Stratfor does it with impunity, while Assange is “fucked”

According to Democracy Now, there appears to be a sealed indictment against Julian Assange coming out of the highly secretive Obama Administration. This from Rolling Stone magazine, a few issues ago:

Assange recently spoke to someone he calls a Western “intelligence source,” and he asked the official about his fate. Will he ever be a free man again, allowed to return to his native Australia, to come and go as he pleases? “He told me I was fucked,” Assange says.

The Obama Administration has been far worse in the privacy/free speech area than any administration before, and gets away with it because are happy to support any policy so long as the person who puts it in place is a Democrat.

This from DN:

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published an internal email from the private intelligence firm Stratfor that suggests the U.S. Justice Department has obtained a sealed indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The email is one of around five million obtained from Stratfor’s servers by the hacker group, Anonymous. “Somehow you have a private intelligence company, Stratfor, a ‘shadow CIA,’ as people have called it, having information about this sealed indictment—secret again—that Julian Assange doesn’t have, that WikiLeaks doesn’t have, that his lawyers don’t have,” says Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is a legal adviser to both Assange and to WikiLeaks. “What you see here is secrecy, secrecy, secrecy.” News of the indictment comes less than a week after Army Private Bradley Manning was arraigned for allegedly leaking classified U.S. military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks.

Isn’t it interesting that a private corporation has this information, presumably leaked, and bears no scrutiny, while Julian Assange, who has done the very same thing, is “fucked?”

USA: The planet’s lone nut

I'm from America, and I'm here to save you.
Afghan villagers who witnessed the recent massacre in Kandahar province say that it was not a lone marine, but rather a group of drunken marines.”They were all drunk and shooting all over the place,” Reuters cites Agha Lala, a villager in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district.

Lala’s neighbor Haji Samad lost all of his 11 relatives in the rampage, including children and grandchildren. He claims Marines “poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them.”

The Pentagon reflexively lies about these things, and will spend far more money and time covering up the incident than investigating. The “lone gunman” notion is quaint.
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The security of the herd

I have often written here and elsewhere that “Democrats are the problem.” If it were that simple, of course, then Republicans would be a logical alternative. Alas, neither party offers much in the way of hope or change. And it is not so much the failings of individuals, even well-intended ones, as it is herd behavior. People simply do not think their own thoughts, and desire to be led by others. Democrats would reflexively oppose a nominal member of the other party who assassinated American citizens, mandated purchase of private health insurance, extended tax cuts for the wealthy, ran a prison dedicated to indefinite detention and torture, arbitrarily attacked other countries and even attacked a country after Congress voted against allowing him to do that.

Alas, Obama has done all of this, and for this garners high praise from his own party. He is, after all, a Democrat, so it must be the right way to go.

It’s not a failure of leadership either, as the system mandates that those who occupy leadership positions first accept private bribes to gain access to those positions. For a man or woman to accept bribes and then turn on the benefactor is political suicide – there are many ways to remove such a person from office, as Nixon, Spitzer, Kucinich, Feinstein and so many others know. So the idea of changing the system by participation in the system, or to “get active,” as Thom Hartmann says is our patriotic duty, makes no sense. If the only way to affect meaningful change is to join the Democratic Party, then it is time to resign citizenship.
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American fairy dust

Typical of the way we do things here in our fake democracy, even as officials talk about US military involvement in Syria, we’ve long been involved. Syria claims it is not fighting internal rebellion, but rather a military operation financed and armed by western powers. If the Syrian government is anything like the American government, only one thing three things can be safely said: They lie, they lie, they lie.

The American news media is highly unreliable in matters of US military operations, along with just about everything else except celebrity culture. Syrian media is also suspect. Al Jazeera might be a useful source, but has drawn complaints of complicity with western forces. Has it too been compromised?

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Justice, Bush League variety

In February 1990, a group of British relatives [of Lockerbie victims] went to the American embassy in London for a meeting with the seven members of the President’s commission on aviation security and terrorism. Martin Cadman remembers: ‘After we’d had our say, the meeting broke up and we moved towards the door. As we got there, I found myself talking to two members of the Commission – I think they were senators. One of them said “Your government and our government know exactly what happened at Lockerbie. But they are not going to tell you.” (Paul Foot (1937-2004), Private Eye, May, 2001)

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
In Shakespearean tragedy a small incident often leads, step by step, to major tragedy. Although the shooting down by the US warship Vincennes of an Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3, 1988, killing all of its 290 passengers and crew, was not a small incident, by comparison to the tragedy that it initiated, is seems as such. The US claimed it was an accident, but as the Vincennes was in Iranian waters and the event precipitated an Iranian stand-down against US ally Saddam Hussein, it can at least be said that it was … convenient.

Imagine the aftermath:

Officials in the Iranian and Syrian governments, incensed by the event and the arrogance by which a major power like the US can commit such a crime with impunity, seek revenge.

Using Palestinians not connected to the PLO, they arrange for a bomb to be placed aboard a Pan Am flight from London to New York on December 21, 1988. The plane blows up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 aboard and 11 people on the ground.
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Bush II rattling the sabers

Obama won’t hesitate to use force to “defend US.”

C’mon people, please. How is this guy in any way different from his predecessor?

That aside, we know now, due to some real journalism, that Isreali insider sources say that Iran’s nuclear program is compromised. Secondly, countries do not commit suicide, so that Iran’s only intent in procuring a bomb is as a deterrent.

We have our share of lunatics in power, as does Israel. But more and more as time goes on I am thinking that the whole purpose of the current war scare is to stop Iran from doing something that might seriously jeopardize the interests of our Mullahs, our Wall Street overlords. And the only thing that comes to mind is preservation of the dollar as the reserve currency for trading world oil – the petrodollar.

But it is about a real threat to power, so that an unprovoked attack on Iran is not out of the question. The most frightening aspect is that to achieve a quick and decisive victory, the War Department might decide that nukes are in order. They would use Israel for that purpose, of course, but there are so many unknown unknowns in such a strategy that civilization might be in serious jeopardy.

Or not. Who really knows?

The Jon Tester Chronicles

Not much going on here in Arizona, but I had an idea yesterday as we wandered in the desert (how appropriate!) that this would be a good time to start the Jon Tester Chronicles. This is the man who so charmed Montana progressives in 2006 and still holds them in rapture. I’ll add to this now and then as I am inspired and invite reader contributions.

Jon Tester believed in a “public option” for health insurance when he was elected. That’s because Max Baucus said that it meant that the public would be given the option of buying health insurance from a private company. OR ELSE. Jon still supports that kind of public option, and will fight hard for it.

Jon Tester set out one morning on his way to work to count to ten. When he got to five, he backed down.

Jon Tester thinks that we should change the last words of the national anthem to “o’er the land of the free, so why can’t we all just get along?”

Jon Tester believes, in his heart of hearts, that Notre Dame’s mascot should be called just an “Irish Fella.” He doesn’t get why “fighting” is important to them.

Jon Tester likes to tell the joke in the Senate dining room that he loves progressives … “boiled in oil!” (He usually guffaws and discharges liquids out his nostrils). He gets odd stares and polite chuckles.

Jon Tester was driving down a country road near his home one day when he saw a sticker in the window of the car ahead. It said “Progressive Insurance.” Enraged and gorged with country cider, he floored it, pulled in front of the car, slammed on the brakes, forcing the driver with her infant passenger to stop suddenly. He then flipped her off, screamed out his window “Take that, bitchwoman!”, floored it and sped home.

Jon Tester and Max Baucus are close friends. Max taught Jon all about this “being a senator shit.” He said that all you have to do is talk the right way, and people talk themselves into believing in you. That way, you can pretty much do what you want. Jon didn’t really believe it until he proposed the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, and saw Democrats and some environmental groups line up behind it. “Holy shit,” he said to Max. “I can do anything I want!”

Jon Tester is fat, so he doesn’t get the babes like Max does. Even so, Max occasionally sends over an intern who searches amid the layers of fat for his unit. If she can find it, he gets his Monica on.

Jon Tester once told Max that he could not believe how easy it was to be a senator. He said “I vote right, money rolls in.” He told Max that all he had to do was watch out for the burrowing press. They both laughed heartily.

No chance we’ll be pulled over – we’re white!

We are spending the next month in Phoenix, Arizona, in a house that backs up to South Mountain Park. It was an impulsive move I made a couple of months ago as I grieved the loss of my two brothers. I thought – “To hell with it! Live!” All three of my brothers died before reaching 70 (Joe 58, Steve 67, Tom 69 years and 11 months). I’m going to break that record, shatter the 70 barrier. It’s an eight year stretch ahead of me. *

We’ll be hiking the desert, taking in spring training. Two sets of Bozeman friends have houses down here, and a third couple will be spending a week with us. Does it get any better than this?
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*I had a physical last week, and the doctor told me that parents of daughters tend to live longer than others. I have four, so maybe I should shoot for age 100?