The media seized upon the idiotic remarks and subsequent spin by Christian Broadcasting Network's 700 Club founder, Pat Robertson, in which he basically endorsed yet another coup attempt by the U.S. upon the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez.  His careless remarks have re-opened a blood-stained, 55-gallon-sized oil barrel of worms.  Call it a "Pandora's Barrel" of failed U.S. foreign policy decisions dreamt up and propagated by right-wing neocons and then blindly supported by right-wing socially conservative nutbags, like Pat Robertson:

"You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he [Chavez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson told his audience. “It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."

With Christian Fundies like him, who needs Islamic Fundies to terrorize the world?  I think when the American public can go berserk over Janet Jackson's floppy tit for months, you'd think the FCC would investigate Robertson's call to kill the leader of another country.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said Robertson’s call for violence should be condemned by American officials.  “It is deplorable for a Christian preacher to go before his vast audience and urge the American government to murder a foreign leader,” Lynn said. “His bloodthirsty commentary is over the top, even by Pat’s rather elastic standard. “This is just the kind of religious fanaticism that the world does not need more of,” Lynn continued. “President Bush should immediately disavow Robertson and his extremist rhetoric.”

But, no.  As a matter of fact, the Bush Administration practically defended Robertson, saying, "they were remarks made by a private citizen."  Really, now?  Just how private or public a person is Pat Robertson?  According to intelligence reports by the Interhemispheric Resource Center, I would conclude that Pat Robertson has been polluting media, religion, domestic politics and U.S. foreign policy for decades:

• CBN's flagship program, "The 700 Club," was started by Pat Robertson on radio in 1961 and on TV in 1963.  By 1975 the ministry had gone international, airing the "The 700 Club" in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, the West Indies, Europe, and Nigeria.  By the mid-1980s it had an estimated 28.7 million regular U.S. viewers.
  
  
• Robertson, according to investigative reporter Sara Diamond, used his tax-exempt broadcast license to hold a fundraising telethon in the United States for the Guatemalan military and the Nicaraguan contras.  On "The 700 Club," Robertson has interviewed Adolfo Calero and Steadman Fagoth, contra leaders; Efrain Rios Montt, then-president of Guatemala known for massive human rights abuses; Jeremias Chitunda, an Angolan guerrilla leader; Ray Cline, former CIA deputy director of intelligence; several Israeli cabinet members, and even President Reagan in an exclusive interview.
  
  
• Robertson's campaign for the presidency brought many rightwing Christians into the political process and made pentecostal Christianity a policy force to be reckoned with. However, his run for public office also brought Robertson some controversy and embarrassing moments, such as when he was forced to admit that his son was conceived out of wedlock. He filed libel suits in response to allegations that he used the influence of his father, a U.S. senator, to avoid combat duty in Korea.  [ sound familiar? - JfZ ]
  
  
• The U.S. operation of CBN was considered one of the top private funders of the contras. As of 1987 Robertson reported that Operation Blessing had sent more than $3 million in aid to the Nicaraguan refugees. CBN gave the $3 million to the contra's Houston-based Nicaraguan Patriotic Association, according to Juan Sacasas, Vice President of the group and representative of the FDN contra force. Robertson denies any connection with Sacasas. However, there is little question that the Operation Blessing donations reached the contra forces. Robertson was so popular among them that one group named itself the Pat Robertson Brigade.

Believe me, this is just the tip of the frackin' iceberg concerning Pat Robertson.  The man has his dirty fingers in more pies around the globe than the average CIA section chief.  Read his profile compiled at Interhemispheric Resource Center and then realize that it is not even current, by any means.  It does not include Robertson ties to the deposed and exiled Liberian dictator Charles Taylor and Robertson's 8-million-dollar gold mining investments, his jingoist anti-Islamic foments, or the recent Chavez flap.

And, don't even get me started on the two decades of political and religious pollution caused by Robertson's Christian Coalition political action group!  Nowadays, however, it's fairly apparent that Robertson's brilliant business and scheming mind is a cart whose wheels have now flown off.  As much as I dislike people like Pat Robertson (and Jerry Falwell), it's just sad -- but perhaps comforting to some -- that this man is clearly sliding down the slippery slope of atrophied brain dementia in an exponential way.


[Headphones] :: Democrusader - JfZ

I watch the news.  They talk about the reasons for record high gas prices in the U.S.  I always think they are lying.  The price of gas in a free market system is based upon supply and demand.  That is the starting point, anyway.  After that, non-economic factors seem to be tossed into the equation -- price fixing by OPEC, tariffs, etc.  In fact, oil exporting countries still make a profit if a barrel of oil costs anything over (US)$15 - $18.  So, Saudi Arabia is making a 400% profit selling their SUV crack to the rednecks and soccer moms in the United States.

I haven't completely finished reading an english translation of the Qu'ran, but it just seems to me that the prophet may indeed have a sharp, sarcastic sense of humor, after all.

But inevitably, some energy expert will come on the news broadcast and then say that the unrest in the middle east has driven the price of crude oil to record levels.  Some talking-head experts point to the war in Iraq as the reason. That can not be true on a supply/demand basis because U.S. importers didn't purchase significant amounts of Iraqi oil in the recent past because of the United Nations sanctions.  Even considering the war in Iraq -- the sanctions have been lifted and the opportunity to import oil from Iraq has actually increased -- despite the obvious security problems.

If the prophet Mohammed has a sarcastic sense of humor, Jesus Christ must be busting a gut laughing at the irony of the United States twice electing a president and vice-president so soaked in the oil business their entire lives that both of them likely piss light sweet crude in the executive bathrooms at the White House.  It's just bad karma for a greedy oil man to have the ear of the commander-in-chief of the largest military force on our increasingly shrinking, little spinning ball of mud -- especially when he is so well-known for failed business plans and evangelical delusions.

Meanwhile, using the Way Back Machine, let's eavesdrop on some conversations:

Cheney: "Hey, Dubya, let's invade Iraq."
GWBush: "Sure, Saddam made my daddy mad."
Cheney: "Rummy says we've been half-ready since the Gulf War."
GWBush: "Really?"
Cheney: "Yeah, we've kept him in a no-fly-zone box for you."
GWBush: "God Bless America."
Cheney: "Uh, sure ... whatever."
GWBush: "I'll have to ask Karl Rove first."
Cheney: "No problem.  I'll make some calls, too."
GWBush: "I'm going on a bike ride to pray about it."


Cheney: "Hey, Colin. What's up, my brother?"
Powell: "Not much.  I'm checking out shower surveillance videos of Condi."
Cheney: "Yeah, that's good stuff."
Powell: "How's Gilligan?"
Cheney: "He just left to ride his bike."
Powell: "John Bolton just told me Iraq has WMDs."
Cheney: "Yeah.  George Tenet will say the same thing."
Powell: "What are we going to do?"
Cheney: "The usual dog and pony show.  I'll get back to you."


Cheney: "Hey, Ken. I think I have a plan."
Ken Lay: "I'll bring some friends."
Cheney: "We should talk about this in my office."
Ken Lay: "Let's roll."


JfZ's advice: Do as the Dubya does, not as he says.
Ride a bike.  It may just save a soldier's life.

[Headphones] :: Dancing with the Dubya - JfZ

Last Summer, I urged people to check out the various blogs written by the Jarrar family members in "BBSes to Blogs" on Thunderstorms in the Imajica.  Unlike the U.S. news media hiding in the Green Zone in Iraq, Raed Jarrar was blogging about the Baghdad street.  His little brother, Khalid was complaining about school and the craziness of trying to be a young person caught in a war zone.  From my periodic reads of their blogs, the Jarrar family seems very much like any other Iraqi family I have met in the wealthier suburbs of Detroit.

Some Iraqis are Sunni or Shia Muslim of varying degrees of practice and some Iraqis are Christians who fled way back when Saddam Hussein first took power.  Some families are mixed, like the Jarrars: where one person is Sunni, one is Shia, one is devout, one is not.  They might be business owners, usually very well educated, and speak two or three languages.  The Jarrar family reminds me of some of the families that I might have talked to in the Detroit area.

Today, I was saddened to hear about the trials and tribulations of the Jarrar family that occurred back in July.  Basically, it seems Khalid was on his way to pay his school tuition, when through a series of unfortunate events, he was snatched up by the interior ministry for reading his own brother's and mother's blogs while killing time at the university internet cafe.

Here are a few excerpts from Khalid's blog entry describing that day:

The whole thing started when I went to the university to pay my tuition fees, the thing is that the engineering campus is separated from the rest of the university with few kilometers, but for such administrative issues, students should go to the headquarter, and this is what I did. I entered the main campus and went to the financial department to pay money. I started the paperwork process, and then reached to a point where we needed the director’s signature to finish the paperwork, but she was in a meeting. So, the employee asked me to go and waste an hour inside the campus till the meeting is over, and I did. ... Of course, what is better than the internet to kill time?

After doing some surfing and reading the blogs of his mother and his brother, Khalid attempted to return to the tuition office, but instead was quickly detained by security.  Shortly thereafter, Khalid describes how he was searched, interrogated, humiliated, handcuffed, had a bag thrown over his head, and then tossed into a van.

Given the well-known history of the Iraqi government's atrocious record of human rights abuses under Saddam Hussein, Khalid was definitely justified to be frightened for his life.  It seems little has changed in that regard.

I was so lucky that I was taken to the Mokhabarat directly. Usually you have to go through a police station or a center of the national guards to get there, where the standard procedure of torturing is hanging people upside down and beating them with cables for hours, pinching their bodies with electrical drills, burning them with hot water, ripping out their finger nails, breaking bones, using acids on the wounds after whipping them, the dead bodies that are found in the dumpsters in Baghdad even had their eyes taken out of them, and a lot of these things happened with people that I know, or with people that were detained with the people that were with me in this jail, before they were brought here, and the list of torturing techniques is long, and you don’t want to hear them or know about them if you want to sleep at night.

Khalid describes his days in the prison in detail.  He tells some of the stories of other prisoners in his cell.  Since I first had the opportunity to read Khalid's blog a year ago, I have noticed several things.  Khalid's fluency in English has improved a great deal.  The tone of his blog has changed from a typical teenager's style of writing in text message slang with fairly light topics to a more articulate, but darker disdain for the U.S. occupation of his homeland.  It's sad, but not entirely unexpected to me, to see the devolution of his spirit.

There are several things contributing to the mess in Iraq.  Despite the Bush Administration's constant "stay the course" and "we're making progress" chants, things are not getting better for the people of Iraq in real, everyday ways.  In fact, in many ways, the situation is deteriorating.  You may have noticed that no one from Bushworld has uttered the familiar phrase "we are winning hearts and minds" in the last year.  Even Dubya's evangelical ability to deny reality doesn't allow him to try and put that one slogan past the U.S. public any longer.

It's difficult to win hearts and minds when the lack of public security and contractor fraud has left Baghdad without basic services, like reliable electricity.  It's hard to win hearts and minds when the U.S. military often goes on blind insurgent hunts and ends up killing thousands of innocent bystanders.  Much of the blindness in intelligence in Iraq is due to historic political animosity between Sunni and Shia.

There is increasing evidence that the Iraqi police forces, now under Shi’ite control, are carrying out systematic revenge killings against Sunnis in Baghdad. The bodies now showing up at the morgue have obvious signs of handcuffing and blindfolding and evidence of being tortured before death. U.S. sources indicate that the suspicious killings have reached the rate of almost 700 per month. The police are supervised by the Shi’ite-run Ministry of Interior, which claims that the killings are being carried out by insurgents wearing stolen police uniforms. But American intelligence sources disagree, noting that many of the killers appear to be actual policemen carrying the expensive standard-issue Glock automatics and driving official Toyota Land Cruisers.

-- Philip Giraldi (ex-CIA) in American Conservative Magazine

Unfortunately for Khalid, who happens to be a Sunni Muslim, the new ruling Shia officials can be quite revengeful.  Despite the fact that his mother is Shia and his best friend is Kurdish, there is a high level of ethnic killing in Iraq.  I fear that ten years from now  -- when the body count is finally tallied in Iraq -- it will likely eclipse the racially-motivated lynchings of the 20th century in the Southern United States perpetrated against the blacks by the whites.

[Headphones] :: Bush and Brando Debate - JfZ

Some of the stories are tragic on their face.  Someone is injured or even killed by acts of pure stupidity or criminal intent.  Investigations ensue that peel back the past activities of the person involved like a glass onion. Why did the person do this thing?  Who is really to blame for all the sorrow and grief?  For some grieving people who are't finding closure or satisfaction with the criminal justice system in the United States, more and more are looking to the civil court system in order to find deeper pockets to blame.

Recently, a $160 million lawsuit was filed against the makers of the Grand Theft Auto video game.  Apparently, an 18-year-old Alabama man shot and killed three people, two of them were police officers.  The investigation revealed that he had bought Grand Theft Auto when he was sixteen.  Grand Theft Auto is also the focus of an investigation initiated by Senator Hillary Clintoon after the discovery of some explicitly sexual scenes hidden in the game.

Blaming video games is not a new trend.  You might remember that in the aftermath of the tragic Columbine High School shooting incident in Colorado, some people found it possible to blame the first person shooter video game, Doom II, as some sort of violent inspiration for the killers.  Similarly, investigations revealed that some of the September 11th hijacker's may have played Microsoft Flight Simulator to practice flying into the World Trade Center buildings.

Another ridiculous lawsuit has been filed against Lucas Arts by a couple blaming a Star Wars video game's flashing screens for inducing a grand mal seizure in their epileptic child.  Hey, parents! I'm not happy your kid has epilepsy, but don't blame the force for your own stupidity for not reading the manual.  In addition, someone really should shove a hot light sabre up the greedy, ambulance chasing attorney's ass for even filing this lawsuit.

So, remember kids, save your allowance money to buy as many video games for your collection as you can.  That way, when you do something incredibly stupid or criminal in your teenage years, you'll be more likely to have a video game to blame it on.  And then -- you, your parents, or the victims of your acts can sue for millions!  This is America.  Nothing is your fault.

[Headphones] :: Evil Stevie: Activate! - JfZ

One of the things about the controversy surrounding Karl Rove leaking classified information to the press that irritates me the most is that some of the right-wing media outlets seem to excuse away the gravity of his criminal behavior.  From my own specific training in military digital communications systems and subsequent years of experience dealing with highly classified information, I can only hope I might have developed a knack for explaining some of the most basic concepts about this topic in simple terms.

In the circles of government, information is either commonly called open source or closed source. In other words, information is either unclassified or classified. Open source information is basically defined as anything anyone in the public can read or know. This information may originate from sources such as press releases and required public reporting from government agencies. It can be original information published in books, professional trade journals, and newspapers. Opposingly, closed source information is classified information shared only among those government officals and other persons holding a certain level of security clearance and also typically having the need to know it.

If information is classified, by its legal definition, it then falls under three main categories: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. An example of information classified as Confidential might be the home address and telephone number of a government official. Sometimes very unusual and normally benign stuff becomes classified during a time of overt war like in Iraq, or during covert in-theater activity, like some of the Special Operations field trips across sovereign borders. While in-theater, an army cook's recipe sheet for meals could become classified as Confidential or Secret. The justification for classifying such a normally benign thing could be the fear of the enemy discovering or deducing the local in-theater vendor for produce. This information would then become a point of high vulnerability to the force should the enemy poison the milk, for example.

In addition, access to documents and information (usually Secret and above) can be then further limited by specially compartmentalizing it. An official communique' from a U.S. embassy to agencies in the U.S. government may only be classified as Secret, but then be tagged with what we used to call NoFo status, meaning No Foreign Dissemination.

As you can imagine, the highest security classification for information is Top Secret. Specially Compartmented Information (SCI) is usually first classified as Top Secret. Then, the information is tagged with a unique code word, compartmentalizing it. The logic behind this information security system is the principle of need to know. Although you may have already heard the term 'need to know' in a movie or have read it in a book, it is the actual logic behind, and terminology used, in government and the military in regards to classifying information.

Tagging documents and other information with a specific SCI code word limits the access to that information to only those people who have the need to know the information or activity, or have been "read on" (past tense) to see it. Here's an example using code words Kermit, Bert & Ernie:

Scientist Kermit has a Top Secret security clearance and is researching the tactical feasibility of a directed electro magnetic pulse weapon deployed from satellite platforms. Army General Bert also has a Top Secret security clearance and is talking with an Iranian dissident with knowledge of the logistical support needed for the underground railroad of suicide bombers entering Iraq. U.S. Senator Ernie also has a Top Secret security clearance and sits on the appropriations committees for Science and Technology and Armed Services.

In this example, although Scientist Kermit and Army General Bert have both gone through the arduous process of investigation by federal and military investigative agencies to hold (or renew) their top secret security clearance, neither person really has a need to know each other's business, so they do not have access to one another's work. On the other hand, Senator Ernie likely has the need to know both the Scientist's and Army General's work, so he is "read on" (past tense) to have access to the information tagged with all the SCI code words Kermit, Bert and Ernie.

When General Bert retires, or Senator Ernie is not re-elected, those people are then debriefed, or "read off" (past tense). Unless the defense department or goverment has radically changed its policies since Bush and his cronies have stumbled into offices of power, neither Bert nor Ernie can divulge any of the classified information to which they previously had access during their service to the country, let alone while they held their jobs.

Information Security (infosec) and Operational Security (opsec) are both like a locked door guarding a roomful of classified dominoes. Classifying information into one of the three confidential, secret or top secret categories is a process which is bound by specific legal definitions that evaluates the possible harm to United States should the security of that information be compromised. Inappropriately, accidently, or purposefully disclosing classified information has grave legal and criminal consequences. At mininum, disclosures or leaks cause a huge clean-up or sanitizing operation for all the information that has suddenly become falling dominoes in a room whose size is sometimes not even knowable. During a time of war, disclosure or leaks of classified information can even be prosecuted as treason, and as such, death can be the penalty.

I'll follow this up with some personal anecdotes.  I didn't want to break the dreaded attention-span barrier again, like I did with the Mullahs with Nukes and On Life and Death entries recently.

[Headphones] :: Jessica: Pleasure Club Mix - JfZ

Iran has had numerous political defectors warning "The West" about the clerical leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran developing nuclear weapons for over twenty years and as recently as November of 2004.  Colin Powell, during his last official trip as the U.S. Secretary of State, told reporters in Chile that the intelligence community had recently been given a gift -- a walk-in Iranian defector carrying with him about a thousand pages of documents detailing the technological efforts of the Iranians to marry nuclear warheads with the missile already in Iranian inventory.

It would seem to me that those kind of technological efforts are one of the last steps one does to become a nuclear power.  In other words, there really should be no doubt that Iran has already developed nuclear warheads.  The fact that the Mullahs with Nukes are not driving them around Tehran in a proud Soviet-style military parade for the western intelligence agencies to photograph shouldn't be of any comfort to anyone.  One of the many problems the Bush administration has created for itself -- and by extension, all of us -- by their pre-emptive and prolonged romp around Iraq is that now if Condoleeza Rice stands in front of the United Nations Security Council with polaroid pictures of Iranian nuclear weapons, there are few people in the world that would believe her since the Bush administration lied, and lied again, concerning Iraq.

Why didn't we see this coming?  Why do they hate us?

We have and we have not.  They do and they don't.  One of the many primary failures in the administrations of the last three U.S. presidents (Bush-Clinton-Bush) is simply not taking this Mullahs with Nukes problem seriously enough, and a mistaken presumption concerning the relationships between the enemies of the United States.  Old school, Cold War warriors in the CIA evaluated everything about most of the countries in the Middle East as simply a logistical problem whose only strategic considerations were boiled down to the question of, "Can we fuel our war machine there?"  I can personally affirm, from my own experience, that that was the general mindset of the intelligence and defense crowd in the 1980's, even from the limited, personal keyhole through which I had access to know about the bigger picture of the world at that time.

First, let's not forget that Iran officially declared war with the U.S. way back during the 444 days of the U.S. embassy hostage crisis more than 25 years ago.  Have the Iranian clerics somehow changed their minds about their desires to kill Americans since that time?  No, not at all.  As a matter of fact, I just watched a very tedious speech by the leader of Iran in front of an audience of Iranian military that was broadcast on C-Span this year which concluded with everyone in the room chanting, "Death to Israel, Death to the Zionists, Death to America!"  Second, let's not forget that the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein's side of the regionally devastating Iran-Iraq war.  The Iranian Mullahs with Nukes have ample historical and current points to justify their reasons for wanting to strike a devastating blow to the United States, or any of its closest allies.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Despite the obviousness of this old Arab proverb, the head of the middle-eastern bureau at the CIA operated under the assumption that Sunni Wahabbi terrorists would never covort with the Shia Iranian Mullahs with Nukes.  A very under-reported fact that was brought out during the extensive work of the 911 Commission (perhaps because it is in the classified portions of that report) is that nearly half of the Saudi terrorists perpetrating their 911 terror were helped and fascilitated by Iranian intelligence agents at many earlier points along their way to 911.

The Iranian - Al Qaeda intelligence reports were literally discovered by the 911 Commission staffers a week before their report was due to be published.  They found a CIA summary report at the bottom of document box that caused them to request 75 more intelligence reports at the eleventh hour detailing Iranian and Al Qaeda collaboration.  As a matter of undisputed fact: an Iranian defector told a CIA section chief at the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijian that "Arab fighters" (before they were tagged with the Al Qaeda name) were training to hijack commercial airplanes in a facility, north of Tehran, in the Spring of 2001.

Do you remember the last three years of "unspecified" threats that made the Secretary of Homeland Security raise the stupid color code alert system based upon terrorist chatter?  Guess what?  The very same man in Azerbaijian that warned of a major hijacking operation planned for the U.S. also told our man from the CIA exactly what date it was to occur, very specifically, September 11th.  He was ignored and discredited by the CIA.  However, if it is any consolation to the relatives of the thousands of 911 victims, this top-level bureaucrat was just fired by Porter Goss.

The nightmare scenario

The Pentagon has already war-gamed the nightmare scenario that the Pakistani nuclear guru A.Q. Khan has given the Iranian clerics his rolodex of black market nuclear technology suppliers from France to North Korea.  Iran has nukes, but since Iran doesn't want a traditional confrontation with the U.S. in the Persian Gulf, they prefer to fascilitate plausibly deniable actions against its enemies. Porter Goss had an accidental slip of the tongue this year when he exclaimed that the CIA knew where Osama Bin Laden was located but he was unfortunately being protected by a sovereign state.

That probably doesn't mean Afghanistan.  Karzai has been openly battling Al Qaeda for several years.  It probably doesn't mean Pakistan either, unless Bin Laden is tucked away in the Kasmir region, where Musharev has little control.  I think after seven assassination attmepts on Musharev, he's not Osama's buddy, anyway.  The fact that no one seems to want to talk publicly about Iran is telling.

When Iran publicly admitted their nuclear capabilities after the U.S. showed up in Iraq, it was an obvious warning to anyone paying attention to this tidbit in the news.  The Bush administration isn't making Iran a focus to the American people simply because there are not any easy cookie cutter Karl Rove outcomes to this problem.

The one nightmare scenario that worries most people is the one where Iran gives an Al Qaeda cell one little nuclear weapon, an anonymous ocean vessel, and a scud missile launcher for it.  A small team could literally sail up next to Cuba, and toss a scud missile-propelled nuke at Washingtion, D.C., or any major city on the eastern seabord.  Within 3-5 minutes, a quarter million people would likely be vaporized and our military would be left scratching their collective heads as to whom to retaliate against since there is no specific country of origin for the nuclear attack.

The Dark Ages

More and more though, I am seeing lawmakers on C-Span discuss in committee and give speeches on the floor of their legislative bodies concerning a topic about which any casual fan of Sci-Fi already knows.  Despite the obvious Hiroshima-style aftermath of a quarter-million cooked Americans in some city, a nuclear blast at around 100 miles above a city would produce an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP).  It is thought that the after effects of an EMP blast might actually cause enough chaos and mayhem to kill many more hundreds of thousands of people.

An EMP would shut down all electrical devices that were not hardened against that threat over the entire region of the country.  In other words, if D.C. got nuked, the EMP from that nuke could shut down everything containing any electronics from Miami, FL to Bangor, ME, depending upon the size of the nuke and its detonation altitude.

What does that mean?  That means that we all get to go back to Dark Ages.  Most major U.S. cities only have about three days worth of food unless interstate trucking can resupply a city's hundreds of grocery stores.  Millions of people without water, or food, or even transportation to leave the city could turn New York City and many other places into a gruesome place to be.  It also means that whatever city on the eastern seaboard that gets hit by the actual nuclear blast will burn until fire trucks from somewhere like Kansas arrive, since all vehicles within the EMP radius will be rendered useless.  People who get paid to imagine the worst don't call this the "nightmare scenario" for lack of a better name.

What can be done?

Taking the problem to the United Nations probably will not be very helpful in the short term.  The other countries on the U.N. Securitiy Council will likely blow the United States off.  First, because of the previously mentioned lies about Iraq that will kill our credibility about any future wolf cry, even if it is the truth.  Bush squandered our international credibility there.  But, second, the European Union has had a good grasp of the Iranian nuclear problem for ten years.  And frankly, they and the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council feel safe that Iran and Al Qaeda are fairly focussed on the U.S., or Israel, for anything so spectacular as a nuclear attack.

Leaders of a number of countries wouldn't care about this threat because the Mullahs with Nukes have clearly stated that the U.S., and Israel, and those shadowy Zionists are Iran's enemies, not anyone specifically in the European Union.  Their only real concern would be the possible shutdown of many world markets from the knee-jerk U.S. retaliatory response of nuking Iran.  But, when the shit does hit the fan, it will likely be in New York City or even Los Angeles that suffers from a nuclear strike.  The modern technologically entrenched cities in the U.S. are more vulnerable to the lifestyle change coming from an EMP blast than the rural, agricultural areas on the planet that might not even have an electrical grid.

You'd think that Israel might get nuked first, but that may not happen because of the unblinking scrutiny of everyone's satellites and intelligence services focussing on that region.  Yet, some group of guys can sail a vessel from Sudan almost up to the port of Miami fairly little interference in international waters.

The long term solution must be embarked upon.  The U.S. government must fund and support the many Iranians wishing to reform their current government of Iran.  It is a hopeful sign that the last election in Iran was boycotted massively by many Iranians.  If a regime change by Iranians is not put forward, the only other option for stability and peace will be a military one.  Iran is a serious national security problem for the U.S. for which the Bush administration does not have many good answers so far.

Further reading:

Countdown to Crisis : The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran
by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it
by Curt Weldon

[Headphones] :: Bush and Brando Debate - JfZ

Despite the fact that I have consistently identified myself as a Libertarian for more than a decade, I get maligned and personally attacked by the far right-wing conservative nutbags blogging in my country more than I am hassled by any communist nanny goverment liberals.  Whether you are a tree-hugging socialist or a fascist fear-mongering christian mullah, I say, "get thee behind me."

That's bible-talk for fuck off.

But, I really feel I have to tell both poles of the same oppression, by any another name, that you can suck my big fat dick.  Christian conservative fascist nutbags can spit my spunk out and know that Jesus still loves them despite their indescretions.  Nanny government communist liberals can avoid my salty goo by offering free condoms and dental dams.

Now that I might have shocked you enough to pay attention, I have to re-iterate how much I am disappointed with the conservativism of the far-right and the liberalism of the far-left in the United States.  Simply put, you both suck.

And further, the U.S. constitution is quite clear in regards to modern day issues, especially privacy and the protection against unwarranted search and seizure.  Whether it is security versus liberty, or privacy versus safety, or big brother versus freedom -- not only do both political sides fail miserably -- but also, they are so corrupt in their political thinking that these bi-polar idealogues are continually infecting the common sense middle ground of America and the world.

Whether is it random searches in public for mass transit passengers or the unbelievable proposal that police should be able to pull you over for smoking cigarettes in your own car, in NJ -- these politicians and legislators need to be embarrassingly flogged in public, or called to task in the media, or sent back to constitutional grade school and then put away in lawmaker retirement homes.

Let me just share a fact.  More people die in the United States (on average) every year by being struck by lightning (67) from God himself than died in the four seperate terrorist bombings upon the London tube and bus mass transit systems on July 7th.  I'm not trying to minimize any individual person's grief and loss who may have suffered as much from this despicable act of terrorism, but I am trying to point out the apparent over-reaction by local politicians an ocean away who seem to have too much time on their hands and want to appear to be doing something, anything, about this latest incident.

What part of unwarranted or unreasonable search and seizure do the people in charge of the mass transit system in the U.S. not understand?  This is not East Berlin under the KGB.  The scariest thing to me is the normalization of the two ends of totalitarianism meeting together to excuse away the public citizen's rights based upon the fear of the fracking Great Pumpkin in a supposedly free society.

How is not fascist that you search random people in public?  Don't give me any excuses.  The generational Bush-Saud bed buddy-induced love fest and lack of HUMINT about Wahabbi terrorists are allowing those extremist world views to win the day by shutting down the (supposedly evil) freedoms of the western world and supplanting the daily activities of average people in previously free societies with surveillance cameras and ineffectual random searches.  Or worse, authorizing pseudo military detainments in extra-jurisdictional locations of the seized and detained -- in which they may linger for years without any regard to international or U.S. law  -- simply because they were snatched up during the grayest timeframe of international strife, law, government and civilized behavior, by a pre-emptively aggressive, sheltered and self-assured, self-annoited, and apparently, self-ordained dictator and crusader of world democracy named George W. Bush and friends.

At home, however, the Democrusader whips up fear and patriotism, so liberals and conservatives alike can acknowledge the apparent need for surveillance, and caution, and prudence, and counter-intelligence, and domestic surveillance, and secret law enforcement dossiers of political opponents, and all manner of completely fascist bullshit.  All these things are needed when everyone is running scared of their own shadow, political destiny, and getting caught red-handed as a politically weak and criminal coward.

I can only hope the next delusional meglomaniac we elect as president of the United States is more in touch with the average family struggling to survive in the so-called richest country on the planet.  Despite all the bootstrap talk of the self-righteous, compassionate conservative, right-wing, rich, nut bags who become our elected officials in federal government these days -- our jobs, technology, manufacturing base, currency and pensions have been off-shored and out-sourced by some sickly unpatriotic and nefarious sociopaths in power recently.  I'll let you name your own names; the list is surely long.

Here's a future song lyric I just made up for you, describing the stupidity of the state of affairs in the so-called civilized world.  Maybe I'll name it Terrorist Action Over Reaction, or just Over Kill:

I made a tupperware bomb.
Found a bus to put it on.
Although I died in the blast,
I will be laughing at last,
just like Orwell in his grave
and Bin Laden in his cave.

So, instead of actually promoting more funding for some of the intelligence agencies, so they don't have a two-year-long backlog of something as stupidly simple as language translation of suspected terrorist chatter, we have lawmakers like Hillary Clinton who focus on starting a commision to investigate whether or not some pale womanless hacker geek put out a pornographic software patch for the Grand Theft Auto video game.  These kind of politicians totally suck.  Well, I guess maybe Hillary doesn't actually suck, but Monica Lewinsky apparently does.  Perhaps that is how the Grand Theft Auto porn patch came to Hillary's attention in the first place.  I didn't even know Bill Clinton owned a playstation.  Go figure.


[Headphones] :: G is for Gihad - Soylent Gringo

Have you heard of the global weather phenomenom of the African dust storm?  I've only seen one dust storm in my life.  It happened while I was driving along the I-10 freeway near the Mexican border when I was working as consultant in El Paso, Texas.  Growing up in Detroit, in the Great Lake state of Michigan, there wasn't any likelihood of seeing a dust storm.  But, during the months of my contract, experiencing the landscape and lifestyle in the areas around El Paso, Texas, and Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Cuidad Juarez, Mexico was fairly unique for me, anyway.

After working for several weeks, I had finally began to be less distracted by the sights along my daily commute from the hospital back home to my hotel, but on this day I spotted an immense dark wall of clouds on the horizon.  At first, I thought it was simply a thunderstorm.  The entire day had been clear and sunny, so initially, I just became disappointed that the weather was going to be turning ugly, just at the time that I finally got off of work.

However, after stealing a few more quick looks at the approaching storm off to my side -- while also trying to drive safely on the freeway -- I noticed something wasn't quite right. Something was off, but since I had no prior experience or reference to the thing upon which I was furtively glancing, it took a little while to understand what I was actually seeing.

It was the color.  Those building storm clouds weren't gray, they were actually reddish brown.  And the perspective was off.  The front edge of the storm wasn't actually far off on the horizon, it was much closer and hanging low to the ground.  It seemed to be miles wide.

To me, it was an unusual sight of nature, but I imagine some of you who live in the southwest of the United States must see dust storms and dust devils (tornadoes) on a regular basis.  People living near the many deserts of the world must also see dust clouds frequently.  I've heard some news reports from Iraq about the sand storms that last way too long for anyone's tastes.

Now, I just heard on the radio that sometime early next week, I may be seeing my second dust storm.  I found that very, very odd -- since I live in Florida.

Apparently, the dust storm is so large as to be visible from satellite.  This cloud of dust is kicked up in north western Africa and actually travels across the Atlantic ocean on high altitude trade winds over the course of several days.  The dust cloud is about the size of the contiguous 48 states of the U.S.

[snark] I don't mean to seem ungrateful, but ... how is it fair that we send billions of governmental and privately-raised aid dollars to Africa and they send us back some dust?  That continent also seems to send some terrorists.  That continent allows hurricanes to spawn off its coast every year which destroy billions of dollars of property here in the south eastern United States, and the islands, and Mexico.  That's not fair at all.  This dust is just a further insult to our well-meaning intercontinental relations.

Just for that Africa, we're going to help you establish stable democracies, market economies, and free trade agreements with all of your countries on the continent.  That way, the next time you send us a hurricane, we'll send you the scourge of a totally pointless Starbucks or McDonalds franchise.  The next time you send us a dust storm, we'll build a tennis shoe factory or clothing sweat shop there.  Take that! [/snark]

Actually, it may all turn out much better at the end of the day.  Some people are forecasting that the combination of the latest hurricane (thank you very much) and the dust storm (thanks again) may create some unusually colorful sunrises and sunsets in Florida.  Murphy's Law: I hope it doesn't botch the space shuttle lift off, though.

[Headphones] :: Hurricane Jeanne is Gone - JfZ

As you should know by now, President Bush announced his first judicial nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) last night in a televised interuption to regularly scheduled programming.  Despite my unanswered emails of objection to the corporate offices of many broadcasting networks, Dubya's C-Span style press briefing was televised.  Sadly, reruns of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" were interupted, but luckily not for very long.  I won't need to study ten thousand posts on alt.soc.tv.buffy on usenet newsgroups in order to follow the storyline next week.  Priorities.

Dubya's nomination of John Roberts will hopefully satisfy his socially conservative core constituency.  The conservative nutbag slogans of "judicial tyranny" and "legislating from the bench" and "we just want an up or down vote" are so tedious to me, it makes my teeth hurt.  It's almost as troublesome to hear those phrases as it is hearing the Democrusader carefully articulate the word "i-dee-ahl-loe-gee" over and over and over again.

It's not as bad as when I hear him tell an audience of soldiers and marines that "he supports them and appreciates their sacrifice."  God bless America, yadda yadda.  Puppetry and lies.  Just shut up.  Sometimes, when I hear Dubya's voice on TV, I wish he would just go ride his bicycle while eating a pretzel, if you know what I mean.

But, I am more hopeful that everyone gets pissed off.  That way, hated Democrats in the Senate -- like Clinton, Kennedy, and Kerry -- will make useless accusations and the confirmation hearing will be turned into a political nightmare theater of witnesses testifying about pubic hairs on beverage cans, as happened with Justice Thomas and witness Anita Hill.

Unfortunately, John Roberts looks like a stereotypical stand-up guy from the 1950's.  He looks like he has been been recruited straight out of a movie studio's central casting of some black and white situational comedy (sitcom).  Who is going to complain about justice Dick Van Dyke?

Nonetheless, I know that opposition groups like People for the American Way and MoveOn.Org will find some way to bitch about this supreme court nomination from Dubya.  I realize that they capitalize on the moment for fund raising, but I actually don't care that they do that.  If I cared about people exploiting the moment, I'd first be outraged about the far right-wing nutbags exploiting Terri Shiavo for political purposes, wouldn't I?

Oh, yeah.  I was a bit pestered at Tom Delay about the Shiavo thang.  What a tool.  Well, like I said, hopefully, John Roberts will be confirmed in the Senate without the indignation of pubic hair testimony, or questions about his preference for having his wife wear a creepy pink suit to the White House, or having a son acting up in front of the press in some sick, light blue, Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit.  That's just toddler fashion abuse.

Despite John Robert's manly dimpled chin, last night he dressed his family up in pastel colored business suits and they all looked like the pastel houses featured in the bucolic neighborhood from the Tim Burton movie "Edward Scissorhands."  It was like a 1970's high school prom nightmare with cheap pastel-colored suits snatched up at the last minute from the Sears and Roebucks mens wear department.  That level of Stepford creepiness should be illegal.

But, perhaps Dudley Do-Right doesn't care about fashion -- except whether or not he will be wearing the robe of a Supreme Court judge.  Whatever.  Moose and Squirrel, Moose and Squirrel, Moose and Squirrel.

Do me a favor.  Don't get too distracted and caught up in the minutia that is likely to be dragged out concerning John Roberts.  He'll probably become a decent justice, anyway.  Don't be distracted by another Bush bag of tricks.  Rather, turn the focus of the media back onto Karl Rove, the Downing Street Memo, and getting it right in Iraq so everyone's sons and daughters serving in the military in that sand trap of a country can return home safely and soon.

[Headphones] :: Birthday-partyparty mix (lo-fi stream) - RX

I think there are very few people in the Bush administration more hated by Democrats and progressives and even more blindly defended by Republicans than Karl Rove.  In the heirarchy of Bushworld, Rove commands staunch GOP loyalty, second only to the Democrusader himself.  If Bush, Cheney and Rove were aboard a doomed sailing vessel going down in the deep blue sea (a wet dream for some millions of people) -- and there were only two life preservers available -- I feel the majority of GOP pundits would vote to hit Cheney over the head like a baby seal, if he didn't give Karl Rove his life preserver.

Now, before you go calling the Secret Service or the even more formidable group of jack-booted thugs at PETA about my "baby seal" remark -- please realize that it's just an illustrative turn of phrase.  I want to state unequivocally that I don't support any violent acts upon our elected officials, or those fuzzy, cuddly-looking and doe-eyed baby seals.  I don't support Dick Cheney wearing fur.  He's a fat man.  Imagine, how many extra baby seals would have to die to make him a fur coat?

Now, let's get back to the other fat man in the sinking ship.  Karl Rove -- who I had just compared to Hermann Goring, founder of the Nazi Gestapo after his remarks last month in New York -- is loved by Republicans.  He is given the main credit for both successful presidential elections of his fuhrer, George W. Bush.

He is lovingly called, "The Architect," by his GOP devotees and he's likely earned this man-love by the Bush Family even more than Osama bin Laden himself for the successful architecture of the political career of the troubled, idiot son, Dubya.  The day after President Bush won re-election in 2004, he referred to Karl Rove as The Architect, and thanked him in his acceptance speech.  PBS' Frontline show has even explored this pasty-pale phat political phenom architect in-depth.

I personally don't forecast anything untoward will happen to Karl Rove in the near future, unless a liposuction procedure or stomach stapling operation goes horribly wrong.  Dubya-defenders and Rovians are spinning this latest controversy faster than the winds of hurricane Emily over the Cayman Islands, the jurisdiction in which Rove likely has many millions of dollars hidden in offshore bank accounts, anyway.

The pundit spin is immense.  Media Matters is a fun place to see that.  Republican crack whore, Ann Coulter, is playing her most entertaining peak game.  Blame the messenger.  She calls Ambassador Wilson, Clown Wilson on Fox and in her recent op-ed articles.

Man, I love watching this GOP boo-boo kitty on TV, sometimes.  It's like watching a NASCAR race and knowing the odds are very good that there will be an entertaining crash.  I watch her like that.  I know if I even remotely watch her televised interviews with enough tenacity, someday I will witness that one last interview in which Crack Head Coulter has an aneurism and slumps over the desk on camera.

Truly, this Karl Rove CIA leak scandal brings back some old memories.  I had just posted an unnoticed, but bizarre and snarky entry about the CIA itself called, "Spy Kids 3D - Game Over," when this situation first developed.  Go read that entry.  It might make you laugh in the tradition of you can't make this shit up (YCMTSU), or it might make you cower in paranoia and adjust your tin foil hat.

[Headphones] :: Who's the Nigga (lo-fi stream) - RX