and they know we are not the enemy." The General's assessment provoked a barrage of e-mail among American officers with experience in Pakistan, and a former member of a Special Forces unit provided me with copies. "The fact that a two-star would make a statement [like] that . . . is at best naïve and actually pure bullshit," a senior Special Forces officer on duty in Pakistan wrote. He went on:

"I have met and interacted with the entire military staff from General Kayani on down and all the general officers on their joint staff and in all the services, and I haven't spoken to one that "loves us"--whatever that means. In fact, I have read most of the TS [top secret] assessments of all their General Officers and I haven't read one that comes close to their "loving" us. They play us for everything they can get, and we trip over ourselves trying to give them everything they ask for, and cannot pay for."

Some military men who know Pakistan well believe that, whatever the officer corps's personal views, the Pakistan Army remains reliable. "They cannot be described as pro-American, but this doesn't mean they don't know which side their bread is buttered on," Brian Cloughley, who served six years as Australia's defense attaché to Pakistan and is now a contributor to Jane's Sentinel, told me. "The chance of mutiny is slim. Were this to happen, there would be the most severe reaction" by special security units in the Pakistani military, Cloughley said

[...]

Leslie H. Gelb, a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "I don't think there's any kind of an agreement we can count on. The Pakistanis have learned how to deal with us, and they understand that if they don't tell us what we want to hear we'll cut off their goodies." Gelb added, "In all these years, the C.I.A. never built up assets, but it talks as if there were 'access.' I don't know if Obama understands that the Agency doesn't know what it's talking about."

The former high-level Bush Administration official was just as blunt. "If a Pakistani general is talking to you about nuclear issues, and his lips are moving, he's lying," he said. "The Pakistanis wouldn't share their secrets with anybody, and certainly not with a country that, from their point of view, used them like a Dixie cup and then threw them away."

Merkel might have done better had she spent some time as a trainee on Wall Street before playing for keeps with the big boys of GM and the Obama posse--could've spared her a bambozzling and a berating smack to the chops. Meanwhile, some other Krauts are making fine progress in the predominant strategic PSYOP.

Muslims should make peace with Germany, argues former hate preacher Mohammed El Fazazi, the man who once provided religious instruction to the men behind the 9/11 terror attacks. SPIEGEL ONLINE has published an abridged version of his open letter to Muslims.

In 2001, imam Mohammed El Fazazi of Morocco preached that it it is a Muslim obligation to "slit the throats of non-believers" in a Hamburg mosque. Among his listeners and star pupils were Mohammed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh and Marwan al-Shehhi, three of the men who participated in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Today, eight years later, Mohammed El Fazazi has foresworn acts of terrorism against Western targets. "I admit that I went too far and overshot the target," he wrote in an open letter to his daughter, who lives in Hamburg, and Muslims living in Germany. Muslims living in Germany, he said, should draw attention to themselves and their issues through "peaceful demonstrations, strikes and protests that are far removed from indiscriminate attacks" and the "killing of innocent people with the argument of killing kuffar," or non-believers.

You know, there is something so very NOT stochastic about this. This kind of shit seems to swirl around you.

And lame? I think not. Perhaps to normal people, this would be lame, but to Ik. This is fascinating. Of course, questions immediately spring: what company? agency? who? Hah. It sounds like Operation Mockingbird is still running.

You need to start carrying some sort of digital recording device. We can tweak S/N and amplify later.

Oft found underwriting our SMC significations, we seldom durst abscond from whiffing upwind scents draft-drifted to said skanky tribe from the stolid camps of reinsurers and money marketeers. Not to second guess our incontestably tendentious inclinations is to be a que sera sera kinda' gal. Daily is the struggle not to wax t'wards femme fatale.

Scor SE, France's largest reinsurer, renegotiated a contract with JPMorgan Chase & Co. to make cash more quickly available if needed for a surge in claims tied to a swine flu pandemic.

JPMorgan will pay as much as $75 million when an index tied to European and U.S. death rates climbs to between 105 percent and 110 percent. The earlier arrangement was for $100 million and 36 million euros to be paid when the index reached 125 percent, the Puteaux-based reinsurer said today in a statement. The protection was renegotiated to guard against an increase in deaths caused by terrorism, pandemics and natural disasters, Scor said.

"We are taking the current threat of the Influenza A, H1N1, virus seriously," Jean-Luc Besson, a Scor chief risk officer, said in the statement. Pandemics "may have corresponding financial repercussions on both sides of the balance sheet."

Countries in the northern hemisphere should prepare for a second wave of pandemic spread, the World Health Organization said in a report last week. More than 209,000 swine flu cases and 2,185 deaths were reported to the organization as of Aug. 23. The U.S. has the highest influenza rates for this time of year since the 1968 Hong Kong flu, said Joe Quimby, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scor fell 4 cents to 18 euros earlier today in Paris trading. It has climbed 10 percent this year. JPMorgan advanced $1.25 cents to $42.11 as of 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Insurers and investors bet on life expectancies using indexes such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s QxX index, which includes a sample of U.S. residents older than 65. Life insurers may hedge against a crisis that increases the death rate, while companies with pension obligations seek to protect themselves as medical advances boost life expectancies.

-Bloomberg