A few words on religion in film, in which I say an evil thing about "Song of Bernadette."

Yes, I know many political matters demand our attention. But this is the weekend, and I'm in the mood to write on non-political matters. Besides, Easter is coming, and the season always makes me long to jot down irreverent thoughts.

Today's topic is religion in film. Religion plays a massive role in the other arts -- think Bach, think Bernini -- so why do most religious films reek?

Indeed, how do we define a religious film? Do we count Bad Lieutenant? The Exorcist? Meet John Doe? The Devils?

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Heathen I may be, yet I've seen nearly every Jesus movie ever made, including Roberto Rosellini's little-known The Messiah, which is terrible. Here are a few thoughts on some of the best-known works in the genre:

The most notorious attempt to put the life of Christ on film is probably George Stevens' elephantine The Greatest Story Ever Told. Although I used to despise that movie, it improved on my most recent viewing. The script contains many clunkers, Utah makes an unconvincing Israel, and the pacing is all wrong. But Max Von Sydow -- an atheist, or so I've heard -- delivers a superb performance as the Big Guy. Some of the images will haunt you. I've never forgotten the crane shot revealing the valley of the crucified men; it's a tableau one might have expected from Werner Herzog. This was certainly the best-photographed film of the 1960s -- a fact which led one wag to quip "When a good director dies, he becomes a cinematographer." The star cameos grate less now that I've forgotten who some of those people were.

King of Kings -- the Nicholas Ray version -- has many virtues and many howlers, such as the magical moment when Mary the Magdalene meets Mary the Mom: "I...am a woman of sin!" Anyone who doesn't guffaw must have a heart of stone. The action scenes are well-done, but they leave you wondering why a Jesus movie needs action scenes. Ray gives the impression that he really wanted to make a Zealots-vs-Romans war movie; alas, the producers insisted on including extraneous dialogue scenes with that preachy kid. Interestingly, the film begins not with a nativity but with the conquest of Jerusalem. This is a Jesus movie that tries very hard not to look like any of the others -- which is odd, because the others hadn’t been filmed yet. Many have praised the final shot, but I always found it bewildering: After Jesus has risen from the dead, the disciples walk away from him -- while he's still right there talking to them! One wonders what the guy has to do to keep their attention.

When I saw the 1927 C.B. DeMille version of King of Kings at the Pantages theater in the '70s, Jacqueline Logan -- DeMille's Mary Madgalene -- was in attendance; she made a short speech in which she proclaimed it "the greatest film ever made." It isn't -- although it remains watchable. Jesus' big intro is cleverly done: We first see him through the eyes of a young blind boy whom he heals; the boy turns out to be Mark, the gospel writer. Ms. Logan's scenes are the apotheosis of camp: DeMille pictured MM as both the ultimate 20s vamp and the highest-grossing harlot in history, luxuriating in decadent orientalia: "Show me my zebras, gift of the Nubian King!" (1920s erotica looks hilarious nowadays. I wonder how today’s erotica will seem eighty years from now?) At film’s end, Caiaphas lets the audience know that the death of Jesus is his fault -- that is, Caiaphas' fault, his alone, nobody else's, just his. So at least that's clear.

The best of the JC movies is undoubtedly Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew, filmed in black and white on a tiny budget with a non-professional actor named Enrique Irazoqui in the lead. Best Jesus ever. He may not have von Sydow's talent, but -- those eyes! Most of the snaggle-toothed actors look as if they haven't bathed in weeks, which adds to the sense of verisimilitude. The film's great virtue is that it does not fear the text: This is a Jesus who talks. And talks and talks. The Sermon on the Mount is given in full, with Enrique/JC in close-up, literally in your face. This scene usually goes missing when the film plays on TV in horribly dubbed prints. On the big screen, the impact is extraordinary. One wonders why other films about Jesus tend to edit what the fellow had to say.

I've written about the Mel Gibson film before, both under my own name and as the abominable "John Dark." I can add this: Gibson knows full well that the Jews of that day ate while reclining, Roman style, facing a communal table. (Remember that bit about John the Beloved leaning his head against JC's breast? Makes a bit more sense now, dunnit?) Yet Gibson still wanted his Last Supper to maintain the visual tradition established by Leonardo and the other Renaissance artists. So -- get this -- the film features a flashback scene in which JC invents the technique of upright dining. I'm not kidding. Oddly enough, it's the most charming bit in the movie. In fact, it's the only bit in the movie any sane person could call "charming."

The only American religious film that I truly like is The Song of Bernadette, based on the novel by Franz Werfel.

I pause for your laughter.

After thumbing through a biography of Franz Werfel recently, I decided to track down the film for another viewing. And...

(Digression: Werfel married Alma Mahler, which is why I sought out that bio -- and until I read it, I never knew that old Gustav's widow was such a bitch. Despite having married two famous Jews, and despite being chased out of Europe by bloodthirsty fascists, she remained an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer. Franz settled in Hollywood and often socialized with Jewish friends, such as Edward G. Robinson. Alma would storm into the room, sing the praises of Hitler, and belittle Franz in front of his guests. Tom Lehrer was way too kind to her.)

...and what was I saying? Oh yeah -- Song of Bernadette. I really like it. Shoot me.

The film has a surprisingly convincing look, even though it was filmed in California during wartime -- no doubt on the same 20th Century Fox ranch you see in every episode of M*A*S*H (and which is now a state park where I sometimes hike). The actors resemble their real-life models, although the accents can be a bit odd: Bernadette’s sister sounds like she came to the Pyrenees by way of Alabama. The film stars a young Vincent Price, who manages to convey a sinister impression without a hint of ham; he's quite good. The best performance in the film comes from Louise Revere (later a victim of the HUAC witch hunts), who plays Bernadette’s mother. She doesn’t wear any make-up -- which I wish could be said of the other female performers.

I will probably serve a few centuries in purgatory for noting that the real Bernadette was prettier than Jennifer Jones, who never passes for 14. Even so, Jones does fine work. (When the film came out, the moviegoing public had no idea that JJ was already a mother, and they never forgave her when they later discovered that she was a human being, not a saint.)

Parts of the film don’t work. The film-makers hint at a love interest for Bernadette -- not true; in real life, that guy was ten years older than she was. The final scene with Vincent Price is unbearably mawkish. In an early scene, character actor Aubrey Mather keeps blowing his lines; why didn’t the director demand a retake?

So why do I, impious fiend that I am, enjoy a film that most viewers consider a sentimental hagiography? For one thing, director Henry King, a veteran of the medium’s early days, always conveys sympathy for working people and their struggles; this is a film about poverty and sickness. Some of his compositions are quite striking -- they make me wish modern directors would rediscover the formal joys of the stationary camera. Alfred Neumann, who specialized in music for religious films, contributes an outstanding score with hints of Wagner and Bruckner.

The script is cleverly constructed to please the devout while allowing skeptics room for the occasional cynical smile. This film is indeed a sentimental hagiography -- on first viewing. On second viewing, one can’t help suspecting that Vincent Price’s character -- the debunker, the intellectual, the forerunner of Third Republic anticlericalism -- is correct about everything; he’s an unhappy man precisely because he sees the world as it is, while those around him, the poor and wretched working folk, derive their satisfaction from their myths. The film delivers some nice jabs at the commercialism which overtook Lourdes, and offers a portrayal of the clergy that is neither uncritical nor unbalanced. The script also gives us a nice (and accurate) scene featuring Napoleon III, a fascinating rogue who, to the best of my recollection, is not portrayed in any other film.

All told, this may be Hollywood's most satisfying attempt to film a "real life" bit of Forteana. I'd like to see a movie about La Salette, the first of the "great" apparaitons, but I doubt if anyone will make the attempt, since the chief visionary, Melanie Calvet, was no Bernadette. Melanie was one of those "difficult" women for whom menopause starts at puberty and lasts until death.

A couple of trivia notes:

1. Song of Bernadette concludes with a Hallelujah Chorus which remains something of a musical mystery. It was first heard at the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (which features Neumann’s finest score). It was later used toward the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. But Neumann did not write it, and nobody knows who did.

2. Here’s the evil part. In the first scene, Bernadette’s father, played by Roman Bohnen (another victim of the HUAC days), puts his pants on over his longjohns. Sharp-eyed viewers will note an obvious fact -- a very, very, very obvious fact: If the Soubirous family ever gets thrown out of that jail cell, Daddy can supply his own pup tent. Although Bohnen was not one of the most famous actors in Hollywood, he was surely one of the biggest.

Also, Bernadette’s cute sister -- the one with the southern accent -- displays a surprising amount of cheek when she hikes up her dress to cross the river. I suppose I’ll do another century in Purgatory for mentioning that.

Computergate: I call BULLSHIT

The White House has officially responded to questions about the use of private RNC email accounts used by White House staff.

White House spokesman David Almacy said the outside e-mail accounts were set up to allow legitimate political activities to be conducted by appropriate staff members without using White House accounts, which would be illegal under the Hatch Act. "It was specifically set up that way so that people weren't using their official accounts for political activities," he said. Only certain White House staff members have such outside accounts, including those who regularly communicate with outside political groups, he said.

BULLSHIT.

How often do I use such terminology? Not often. But what other phrase can we use in this instance?

Problem numero uno: The Hatch Act comes into play if anyone in the WH does partisan political business. It's not purely a matter of who uses which email account. It's also a matter of whether you've parked your buns on a chair inside the White House while doing party work on the taxpayers' dime.

Problem numero two-o: The RNC email accounts were used for official business! That's how this scandal first came to light. These accounts popped up in communications pertinent to the U.S. Attorney purge.

Here's a snippet from Congressman Waxman's latest letter to Sue Ralston, the Karl Rove aide feeding info to the notorious crook Jack Abramoff:

The September report left a number of questions unanswered, including whether White House officials reimbursed Mr. Abramoff for tickets and meals as required by law; whether White House officials took actions that benefited Mr. Abramoff and his clients as described in the e-mails; and why White House officials used Republican National Committee and other non-governmental e-mail accounts to communicate with Mr. Abramoff and his associates about official government business.

(Emphasis added.) This excellent piece in Truthout details many instances of how private email servers were used to do an end-run around history.

The White House claims that the emails routed through the RNC servers are archived. But would a subpoena bring forth a complete record? Or are we forced to trust the same people who just now tried to feed us bullshit?

(Sorry if my use of a profanity offended some readers or caused problems with filters. Sometimes you just gotta use the only word that fits the sitch.)

Carrot and stick: There's more than one way to purge

Over on Democratic Underground, one "hootinhollar" has a juicy piece on the Lam firing (see also here):

Right before she left she delivered indictments of Foggo and Wilkes, and possibly turned over to the LA office A case regarding Rep. Jerry Lewis (an unfortunate but perhaps apt name) who has already lawyered up at Gibson Dunn, a big LA firm.

That case would have landed on the desk of Debra Wong Yang, the United States Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. Now, Ol Debbie there, I don't think was on the enemies list, but, she did leave the office for private practice at (you might have guessed it) Gibson Dunn. She allegedly got a tidy signing bonus to the tune of $1.5 Mil.

This is indeed intriguing. Corruption target Jerry Lewis hires the same firm which hired the U.S. Attorney who would have gone after Lewis?

I notice a funky smell in the air, and I don't think it's coming from my vegetable bin.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The same firm, Gibson Dunn, also hired an assistant U.S. Attorney under Yang, a man named Douglas Fuchs. They also hired Maurice Suh, "the former Deputy Mayor of Homeland Security and Public Safety for the City of Los Angeles."

The San Bernardino Sun thus quotes a law professor about Yang: "It's no secret: She left for money."

She added that while it may look questionable that Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher hired Yang, she doubted that Yang would provide lawyers there with information about the investigation into Lewis.

Really? Others might not be so certain about that. Josh Marshall offers these words of caution:

Most lawyers would, I think, caution that this isn't necessarily as questionable as it might seem on first blush. Gibson Dunn is a major national law firm based in LA. It's a logical place for someone like Yang to go.

However:

Yang is now one of three co-chairs of the firm's Crisis Management Group, along with New York Partner Randy Mastro and GOP power player Theodore Olson.

And one other issue that might come into play here. If you look at the corruption investigations over the last two years, there's an odd pattern of pivotal investigators and prosecutors getting fortuitous promotions or offers of employment in the private sector at key moments.

(Emphasis added.) Take the carrot or get the stick? We thus come to...

A digression:

Fired U.S. Attorney Carol Lam is doing pretty well at the moment. She walked right into a well-paying gig for Qualcomm.

The reference to Qualcomm reminded me of the Jack Shaw mini-scandal, which should not disappear entirely down the memory hole. (See here and my previous post on the subject, here.)

Defense undersecretary Shaw, who had the job of restoring Iraqi telecommunications, was accused of improperly giving contracts to friends at Qualcomm. (He had deep-sixed an effort to feed the contract to some pals of Chalabi.)

Shaw later claimed that foreign intelligence officials fed him an outrageous story that Russian commandos had heisted weapons at Iraq's Al Qaaqaa facility. The rightists milked that tale for all it was worth, even after it was proven to be bogus.

Shaw never revealed just which foreign intel service misled him, but it should be noted that Qualcomm has strong ties to Israel.

Bad Post, good Post.

Brad Blog's Margie Burns has an excellent riposte to a false Washington Post story slamming Patrick Fitzgerald. The Post (followed by many other newspapers) claimed that Fitz received an "undistinguished" ranking on an internal Justice Department memo.

The major problem with this story? It’s not true. The Department of Justice never 'ranked' U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald negatively or as 'undistinguished.' According to sworn testimony by D. Kyle Sampson, today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Fitzgerald was rated 'very strong' internally in the DOJ.

Today's Post makes up for that blunder -- to some degree -- by exposing a Karl Rove video presentation to 40 officials of the General Services Administration. The presentation "included 2006 election results and listed the names of Democratic candidates considered beatable and Republican lawmakers thought to need help."

In other words, it was purely partisan shindig. Yet taxpayers paid for it. There ought to be a law against that sort of thing -- and there is: The Hatch Act.

For six years, we've chanted the same mantra: "What if this had happened under Clinton?" Yes, that refrain has gotten old. But jeez, sometimes ya just can't avoid it: What if this had happened under Clinton?

The DOJ and the vote game

All praise unto Larisa Alexandrovna for turning our attention to this op-ed by Joseph D. Rich, chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005. His subject goes beyond the politicization of U.S. Attorneys. He describes the Bush plan (which I'm sure is really the Rove plan) to use the Justice Department to insure election unfairness:

Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

And:

Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent.

This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.

We should ask Congress to expand their inquiries. The topic goes beyond the firing of the Eight. The larger issue is forcing the DOJ to enforce unfair elections.

GWB43: Conyers and Leahy smell a rat

Patrick Leahy of the Senate Judiciary Committee and John Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to Dubya's Special Counsel, Fred Fielding.

In addition, we have become increasingly sensitized over the last several days to the White House staff wearing several "hats" and using Republican National Committee and campaign e-mail addresses. In fact, as Chairman Waxman has recently pointed out, congressional investigations, including this one, "have uncovered evidence that White House staff have used nongovernmental e-mail accounts to conduct official government business."

As Chairman Waxman has also pointed out, many exchanges between Jack Abramoff and White House officials were conducted via non-governmental e-mail accounts. Indeed, he quotes exchanges that suggest that Mr. Abramoff and White House officials were using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a White House "record" of the communications.

We hope you agree that such sleight of hand should not be used to circumvent and compromise the comprehensiveness of our investigation...

Finally:

Accordingly, we trust that you will be collecting and producing e-mails and documents from all e-mail accounts, addresses and domains and that you are not artificially limiting your production to the official White House e-mail and document retention system.

Is that trust well-placed? I am, shall we say, less than convinced that this White House will follow the letter and spirit of this request.

What then...?

GWB43/Smartech follow-up

I'm working on a follow-up to my piece on the secret White House communication system. Seems to me that if Smartech receives a subpoena from Waxman, they have to account for the GWB43 emails that have already been made public. So now I have three technical questions for anyone who knows how such businesses operate:

1. Is it possible to wipe the servers?

2. If an ISP gets a subpoena, what constitutes compliance? For example, do they have to turn over the actual machines for forensic analysis?

3. Are there any legitimate "oops" arguments? As in: Oops, we accidentally deleted the mail on that day....

Did GWB call Laura a "cunt"? A closer look...

A rumor is circulating that a drunken George Bush called Laura a filthy name in front of witnesses. What are the sources for this story? Does the claim have any merit? This story digs up all the facts.

Bottom line: Many such reports trace back to Wayne Madsen -- who has an NSA background -- and to the tabloids, often linked to American intelligence. The National Enquirer, let us not forget, became what it is under the leadership of one Generoso Pope, who had links to both CIA and Da Mob. To recap an earlier piece:

Nobody knows just how long Pope worked for CIA, or why he left -- or if he left. But a few years later, in a scene that might have been co-directed by Orson Welles and Francis Ford Coppola, Pope decided that it would be fun to run a newspaper. So he hit up his godfather for some start-up capital (estimated at $250,000 -- quite a tidy sum in those days), and purchased a nearly-defunct rag called the New York Enquirer, which had begun life as a pro-Nazi tentacle of the Hearst empire.

Pope's godfather happened to be Frank Costello, the "boss of bosses" in New York, New Jersey, and other points northeast.

Costello himself had CIA links. Although the tabloids have now come under centralized control, many believe that the intelligence community still has "wires" into that world.

We can, I think, fairly say that the sources for sensational stories about Bush's personal life tend to be kind of -- well, spooky. And that means the stories are significant, even if untrue.

Has W pissed off the Saudis?

Saudi Arabian King Abdullah at an Arab summit, called for an end to the Palestinian blockade. Then he bowed out of a big-deal state dinner at the White House that had been scheduled for April 16. This, despite the fact that he is a Bush family friend, and despite the fact that he can't really come up with a good excuse for non-attendance.

Even the Saudis are treating Dubya as though he were radioactive!

Wade and Wilkes, Wilkes and Wade: One of 'em bilks, the other got made

The best of the bloggers has shamed the rest of us once again. Josh Marshall reveals the secret of that 2002 "furniture" deal Dick Cheney's office handed to MZM -- the deal that got corrupt businessman Mitchell Wade in the government contract biz.

Previously, I had speculated that the furniture was bugged. Others felt that Cheney used furniture as a ruse to hand Wade the money used to buy a boat for Congressman Randy "Duke" Cuningham.

Nope. According to Marshall, it was a ruse, all right -- but the contract went (ostensibly) to a service run by Wade to intercept and decontaminate any mail sent to the President or (presumably) other members of the cabinet and their staff. Remember the great Anthrax scare?

But here's where it gets really odd:

If you're a Cunningham case aficionado, you know that in early 2002 Mitchell Wade was still acting as a cut out for his corruption mentor Brent Wilkes -- who's now awaiting trial in the Cunningham case. And around the same time Wilkes was greasing palms in DC trying to get into the Anthrax mail screening racket himself.

At least I can still claim to be the first blogger to notice Wilkes' (alleged) grand venture into the field of mail decontamination:

MailSafe Inc. supposedly offers "mail decontamination, digital capture, and electronic distribution to government and commercial entities." But the web site has disappeared, and the company seems to have left zero imprint on corporate America. Where is the evidence that it actually provided any services to clients?

So far as anyone has ever determined, MailSafe was never anything more than web site and a mailing address. Wilkes' modus operandi was to grease congressional palms and get fat contracts. Actual work was for the plebians.

It's not hard to figure out how Wilkes hit upon the idea for Mailsafe. The only true service he had provided the government, as near as anyone can tell, amounted to the photocopying of some really old documents. (Which I would have done for ten bucks an hour. Can I be a defense contractor too?) Here, the service amounted to a proposal to have someone in a protective suit photocopy the President's mail.

Would Wilkes have actually sprung for the suit? I tend to doubt it.

Marshall's story should be read in conjunction with David Corn's, in which he outlines the runaround he got as he tried to track down the story.

According to federal procurement records, the contract was for "ADP systems development services" and "custom computer programming services."

Hm. So far, nothing here about either furniture or Anthrax screening...

I asked the Interior Department if I could obtain a copy of the MZM contract under the Freedom of Information Act. The answer: you can submit a FOIA request, but you won't get anything. "It's national security," an Interior official told me, reciting various exemptions. The release of this information, he said, was restricted not by the Interior Department but by the Executive Office of the President because it "includes techniques and procedures used by the Secret Service for law enforcement investigations" and because its disclosure "could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law." He added, "There is no way to get any details."

Now, that could be a reference to Wade's alleged mail screening service, or it might refer to something else. At any rate, I'm not sure how presidential security would have been compromised by a terse announcement that $140,000 went to "mail security." Or even just "security."

So here are my questions:

1. Why would a contract for mail screening for the President be handled by Dick Cheney? And if the deal wasn't handled by the Office of the Vice President, then why did the L.A. Times report that it was?

2. What qualified Mitchell Wade for this job?

Remember, MZM started life as a law firm. Later, it got into the business of refugee aid (!!), through something called the Sure Foundation. (As in: "Did money actually go to refugees? Surrrrrre.") They ran a Republican-friendly PAC out of the same office. In a February 2003 contract, MZM stated that it had zero employees and zero revenue -- this, after they had gotten the gig from Cheney and had set up shop in Charlottesville to do digital mapping for the Pentagon.

My guess: Between the years 1993-2002, MZM was an intelligence front, a spook house -- similar to Brewster Jennings of Plamegate fame, although perhaps not so benign. A better analogy might reference the front companies run by Edwin Wilson on the CIA's dime. Here's Wilson's trajectory in a nutshell (per Wikipedia):

His main role for the CIA was setting up fake companies that would be used to covertly ship supplies around the world. As director of these fake firms, which also conducted legitimate business, he amassed a great deal of money. After 15 years with the CIA, he moved to naval intelligence and brought his companies along with him. He retired in 1976 and went fully private, continuing to run the businesses he had built for the CIA, the largest of which was Consultants International. He amassed a fortune of the some 20 million dollars mainly in the arms trading business.

Perhaps someone in spook-land decided to Wade into the same waters. Perhaps he used the Wilson template to Make Zee Moolah.

Which brings us to...

3. Did MZM, or Wilkes, or anyone, actually provide the mail screening service? In other words: When little Timmy in the second grade writes a letter to "Dear Mr. President," does Dubya get a whiff of the actual crayola, or does he merely see the xerox?

Wade and Wilkes, Wilkes and Wade:
One of 'em bilks, the other got made.
They rose quite high, but by a fluke
they crashed and fell, along with Duke.

Computergate

Those of you following the GWB43 scandal-within-a-scandal should note an important comment by G2Geek (who hints that he's in a position to know more than he can say), appended to this Daily Kos post:

There is a specific "three-letter agency" that is specifically designated to handle our nation's COMSEC (communications security) needs:

CSS, the Central Security Service.

This is a sister agency to NSA, and the two work very closely together.

In a nutshell, whreas NSA breaks codes, CSS makes codes.

CSS develops and promulgates cryptographic (code-making) standards and materiel. CSS is responsible for secure communications protocols. It would not surprise me if CSS is also responsible for building and maintaining a good bit of our secure communications infrastructure at the White House as well as at our various military bases and diplomatic outposts around the world.

It would also not surprise me if a good number of people at CSS were bloody pissed about the WH circumventing normal COMSEC for the sake of politics.

Thus, Congress should start talking with the folks at CSS. I'm quite sure they will have plenty to say, and will gladly say it as soon as they have received Congressional subpoenas to give them the necessary legal basis for coming forward.

Perhaps we can call this scandal Computergate. (If the name sticks, remember the contribution of your humble narrator.) And perhaps we can draw an analogy to the Plame affair. In one instance, the Bushies may have thumbed their noses at the folks whose job it is to keep communications secure. In the other instance, the Bushies thumbed their noses at a CIA covert op designed to uncover WMDs.

The Republican tech guy

Epluribus Media has an interesting story on Mike Connell, Bush family loyalist and Republican Party overlord of All Thing Technical, whose web development firms have put together OhioGOP.com, georgewbush.com (one of the domains that cropped up in Prosecutor-gate) and -- wait for it -- the House Intelligence Committee's web site.

Well, someone had to put together that site, I suppose. Still, it feels a little creepy to have someone so devoted to the Bush family working "behind the line" for Congress. Technically, Connell has two firms -- one for one side of the firewall, one for the other. But if the same guy runs both firms, it's not much of a firewall, is it?

Protecting Pedophiles: The OTHER Department of Justice scandal

You probably already know that Alberto Gonzales is chest-deep in the kind of hot water usually reserved for missionaries in old New Yorker cartoons. Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff, will testify on Thursday; according to U.S. News & World Report, he will say that Gonzales was in the loop on the USA firings -- despite Gonzales' own contradictory testimony.

But there's another controversy lurking in the background -- one which I hesitate to mention because the primary "mainstream" print source is a fellow I would rather not cite: Jerome Corsi, of World Net Daily.

Yeah, I know. The Swift Boat guy. Not my favorite person. But his latest tears into Gonzales -- or rather, the Bush Justice Department -- rather fiercely.

The controversy surrounds the Texas Youth Commission, which is embroiled in a rather grim scandal. In 2005, investigators from the Texas Rangers found that guards and administrator were sexually abusing institutionalized youths, who were recruited to provide "entertainment" during night-long orgies.

(As long-time readers know, this blog has an ongoing interest in abusive youth institutions, which often have ties to the Republican hierarchy.)

Corsi cites this report by a progressive group in Texas, the Lone Star Project. The gist: The Texas Rangers submitted their report of sexual abuse to the A.G. in Texas and to the U.S. Attorney for that state, Johnny Sutton, and to the Department of Justice. The Rangers wanted someone to prosecute the bad guys, and they felt they had a strong case.

Now, Johnny Sutton -- unlike, say, Carol Lam -- was never in danger of losing his gig, since he is considered one of the "loyal Bushies" among the U.S. Attorneys. In fact, his jurisdiction covers Dubya's ranch in Crawford. He is no stranger to controversy.

When the Texas Rangers asked to have the Texas Youth Commission abuses prosecuted, Sutton's chief assistant sent an extraordinary response: The office had decided not to pursue the matter because the sexually abused boys had not sustained "bodily injury."

Baumann's letter continued, adding a definition of the phrase "bodily injury," as follows: "Federal courts have interpreted this phrase to include physical pain. None of the victims have claimed to have felt physical pain during the course of the sexual assaults which they described."

Is statutory rape no longer a crime in Texas? Even if it isn't, the Dallas Morning News reports that the youths were, in fact, coerced -- violently.

When an inmate at a state juvenile prison complained of an administrator's sexual advances, swift and merciless punishment followed: The teenager was thrown into an isolation cell "and put in shackles for over 13 hours," a Texas Rangers report revealed.

And:

In one common form of payback, inmates say, guards instruct their favored juveniles to beat those who complain. This, many inmates say, has been a practice for years at TYC.

In the facility, everyone knew the rule: "Snitches get stitches."

The Alberto Gonzales Department of Justice declined prosecution as well. The paperwork is here. Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project believes that the case was shut down on direct orders from Washington.

The folks behind the Lone Star Project seem particularly outraged that both the State and Federal justice systems gave the TYC outrages a pass, even as they both made a priority of pursuing partisan "voter registration fraud" claims against Democrats:

In February 2006, an agent from Attorney General Greg Abbott's office was informed that sexual abuse had taken place in the Ward County TYC facility. Meanwhile, Abbott had an agent on sight near Ward County working on Abbott's controversial and partisan voter fraud project...and was never reassigned to help with the TYC investigtion... The election case involved a 69 year old woman who had simply mailed sealed and completed ballots for several senior citizen neighbors.

U.S. Attorney Sutton deserves a closer look. We'll be returning to him soon.

Meanwhile: Why is Jerome Corsi one of the few voices reporting this stuff? His primary source is a left-ish group. The Dallas Morning News has run a series of reports on the TYC scandal. See also here.

Another pet food controversy

I feel a little odd using this blog to talk about dog food, what with all the political scandals going down -- but these days, political scandals are like buses: Wait an hour and a new one will come along.

At any rate, this dog blog reports anecdotal problems with Nutro Max DRY, which is not a recalled product and not manufactured by Menu foods. Nutro Max happens to be the kibble I used to feed my own fearsome hound, until I read that phenobarbitol had been discovered in certain types of Nutro dry. That report has been questioned, but apparently the FDA did mention Nutro in a report on phenobarb contamination.

At present, the issue seems to be tainted wheat. That was the problem with the Menu (wet) product, but one would expect dry food producers to seek out the lowest priced ingredients as well.

I am not saying that Nutro contains toxins; anecdotal reports are, of course, unreliable. But I do advise pet owners to watch this story. As always, consider making your own.

GWB43 is becoming a big deal...

Here (thanks to Hoot of DU) is the incriminating email proving that the White House and Jack Abramoff used private email servers to bypass the law. If you can't read it, click on the image for a larger version.

Today's big news: House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman has directed the RNC to preserve all emails involving White House officials. Waxman also asked the key question:

(5) What assurance can the RNC provide the Committee that no e-mails involving official White House business have been destroyed or altered.

The answer is obvious: None.

In the expanded version of my piece on GWB43, I noted the RNC's server, Smartech, merged years ago with a company owned by Mercer Reynolds, George W. Bush's long-time friend and chief fundraiser. History is thus placed within purely partisan hands.

Smartech can claim that they deleted from their servers all emails pertinent to, say, White House involvement with the Jack Abramoff affair. Conceivably, new and exculpatory emails are being written and backdated at this very moment.

What to do? Get people under oath. Perhaps offers should be made to those involved with the Abramoff affair. And the Plame affair.

And the Mitchell Wade affair. Wade is the former head of MZM, the company which bribed "Duke" Cunningham. Waxman is also asking about that bizarre "furniture" contract Wade had with the White House. Does that interaction have an email trail...? Laura Rozen received the following relevant message from a Congressional staffer:

"While this is an option not open to White House staff, because their servers block such programs, other Executive Branch officials in the various Cabinet Departments are also known to use the various free email programs like Hotmail and Yahoo to email sensitive issues. This is not necessarily because they are doing anything wrong, but because folks are aware that emails sent on the formal servers are archived forever and they do not want their emails to be dredged up months or years later – as is the case today with the Justice Department."

What can we do with this information? Simply this:

The folks normally in charge of White House procurement are surely on the "lower" level and must live with blocked access to outside email programs. So if the Wade deal were legit, any emails between Wade and the WH would be archived.

On the other hand, if all email pertinent to that transaction went through the RNC servers, then we know that we're talking about something other than furniture.

The great GWB43 update

To read a revised and expanded version of my piece on the "secret" White House communication system designed to do an end run around history, go here. The newest news: An email written from the White House to Jack Abramoff confirms that administration personnel deliberately used private email servers to avoid legal problems:

...she said is better not to put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.

Did the Abramoff investigators know about this alternative communication system? I think not. If that fact were known, and if those secret emails to Casino Jack came to light, might someone in the WH be looking at jail time? Perhaps.

This should be a huge story, folks...

Israeli racism, part 7: The South African connection

A very strange comment appended to my previous story leads me to believe that the "megaphone" students are still looking over this material. Excellent. The kids writing this stuff probably aren't a bad lot; they're just naive, as are most young people. Seems to me that this series is a great way of getting some young Israelis to look at a few aspects of history they probably never learned in school.

Our subject today is apartheid.

In a debate over Carter's book on Democracy Now, Zionist Professor Gil Troy stated a theme often sounded by Carter's critics:

He calls his title “provocative.” I call it offensive. It’s offensive to South Africans, because to use the word “apartheid,” which is about white supremacy and a systematic approach of discrimination and racism, demeans the very difficult struggle and the odious examples of South African oppression.

Later, he adds:

And the community of nations -- it took them decades, but the community of nations justifiably said this is so odious that we want to kind of vomit out -- and I use the term advisedly -- vomit out South Africa from the community of nations, because they're so despicable.

Disgustingly, Troy neglects to tell his audience that South Africa's biggest supporter in the days of apartheid was Israel.

A number of books published during the 1980s made that very the point, as did innumerable magazine articles and opinion pieces published at that time. One such volume was Israeli Foreign Policy, by the highly respected author Jane Hunter, published in 1987 and excerpted here:

Israel's ties with South Africa seem to be especially disturbing to many who follow Israel's international activities. Perhaps it is natural that Israel has been castigated more harshly for its arms sales to South Africa than for its sales to other countries: first, because there has been for a decade an arms embargo against South Africa; and second, because of the unsurpassed criminality of the white regime and the uses to which it puts the Israeli-supplied weapons.

And:

"The most powerful reason for Israeli willingness to bear the undesirable consequences of expanded and more open trade with South Africa may be her desire to acquire material necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons," wrote a military analyst in 1980.'

Yep, Israel helped to give apartheid South Africa the bomb. The following (from 1997) comes from Los Alamos National Laboratories:

Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad confirmed for the first time that a flare over the Indian Ocean detected by an American satellite in September 1979 was from a nuclear test. This statement was confirmed by the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, as an accurate account of what Pahad officially acknowledged. The article said that Israel helped South Africa develop its bomb designs in return for 550 tons of raw uranium and other assistance.

I recall the controversy over the mystery blast. Although, at the time, everyone more or less knew (or suspected) that a nuke had been tested, the Carter administration insisted on labelling the flash a freak of nature. Of course, only a cynic or a bigot would suggest that political pressures forced the White House to ignore the scientists.

Back to Jane Hunter::

In 1984, the Financial Times (London) wrote of "joint Israeli-South African support for Unita forces." Other sources also report the transfer of Israeli arms and financial support to Unita.

In 1983, Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos told Berkeley, California Mayor Eugene (Gus) Newport that an Israeli pilot had been shot down during a South African attack. The Angolan President showed Newport pictures of captured Israeli weapons. The following year, Luanda reported the capture of three mercenaries who said they had been trained by Israeli instructors in Zaire.

I'll trust a source like Hunter over a guy like Troy any day of the week.

And that's the truth, kids. Wake up and smell the apartheid.

Pet food update

Who runs Menu Foods, responsible for the poison pet food debacle? Robert Luba, formerly the director for a hazardous waste company called Safety-Kleen. The company went bankrupt due to financial hugger-mugger, leaving various states with the problem of cleaning up massive toxic messes.

Here's a list -- and it is a grim list indeed -- of the problems at Safety Kleen under Luba's management.

The company died owing $1.6 billion. And Luba walked right into another high-paying gig. Meanwhile, if you fall behind on rent, you'll have an eviction on your record that will keep most landlords from considering you. Moral of the story: When you reach a certain level of society, failure carries no penalty.

Sanity from a MAD-man

Former Mad magazine Al Feldstein (the guy who brought us the sublime Mort Drucker) has some decidedly rational thoughts on the Iraq war. He lays the blame directly at the feet of the PNAC crowd.

GWB43

A revised and expanded version of my original piece will soon appear on another site. Watch for the link...

Israeli racism, part 6

From an editorial by former President Jimmy Carter:

For 39 years, Israel has occupied Palestinian land, and has confiscated and colonized hundreds of choice sites.

Often excluded from their former homes, land, and places of worship, protesting Palestinians have been severely dominated and oppressed. There is forced segregation between Israeli settlers and Palestine's citizens, with a complex pass system required for Arabs to traverse Israel's multiple checkpoints.

An enormous wall snakes through populated areas of what is left of the West Bank, constructed on wide swaths of bulldozed trees and property of Arab families, obviously designed to acquire more territory and to protect the Israeli colonies already built...

And:

The Palestinian people are now being deprived of the necessities of life by economic restrictions imposed on them by Israel and the United States because 42 percent voted for Hamas candidates in this year's election. Teachers, nurses, policemen, firemen, and other employees cannot be paid, and the UN has reported food supplies in Gaza equivalent to those among the poorest families in sub-Sahara Africa, with half the families surviving on one meal a day.

Satan wins

In the history of Christian heresies, a pattern emerges: A religious movement becomes damned when adherents start to critique the wealth of the orthodox. The Waldensians, the Cathars, the Fraticelli, the Jansenists: The "sin" they all shared was not strange doctrine but the call to poverty.

What's past is present. I never thought I'd recommend a story co-written by John Stossell, but check out this piece on the obscene lifestyles of "Christian" televangelists:

The popular Kenneth Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries lives in a large mansion in Texas. He recently asked his audience to help him spread the gospel by giving him $20 million to buy a new jet. Copeland promised that the plane "will never, ever be used as long as it is in our care, for anything other than what is becoming to you, Lord Jesus."

Our ABC affiliate in Dallas, WFAA, took a closer look. Reporter Brett Shipp obtained flight records that revealed that the Copeland jet, on its way to an evangelical seminar in Australia last October, made a two-day layover in Maui. Then it was on to the Fiji islands for another stop.

After seven days in Australia, the Copelands headed to Honolulu for another three days of what they called "eating and rest."

This story ought to be read in conjunction with this seemingly-unrelated article, "Subprime Bust Forces Families From Homes."

Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, "One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."

Televangelist Pat Crouch considers that sort of talk diabolical:

Paul Crouch, however, disagrees. In the past, he has fired back, charging that "these critics want us to be humble and poor like Jesus. … Let me tell you how subtle that is from Satan himself. If God's people are poor as Job's turkey, who's going to pay to send the gospel to the ends of the earth?"

So really, if Copeland stops using his private jet for r&r jaunts to Oz and Maui, Satan wins.

Faking out the UAVs -- with a look back at the Zarqawi mystery

In April of 2006, a platoon of American soldiers in Iraq, unable to find the man they were looking for, decided to capture and to kill an innocent man named Hashim Ibrahim Awad. The murder came to light only because a guilt-ridden soldier made a spontaneous confession.

This Wired account (which I first learned about by way of Xymphora) indicates that the soldiers staged a bogus incident near a bomb crater for the benefit of the nearly omnipresent unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) patrolling the area. The deception was designed to create the appearance of a firefight with a bomb-planting insurgent.

The story, stunning enough in its own right, casts n interesting light on the infamous Zarqawi video, in which the alleged Al Qaeda mastermind is seen staging maneuvers in the Iraq desert. The video is here.

The Bush administration trumpeted Zarqawi's death not long after the release of that controversial video, which shows him leading men and operating rather heavy weaponry. A few wags have suggested that the Iraqi desert behind Zarqawi looks an awful lot like California. We have reason for captious suspicion: The Washington Post revealed the existence of a psyop campaign designed to create a Zarqawi "myth," and Bush himself once cited a "Zarqawi" letter even after it was acknowledged as a fake.

My question is simple. If UAVs were so ubiquitous when Awad was killed, why did they not spot Zarqawi in the desert?

Perhaps someone with better knowledge of how UAVs are used in Iraq can help us resolve this seeming contradiction.

Worship of the Golden Ass

If you've not seen this clip previously, prepare for some shocking imagery. "Christians" speaking in tongues teach an auditorium filled with brainwashed youngsters to worship a life-sized image of George W. Bush. And when I say "worship," I mean that literally.

Israeli racism, part 5: What's happening now

Cute, isn't it? Sophists can read "racism" into even the most innocent of words. When the phrase "of Jewish extraction" appeared in these pages, a couple of new arrivals on the megaphone network pretended that they had never encountered such a phrase outside of a KKK rally -- this, despite the fact that I never had a problem referring to myself as being "of Italian extraction." Another writer took fake umbrage when I referred to Jews as -- oh, horror of horrors! -- a "group." As though only a sick, Nazi bastard would ever refer to any group of people as a "group."

But lo and behold, when we look at the news from Israel, what do we find? Real racism. The kind backed by law, public opinion and power. From the Guardian:

41% of Israel's Jews favour segregation

A poll of attitudes among Israel's Jews towards their country's Arab citizens has exposed widespread racism, with large numbers favouring segregation and policies to encourage Arabs to leave the country.

The poll found that more than two-thirds of Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab. Nearly half would not allow an Arab in their home and 41% want segregation of entertainment facilities.

The survey also found 40% of Israel's Jews believe "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens", a policy advocated by some far-right parties in the run-up to next week's general election.

The poll was conducted by a respected Israeli organisation, Geocartographia, for the Centre for the Struggle Against Racism, founded by Arab-Israeli academics. "Racism is becoming mainstream," said the centre's director, Bachar Ouda.

(Emphasis added.) Let us buttress this article with a personal report from one of my readers. These words originally appeared in the comments section, but they deserve greater publicity:

I am half jewish and half west indian. I have never been attacked for being half Jewish. I have been beaten for being "brown". I occasionally go to israel to visit my relatives. When I go, I prepare myself to experience a form of racism which is very hard to find in the US or UK these days. Its hard to find cos a) its considered unacceptable to express these views these days b) cos there are now laws against it in the UK and US. Things are different in Israel. It is not merely acceptable there, its the norm.

Incidentally, my Jewish relatives dont argue with me about this anymore. They have watched it happen to me and have had to bail me out on a number of occasions.

Dont let people lie about this. The faster this lie is exposed the better off we will all be.

Now THAT is racism. Real racism comes backed by power. It's a very different animal from the fake outrage that arises when sophists, for political purpose, willfully misinterpret an innocent text.

(Hey megaphonies -- why so silent? I didn't used to post this stuff before you launched your scurrilous attacks on me. Now I'm doing it every day. I'll let up if you provide further details as to how the "megaphone" operation works...)

Did Woody Harrelson's Dad shoot JFK?

This account gives a rather full summary of one of the more intriguing tales to emerge from JFK assassination lore: Did Charles Harrelson, father of actor Woody Harrelson, take part in the murder of John F. Kennedy?

The elder Harrelson. who died last week, was convicted of killing Texas Judge John H. Wood in 1979. He committed the crime, it is said, on behalf of accused drug smuggler Jimmy Chagra.

Woody maintains that his father was innocent of that crime.

Before his arrest for the Wood murder, the elder Harrelson bragged about taking part in the JFK murder. Although he later retracted the claim, Chagra's brother has said at trial that Harrelson was hired based on his alleged participation in the JFK assassination. Moreover, a reporter named Chuck Cook has said that Harrelson once promised revelations about "November 1963" if he ever got out of prison. When arrested, Harrelson was found with the business card of a mobbed-up Jack Ruby associate.

Either the man was an attention seeker -- always possible -- or he really did take part in the most notorious American crime of the previous century.

For years, assassination buffs claimed that Charles Harrelson strongly resembled one of the three "mystery tramps" arrested after the assassination. In the mid-1990s, a researcher uncovered paperwork naming the three tramps, none of whom was Charles Harrelson. That documentation led me to consider that aspect of the mystery resolved. However,

...arresting officer David V. Harkness has said that more than three transients were pulled out of the boxcar on that day.

If that is true, then the so-called "tall tramp" may indeed be Charles Harrelson.

I have put together a photo comparison. Note especially the matching cowlicks and the odd "slope" to the mouth, which, in all three shots, does not parallel the eye level.

Come to your own conclusions.

(Incidentally, I have no idea if Oliver Stone discussed this matter with Woody Harrelson during the making of Natural Born Killers.)

Israeli racism, part 4: The early years

Deuteronomy 20:10-20

10. When you approach a city to wage war against it, you shall propose peace to it.

11. And it will be, if it responds to you with peace, and it opens up to you, then it will be, [that] all the people found therein shall become tributary to you, and they shall serve you.

12. But if it does not make peace with you, and it wages war against you, you shall besiege it,

13. and the Lord, your God, will deliver it into your hands, and you shall strike all its males with the edge of the sword.

14. However, the women, the children, and the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoils you shall take for yourself, and you shall eat the spoils of your enemies, which the Lord, your God, has given you.

15. Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.

16. However, of these peoples' cities, which the Lord, your God, gives you as an inheritance, you shall not allow any soul to live.

17. Rather, you shall utterly destroy them: The Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivvites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord, your God, has commanded you.


Joshua 11: 10-14

10 And Joshua turned back at that time, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms.

11 And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there was none left that breathed; and he burnt Hazor with fire.

12 And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them, did Joshua take, and he smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; as Moses the servant of the LORD commanded.

13 But as for the cities that stood on their mounds, Israel burned none of them, save Hazor only--that did Joshua burn.

14 And all the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any that breathed.

* * *

As you read, keep in mind that this story is about land theft, pure and simple. The Lord is here the ultimate fall guy, the original Nuremburg excuse: "Hey, we didn't want to commit genocide; we were only following orders."

Yes, yes, this all happened a very long time ago. I understand that. I understand that no person alive today can be held responsible for things said and done then. I also understand that serious questions of historicity suround this text.

Even so, this narrative remains relevant to current debates over the Israeli/Palestinian question, because -- when the proverbial push comes to the proverbial shove -- Israel's apologists point to the Old Testament when they insist that a Jewish state must exist there and nowhere else. Few would contemplate any suggestion to purchase an equal-sized chunk of real estate in a fertile region of Africa, South America, Canada, or wherever. As several wags have noted, David Ben Gurion did not believe in God -- yet he believed that God gave Israel to the Jews.

One of my critics cast aspersions on the Koran as a "racist" book. In my youth, I tried to read (or at least sample) all the scriptures considered sacred -- the Analects of Confucius, the Upanishads, the Gita, various Mahayana texts, the Old and New Testaments. I must confess that I did not get very far into the Koran -- which is reportedly much more impressive in the original. Is that book racist? I don't know. All I can honestly say is that I found it dull.

(For some reason, I never even tried to read the Tao. My bad.)

In my explorations, I have never found any other "sacred" text dripping with the inexcusable bloodlust and hate one can find in the Old Testament. My sympathies now lie with the Gnostics, who considered much of that book evil. (Incidentally, Gnosticism originated within the Jewish community in Alexandria, a group no-one can call anti-Semitic.) Any Jews who want to insult the Islamic holy book should feel free to do so -- but they would make a more persuasive case if their own "sacred" work were not so indefensible.

No Jew ever had a right to the land now called Israel. Not Solomon, not David, not Jesus, not Ariel Sharon. None of them. Of course, as I always quickly admit, I have no particular right to park my capacious hindquarters on land that belongs to the Chumash.

GwB43: The White House, vote theft, and the email trail

GWB43 is the name of an internet server owned by the Republican National Committee.

Oddly enough, communications revealed in the course of the Great U.S. Attorney Purge document dump reveal that key figures within the administration used such email addresses as SJennings@gwb43.com.

The White House has its own internal email system, ending in the .gov suffix, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. As Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) notes:

CREW has learned that to fulfill its statutory obligations under the PRA, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA.

So why are White House personnel using private email addresses to bypass this system?

A not-unrelated question: Did Patrick Fitzgerald know about this bypass when he subpoenaed White House emails pursuant to the Plamegate investigation? I doubt that he did. If he had, Scooter might not have been the only one brought to trial.

This story by Joseph Hughes and Melissa McEwan compiles statements by George Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Michael Chertoff and Alberto Gonzales, all of whom have claimed that they do not use email for business. Oddly, Rice made this claim at the same time let slip that she had used email to communicate with Richard Clarke.

Dubya's stated reasoning for not entering the computer age is both disconcerting and hilariously inarticulate:

"I tend not to e-mail - not only tend not to e-mail, I don't e-mail, uh, because of, uh, the different record requests that could happen to a president. I don't want to receive e-mails, 'cause, you know, there's no telling what somebody would e-mail me and it would show up as, uh, you know, part of some kind of a story that - and I wouldn't be able to say, 'Well, I didn't read the e-mail' - 'But I sent it your address; how can you say you didn't?' So, in other words, I'm very cautious about e-mailing."

All very amusing, but can we really believe that in the modern age these people do not use the most convenient messaging system available?

Or could it be that all these people recall how Ollie North was tripped up by the discovery of certain emails?

If the Bush White House used GWB43 to route around history, we must ask a question straight out of the Parsifal legends: What is GWB43 and who does it serve?

The answer takes us into the dark mysteries of the 2004 election in Ohio...

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

Here (with a hat tip to Jackstraw45 of DU) is the WHOIS info on GWB43:

Domain Name: GWB43.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Republican National Committee dns@RNCHQ.ORG
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
999 999 9999 fax: 999 999 9999

Record expires on 16-Jan-2008.
Record created on 16-Jan-2004.
Database last updated on 21-Mar-2007 17:45:46 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET
A.NS.TRESPASSERS-W.NET

"Trespassers-W.net"? Odd name, that.

We learn that this same Tennessee-based hosting service -- Smartech -- played a mysterious role in the 2004 election in Ohio. From a November 7, 2006 story by luaptifer at Daily Kos:

Ohio's election results are hosted on the same servers by the partisan companies that run websites like Georgewbush.com and many of the familiar Republican group sites.

More (also see here):

SOS Blackwell also neglected to inform that he outsourced Election Night hosting services to the provider of Internet operations for the Republican National Committee, SMARTech Corp. It's clear that most of the IP address space allocated to Smartechcorp, if it has a domain name, is operated by the RNC or its functionaries and allies.

SMARTECH lists the following corporate address: SMARTECH CORPORATION PO BOX 11181 Chattanooga TN US 37401 Their web page is here. They offer internet hosting, streaming media and so forth.

This firm handles everything Republican:

On August 22, 2004, SMARTech Corp (smartechcorp.net) announced that it would be "hosting" the Republican National Convention in New York City, providing "convention speeches, video-on-demand 'streams' and live shots of events through powerful Web servers, most of which are at Smartech’s headquarters in downtown Chattanooga." The announcement stated that the "company also hosts the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site, at www.georgewbush.com, and the national committee’s site, www.GOP.com."

Smartech shows up in this interesting information technology story from 2004, which outlines a still-unsolved mystery. If the reader will forgive a digression...

During election season, web surfers from outside the United States were not able to access Bush's Web site, GeorgeWBush.com, even though surfers within U.S. borders had no problem doing so. Why this oddity, and who was responsible? The site used network management technology from Akamai Technologies Inc. to restrict access. An Akamai spokesman referred all questions to the hosting company, Smartech. Yet Smartech's president said "All we do is host the site. I have no control over what's being done outside our servers."

That strange business probably has no link to the decision made by Ohio's notorious Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, to route election night results through RNC servers. I mention the matter here because the conundrum gnaws at me. I can think of no legitimate -- or illegitimate -- reason why anyone within the party would want to restrict foreigners from looking at GeorgeWBush.com.

(Incidentally, the name Akamai has turned up in these pages before: Defense pseudo-contractor Brent Wilkes named several of his fake companies Akamai. However, there is a real -- and quite legitimate -- company called Akamai, based in Mountain View, California.)

So, what does it mean that Ken Blackwell used Smartech for Ohio's election night hosting services? One might, after all, expect a Republican to give state business to a Republican-friendly company. As one observer remarked, this decision seems, at first glance, akin to an Irish drinker going to an Irish pub.

However, one does not need to exercise much imagination to see how anyone using the net for nefarious purposes would want a "friendly" hosting company handling ultra-sensitive duties. Hosting companies keep records of who does what. If you are using computers to do something you don't want the world to know about, you don't want those records available to just anyone.

As the controversy over the 2004 elections gathered steam, Karl Rove made a joke about fixing the election returns from a computer in the White House basement. This remark always struck me as the sort of "joke" that the guy in Rope might have uttered: "Yeah, sure, I strangled my friend for no good reason and hid his body in the cupboard! Now seriously, how about that drink...?"

The point is that the Diebold tabulators -- the "mother machines" as Teresa Kerry once put it -- were online. A D.U. commenter offers what I consider interesting speculation (paragraph breaks added for readability):

I might be talking out of my ass here, but from what I can remember, Blackwell had direct access to the Diebold tabulator from his office so he could "authorize" the results. That tabulator had links to the machines throughout the state.

Updating the election results was live, but I bet the tabulator server and the election results host server are different - one would be Diebold and the other SMARTECH. Running the tabulator on the same host server as the election results would have been too compromising.

But, there had to be an ftp (or something) link between the tabulator and the election results host for the updating. That would have been configured either by the tabulator company (Diebold) or the RNC. If badly configured, this could have allowed open access to the tabulator results from anyone with admin access to the RNC owned SMARTECH host. This would have given Blackwell plausible deniability. "Just let our techies configure that uplink there...).

If the SMARTECH host server was used in this way, it's illegal because political parties aren't allowed to access raw election data. Only checking the server log would tell whether the election server was used to look at raw tabulator data. Of course, if it was actually used to manipulate data, that would be election fraud. manipulation of election data could easily have been done at the tabulator level or via access to the voting machines. Both are criminal acts. Because the servers were used in an election, they would be auditable material.

It would have needed one man or woman to steal Ohio, together with fudged recounts. That much appears clear. One man or woman.

"Auditable material." Of course, an audit presumes access to the correct information.

Now, I must stress the speculative nature of all this. I have no evidence that Smartech is anything other than an honest, responsibly-run firm.

Here is a list of domains that share mailservers and nameservers with gwb43. On the mailserver list, we find domains connected to Bush, Newt Gingrich, and ohiogop.org. (Blackwell was the party chief in Ohio.) Most of the sites are either Republican or far-right Christian.

Facts, shmacts

Researching my latest art project required me to look up Nazi propaganda posters. The earliest extant example (May, 1920) is here. The text translates to:

"Citizens! Do not believe that the Germany of misfortune and misery, the nation of corruption and usury, the land of Jewish corruption, can be saved by parties that claim to stand on a foundation of facts. Never!"

Yeah. Screw facts.

Does this attitude remind you of any current parties? Such as the one now in charge of the White House? As Ronald Reagan once said at a Republican National Convention (and yes, he really did say it): "Facts are stupid things."

Israeli racism, part 3

Another entry in our series on Israeli racism. This enterprise began when Israeli apologists (on the megaphone network, it seems) scried a non-existent "anti-Semitism" into utterly innocent words and phrases published on this blog, simply because I had dared to bring up the "movers and art students" story.

Racism, eh? Well, a noted Jewish after-dinner speaker once said that you can't go around telling folks to remove the splinters from their eye sockets when you've got enough lumber to build a replica of Abraham Lincoln's birthplace blocking your own vision. (I translate loosely.)

A critic asks me why I don't go to Israel and check things out for myself. I would like to do so, but funds do not permit. However, Shulamit Aloni is the the former Education Minister of Israel, so I presume that she knows the territory quite well. Here's what she has to say in a piece titled "This Road is for Jews Only: Yes, There is Apartheid in Israel":

The US Jewish Establishment's onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practises a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.

And:

On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle and sending its owner away. "Why?" I asked the soldier. "It's an order--this is a Jews-only road", he replied. I inquired as to where was the sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. "It is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some antisemitic reporter or journalist take a photo so he that can show the world that Apartheid exists here?"

And:

Did man of peace President Carter truly err in concluding that Israel is creating Apartheid? Did he exaggerate? Don't the US Jewish community leaders recognise the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination of 7 March 1966, to which Israel is a signatory? Are the US Jews who launched the loud and abusive campaign against Carter for supposedly maligning Israel's character and its democratic and humanist nature unfamiliar with the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 30 November 1973? Apartheid is defined therein as an international crime that among other things includes using different legal instruments to rule over different racial groups, thus depriving people of their human rights. Isn't freedom of travel one of these rights?

In the past, the US Jewish community leaders were quite familiar with the meaning of those conventions. For some reason, however, they are convinced that Israel is allowed to contravene them. It's OK to kill civilians, women and children, old people and parents with their children, deliberately or otherwise without accepting any responsibility. It's permissible to rob people of their lands, destroy their crops, and cage them up like animals in the zoo. From now on, Israelis and International humanitarian organisations' volunteers are prohibited from assisting a woman in labour by taking her to the hospital. [Israeli human rights group] Yesh Din volunteers cannot take a robbed and beaten-up Palestinian to the police station to lodge a complaint. (Police stations are located at the heart of the settlements.) Is there anyone who believes that this is not Apartheid?

There's much more; follow the link. Anyone who wants to reproduce the art may do so; click on the image for a larger version.

(Hey, megaphoners: I'm keeping to my once-a-day schedule. I did not post such pieces before you decided to attack me. In fact, I had hoped to shut down this blog. Can you define the term "self-defeating strategy"...?)

Spying ON Cheney? Or bribing BY Cheney?

This piece expands upon an idea I suggested more than a year ago. Why did MZM -- the defense contractor (now called Athena) which, under Mitchell Wade's leadership, gained so much notoriety for its role in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal -- get a White House contract in 2002 to provide office furniture and computer equipment?

MZM is known for its work in the fields of data mining and eavesdropping -- a resume which makes that firm an odd choice to go on a furniture-shopping expedition.

Unless...

Unless the furniture was bugged.

What we know now (which I did not know before) is that the furniture -- if ever it truly existed -- was meant for the Office of the Vice President.

Think Progress has offered an alternative theory: The "furniture" was just a ruse. Cheney was funneling money intended to purchase the favors of now-disgraced Congressman "Duke" Cunningham.

– Wade’s company MZM Inc. received its first federal contract from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”

– Two weeks later, on August 30, 2002, Wade purchased a yacht for $140,000 for Duke Cunningham...

– According to Cunningham’s sentencing memorandum, the purchase price of the boat had been negotiated through a third-party earlier that summer, around the same time the White House contract was signed.

The coincidence in figures is striking indeed, as is the timing.

Call me ornery, but I'm not yet convinced by this new theory. Why would Dick Cheney make sure that White House funds boosted MZM? What would be Cheney's personal interest in Mitchell Wade's firm? Why that firm and no other?

Admittedly, we have this intriguing data point from the Center For Public Integrity:

MZM refused to provide any information, however, about its corporate structure, including names of other principals.

Far as we know, then, Dick Cheney -- or a surrogate -- may own the damn place (which, as few people know, began life as a law firm, of all things). I don't think he does. But who can prove otherwise, given our current state of knowledge?

I would remind readers that the yacht was hardly the only gift Wade made to Cunningham. So the bribe money did not all come out of the White House operating budget.

Also note that the Think Progress version is quite simplified when compared to the original Washington Post account:

But over the past three years it was also awarded several contracts, worth more than $600,000, by the Executive Office of the President. They include a $140,000 deal for office furniture in 2002 and several for unspecified "intelligence services."

Think Progress also does not note the probably-relevant fact that the Chief Procurement Officer for the White House was, at that time, David Savafian, arrested for his part in the Abramoff scandal.

The afore linked piece offers this haunting quote from a letter sent by an imprisoned Cunningham to reporters:

You are wrong about one thing in your letter. Wade not Wilkes has destroyed a lot of people. I cannot discuss the case – your attempts to question lets me know you don’t give a hoot for me or my family. 90% of what has happened is Wade.

These words raise some very good questions:

Cunningham is in prison, and will probably stay there for the rest of his life. The worst that could possibly happen to him has already happened, or so one would think. Why does he refuse to discuss the case, to discuss a man he now despises? Why does he seem so afraid for himself and his family?

And why did Mitchell Wade -- a man Cunningham calls "an absolute devil" -- provide office furniture for Dick Cheney?

So, we have two choices: Either MZM really did provide desks and (perhaps) bugging devices for the OVP -- or someone linked to the OVP used nonexisent "furniture" as a ruse to fund a congressman's boat.

Which scenario gets your vote?

Israeli racism, part 2

So, what do you think of my little contribution to the art of the political poster?

This is my variant of a popular anti-GOP piece -- and I will be quite amused to hear someone argue that such a tactic is permissible against the American government but never, ever against the Israeli government. (If you have such an argument welling up within you, by all means offer it. Strained rationalization is one of my favorite forms of humor.)

I like to think that my version is a bit more professional than the anti-W effort, on a purely technical level. The original Nazi work, incidentally, was not a political poster per se but an advertisement for a film called S.A. Mann Brand.

While ferreting out the original , I discovered what must be the all-time most hilarious bit of fascist propaganda imagery, reprinted below and to the right. Kinda looks like Heinrich is congratulating Fritz for winning the dress-your-doggy contest on Project Runway, doesn't it?

Admittedly, that sidelight has no direct bearing on our present subject, but I just had to share it.

Our present subject is racism. This blog was accused of it by Israeli apologists (or rather, by "megaphonies") because the doctor and I dared to use the phrases "our Jewish brethren" and "of Jewish extraction." Speaking as someone who is of Italian extraction, I can tell you that no-one in my family would have considered taking offense at that phrase. And to be called a brother hardly qualifies as racism.

("But," someone out there may want to say, "it's different with the Jews than with the Italians!" Different how? Please, hit me with any strained rationalizations that might occur to you. I need the laffs.)

For real racism, the institutionalized kind, the kind backed by power, go to Israel. Here's a snippet from an earlier posting, which I beg my critics to double-check:

As I've noted before, former Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky's book By way of Deception reveals that Palestinian captives were subjected to human experimentation at Israel's Nes Ziyyona facility, which is devoted to studying chemical, bacteriological and radiological warfare. In the 1950s, the Israelis conducted massive radiological experiments on Sephardic Jews. In the year 2000, an Israeli medical journal published an article bearing the ominous title "Human experimentation in the Israel Defence Forces--between the hammer of necessity and the anvil of ethics"; it remains untranslated.

Experimentation on unwilling human subjects, chosen because they did not conform to the Azhkenazi model. Can't get much more racist than that, can you?

(Hey, megaphonies -- rethinking your tactics, yet?)