Is it Obama vs. Hillary AGAIN?

Many more of Hillary's emails have been deemed classified by the State Department. I'd like to say that this news is driving the right-wingers batshit crazy, but I can't. They were that way to begin with.

You have to read well past the headlines to discover the key point: None of these emails were classified at the time. Since we can't see the documents in question, we have no way to determine whether the texts are being over-classified. I feel quite certain that they are.

Many on the right (and some on the left) have compared Hillary's email debacle to the case against General David Petraeus. Anne Tompkins, one of the prosecutors in that case, pooh-poohs any claim of similarity:

As the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, I oversaw the prosecution of Gen. Petraeus, and I can say, based on the known facts, this comparison has no merit. The key element that distinguishes Secretary Clinton’s email retention practices from Petraeus’ sharing of classified information is that Petraeus knowingly engaged in unlawful conduct, and that was the basis of his criminal liability.

The facts of Petraeus’ case are a matter of public record. During his tenure as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, Petraeus recorded handwritten notes in personal journals, including information he knew was classified at the very highest levels.

These journals contained top secret and even more sensitive “code word” national defense information, including the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities, diplomatic discussions, and quotes and deliberative discussions from National Security Council meetings, including discussions with the president of the United States.

When questioned by the FBI, Petraeus lied to agents in responding that he had neither improperly stored nor improperly provided classified information to his biographer.

Hillary is guilty of none of these things.

Indeed, the State Department has confirmed that none of the information that has surfaced on Clinton’s server thus far was classified at the time it was sent or received. Additionally, the Justice Department indicated that its inquiry is not a criminal one and that Clinton is not the subject of the inquiry.

Fox News (of all venues!) just published an interesting take on all of this by Paul Goldman. His piece more-or-less admits that the charges against Hillary are mostly hooey. But in today's political world, mere reality doesn't matter:

The point being: After all that has transpired to date, perception may have already become reality to most Americans, indeed most commentators, not to mention defenders and detractors, on both sides. Or put another way: Another batch of emails isn’t going to change the bottom line.

The drop in Clinton’s support from 69 percent among Democrats nationally when she announced in April to now only 45 percent in one recent poll surely has some cause and effect relationship to the email issue.

Here's a worrying possibility: What if Hillary is being undermined by the Obama administration?

This theory would explain a lot.

After all, Obama is the person ultimately in charge of the State Department, which suddenly deemed 150 emails on that server to be classified. A mere two days ago, those very same missives were thought to be non-sensitive. The State Department took this step knowing full well that misleading headlines would convey the impression that the emails were classified at the time.

Obama favors Biden. That much is clear.

Added note: There are smears and then there are smears. This piece in Forbes (by one Paul Coyer) achieves full-body smeargasm. Example:

Hillary’s comments at her Friday press conference just repeated the behavioral patterns that the Clintons have long been known for – a non-apology apology and carefully parsed denials that do nothing to dispel the broadly-held view that this scandal is merely further evidence, if any were needed after nearly a quarter century of seeing Hillary’s pattern of behavior in public life, that Hillary (like her husband) has a pronounced penchant for dishonesty and dislikes playing by everyone else’s rules.

It is highly unlikely that Hillary’s use of private email servers (and her private email account had no encryption at all for the first few months of her tenure as Secretary of State) were not penetrated by foreign intelligence, particularly the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians, all of whom would see such a target as high priority, and that such emails did not provide such hostile foreign powers a critically useful insight into foreign and national security policy decision-making at the highest levels of the Obama Administration.

The combination of the intelligence gleaned from Edward Snowden and from Hillary’s emails are likely to have contributed to Putin’s aggressive course of action in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

This inside knowledge told the Kremlin that the Administration was not likely to take forceful actions that would raise the costs to Moscow of such actions to unacceptable levels, but would be limit its response primarily to economic sanctions. Putin, who has a long-term horizon, has calculated that the Russian economy (and his regime’s stability) can withstand these sanctions, no matter what the short to medium term consequences on the economy.

And the intelligence coup to Moscow provided by Hillary’s emails says nothing of what the benefit may have been to other American opponents, including Tehran as it prepared for the critical nuclear negotiations with the Obama Administration, and Beijing as it made decisions regarding how far to go in attempting to coercively alter the status quo in the South China Sea. It is a certainty that America’s opponents knew far more about the Obama Administration’s attitudes and decision-making processes and about what Hillary and Mr. Obama were doing than did the American people or the Congress.

"It is a certainty..." Oh, for chrissakes...

None of the emails were classified at the time. Nothing indicates that any of this material was discussed. Nothing indicates that Russia or China or Tehran considered Hillary's email server to be of great importance. (Perhaps needless to add, nothing links the Ed Snowden revelations to any of Putin's actions vis-a-vis Ukraine. Snowden's material was entirely about the NSA.) This Forbes piece is the kind of over-the-top propaganda that even the John Birchers would have considered crude and bombastic.

This nonsense is illustrated with an ominous photo of Huma Abedin. Apparently, we're supposed to think that she is some sort of Mata Hari employed by the dreaded Russia/Chinese/Iranian conspiracy.

The Atlanta child murders (Added note: A mystery man identified!)

Today's post will head into some rather fringe-y territory. If that kind of exploration bugs you, stop reading now. (As regular readers know, this blog's weekend offerings occasionally veer away from "hard" news and politics.)

I have been re-reading a book called Programmed to Kill, in which author Dave McGowan offers a bizarre revisionist history of the serial murder phenomenon. Frankly, McGowan is bit of a crackpot, even by my generous standards. But he has his virtues. Unlike most crackpots, he writes well, and he offers some truly fresh material and insights. Unfortunately, a certain predictability sets in toward the end: The automatic gainsaying of consensus belief eventually becomes as tiresome as consensus belief itself.

Nevertheless, McGowan's section on the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-1981 had me hooked. All readers of a certain age will recall how the killings of some 29 African American children and young adult males caused a national uproar. The killings were ultimately ascribed to a young, locally well-known black musical entrepreneur named Wayne Williams. He was tried only for the murders of two adults; the legal system offered no closure in the cases involving children. Williams maintains his innocence to this day.

In 1985, a three-part TV movie -- starring James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Martin Sheen and Jason Robards -- dramatized the case; it's available on YouTube starting here. I saw this docu-drama when it was first broadcast; it holds up quite well, thanks in large measure to the excellent acting. Although clunky exposition mars the first segment, the script offers a gripping argument that Williams was railroaded.

Gripping, yes -- but not wholly persuasive. I'm not at all convinced of this man's innocence. It's easy to see how a young musical promoter -- someone known to be looking for the next Michael Jackson -- might well have gained the trust of young black kids. No other suspect in the case had that ability to entice the young.

Before the cops identified Williams, many black people believed that the Klan committed the murders. There was an obvious objection to this theory: How could any white person prowl the black neighborhoods of Atlanta unnoticed, especially during a time of great tension and fear? Children were repeatedly warned to avoid all strangers. How could a Klansman lure young blacks boys into a vehicle?

It is nevertheless the case that an informant named Billy Joe Whittaker told authorities that a local Klansman named Charlie Sanders had confessed to the murders. A wiretap recorded Sanders announcing his intention to "ride around a little bit" to find another kid. Infuriatingly, this recording was later destroyed by the Georgia Bureau of Intelligence.

This site offers a look at Sanders and a number other intriguing suspects.

I don't have the space here to go into all of the details of this complex case. In short and in sum: Even though I lean toward the view that Wayne Williams belongs in jail, I do not think that all -- or even most -- of the important questions have received answers.

In 2010, CNN broadcast a documentary which I should have discussed in this column years ago. Here it is. The documentary, hosted by Soledad O'Brien, addresses some of the controversies surrounding this case; other issues (such as the Sanders angle) are ignored. The presentation concludes with a bombshell interview (excerpted here) with Wayne Williams, in which he is confronted with a little-known 1992 document called "Finding Myself."

In this autobiographical text, Williams claims that -- when he was all of 19 -- he received CIA training for possible missions in Africa. This assertion is not so outlandish as many people may believe. At the time, there were several hotspots on the continent, and the Agency did not have nearly as many black field agents as it needed. And Williams was nothing if not ambitious.

Nevertheless, a number of internet commenters have scoffed at the idea. Skeptics presume that Williams is a blowhard hoping to draw attention to himself. None of the scoffers have asked the obvious questions: How did CNN acquire this document? When was it written, and under what circumstances?

Why isn't "Finding Myself" online? I have yet to find a copy. (If you know where to look, please pass along the URL!)

Our most important question is this: Does the document contain information which can be verified through other sources -- information that Williams could not otherwise have known? We cannot address the issue of credibility until we see the details.

Right now, all we have is the following:

O'BRIEN (voice-over): When we returned to prison for our final interview with Wayne Williams, we had one question he was not expecting, what Wayne had written about being recruited for espionage training as a teenager. At a secret government camp hidden in the woods near this north Georgia lake, where he was given what could amount to a license to kill.

(on camera): It's called finding myself. What is finding myself? It reads like an autobiography.

WILLIAMS: Go ahead. I'm listening.

O'BRIEN: It's an account of your CIA training.

WILLIAMS: We're not going to get into that.

O'BRIEN: Why not?

WILLIAMS: We're not going to get into that.

O'BRIEN: I have a copy of it.

WILLIAMS: We're not going to get into it.

O'BRIEN: Why not?

WILLIAMS: We're simply not going to get into it. O'BRIEN (voice-over): By his account, Wayne was fresh out of high school, just 18 years old, when he was approached by an associate of an old World War II spy living in the Atlanta area, and was initiated into a secret world.

(on camera): You're not going to answer a single question on this.

WILLIAMS: No, ma'am.

O'BRIEN: Is it fake? Is it fictional writing?

WILLIAMS: No.

O'BRIEN: Did you work for the CIA?

WILLIAMS: We're not going to get into it.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): In these pages, he said he spent his summer weekends in those woods, learning how to handle plastic explosives, hand grenades, and something even more chilling.

(on camera): So I'll do the talking part and you can answer what part of it you want. You write how you fired rifles, sub-machine guns, handled assault weapons, grenade launchers, C-4, learned unarmed combat techniques, through this training group over weekends. Is it true or is it false?

WILLIAMS: I'm not going to comment on it.

O'BRIEN: When you were 19 years old? You're saying you worked for the CIA. You've been recruited.

WILLIAMS: I'll let the document speak for itself. I'm not going to comment on that.

O'BRIEN: Did you work for the CIA?

WILLIAMS: I cannot comment on that.

The problem becomes more confounding the more one gnaws on it. The reader should understand one key point: The "CIA training" allegation does not bolster the case for Williams' innocence. (This fact may explain why he seemed visibly surprised and upset when CNN's Soledad O'Brien brought up the document.) At trial, Williams' lawyer emphasized that his client was small and physically unimpressive, and therefore unlikely to have choked to death two larger men. "Finding Myself" calls into question the closing statement made by Williams' attorney.

Why did Williams write "Finding Myself" if the text harms his case? Never mind, for the moment, the question of whether this memoir is based on fantasy or reality: Why on earth would a man desperate to prove his innocence undermine one of the primary arguments offered in his defense?

Although the document bears a 1992 date (according to CNN), we have some reason to believe that Williams, before his arrest, had broadly hinted that he had acquired specialized knowledge of hand-to-hand combat. The aforementioned 1985 made-for-TV movie reconstructs -- accurately, I hope -- the testimony offered by various prosecution witnesses. Around 19 minutes into part three, one such witness says that Williams bragged of knowing a special choke hold which induces rapid unconsciousness. Later, this same witness says that Williams has a "split personality."

(This witness was devastating to Williams' case. Even more damage was done by Williams himself: Testifying in his own defense, he went on a tirade that alienated the jurors.)

CNN uses "Finding Myself" to demonstrate that Williams had acquired the training necessary to murder larger men with his bare hands. But if we accept the document at face value, then the Wayne Williams story veers off into very strange territory.

Who was this "old World War II spy" living in the Atlanta area? Offhand, I can't think of a possible candidate -- and I'm a bit irked that CNN has kept the name hidden. (If you can fill in the blank, please share!)

Why did CNN refuse to identify the "north Georgia lake" close to the "secret government camp"? If CNN had investigated Williams' claim and found this camp to be non-existent, Soledad O'Brien would surely have mentioned that fact, and would have named the lake.

(At first, I thought that the reference might go to the Georgia Public Safety Training Center. But that complex is located in central Georgia, and it is hardly a secret.)

We must add one other point. In 1981, none other than Vice President George Bush created a federal task force which investigated the then-unsolved series of murders. Vice presidents do not usually take on such duties; in fact, I can't think of a single parallel. Bush had once headed the CIA, the very organization which -- allegedly -- trained Wayne Williams.

Although I'm irked by Dave McGowan's more outlandish theories, I must admit that many aspects of the Atlanta story do not add up. This case deserves a new investigation.

Added note: Boy, do I feel like an idiot! A kind reader mentioned the name of the notorious Mitch WerBell, an OSS veteran then living in Atlanta. He was an amazing, larger-than-life character who perfectly matches what we know of the man described by Wayne Williams. WerBell had an anything-goes training facility called The Farm off of Georgia State Route 360, near Powder Springs, located north of Atlanta.

Jim Hougan's remarkable -- and, these days, very hard-to-find -- book Spooks offers a vivid picture of WerBell and his crew. Basically, these guys were (are?) the real-life equivalent of The Expendables. Although I lost my copy of Spooks ages ago, a new copy came into my hands quite recently. And if I had bothered to re-read the damned thing, that CNN documentary would have caused all sorts of lightbulbs to flash over my noggin.

Wayne Williams is talking about Mitch WerBell. It's gotta be him. Everything fits.

God damn. I should have seen this immediately.

Added added note: Turns out that my humble blog was not the first humble blog to identify Mitch WerBell as the man who trained Wayne Williams. See here.

Before you read that entry, I should explain that WerBell hobnobbed with all sorts of very strange people, including Lyndon LaRouche, who made the transition from left to hard right in the 1970s. Many LaRouchies received training at "The Farm."

The story gets wilder from there. Check out the link...

The Big Smear

I really do not want to defend Hillary Clinton. Yes, she deserves to be criticized -- for the right reasons. This nonsense is not one of the right reasons. Perhaps it was a bit over-the-top for Hillary to liken the Republicans' stances on women's issues to terrorism. But so what? These days, over-the-top sentiments are as common as raindrops in a rainstorm.

If you hit the link given above, check out the comments -- many of which, we may fairly presume, are pure astroturf. These commenters pretend to be incensed by Hillary's intemperate language, yet the writers always express themselves in the most outlandish terms imaginable. Hypocrisy is hip, it seems. I found the following to be particularly amusing:

I will be more happy when she is in jail for treason and misdemeanor homicide

There's such a thing as "misdemeanor homicide"? Just who, prithee, is the alleged victim? (The same commenter says that Hillary won't go to jail because she is a "Clition.")

In a similar vein, here is the latest attempt to smear Bill Clinton.

ABC News has obtained State Department e-mails that shed light on Bill Clinton’s lucrative speaking engagements and show he and the Clinton Foundation tried to get approval for invitations related to two of the most repressive countries in the world -- North Korea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Yada yada yada. Basically, ABC News is giving us the usual smear job. If you read their piece carefully and skeptically, you'll discover the truth of the matter: Clinton runs a charity, and he goes around the world trying to drum up millions for his charity. Where the money comes from doesn't matter as much as where it goes to. As far as I'm concerned, if dictators and thugs pony up some dough and starving villagers in India receive the benefit, fine. Would you feel comfortable telling the starving villagers to keep starving?

Unfortunately, our "unbiased" news media insists on writing stories which convey the impression (without directly stating) that the money goes into the Clintons' own pockets, not to the starving villagers. A number of alleged progressives go along with this hallucination, because doing so makes them feel hip. This situation persists even though the watchdog groups who keep track of charities all say that the Clinton Foundation is clean and transparent.

Incidentally, Clinton did not speak at any function involving the North Koreans or the Congo. His foundation simply told the State Department that the invitations had been received. That's it. This, we're told, constitutes some kind of scandal.

And so it goes.

Hillary's numbers are going down not because of her policies, not because of anything real, but because the Clinton name is being subjected to daily smears. As the saying goes: If enough bullshit hits the wall, some will stick.

Is there a peace candidate?

The invaluable Bob Parry demonstrates, once again, that our political culture has been so thoroughly neoconned that no candidate in either party can openly favor peace. Even Bernie Sanders, who voted against the Iraq misadventure, seems to have lost his way.

When Sanders has spoken about the Mideast, he has framed his comments in ways that make them acceptable to Official Washington but that ultimately make little sense. For instance, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Sanders suggested that Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich sheikdoms replace the United States as the region’s policeman in the fight against Sunni terrorists in the Islamic State (also called ISIS).

Ridiculous. Saudi Arabia is one of the major backers of ISIS -- a fact of history seldom discussed out loud, but a fact nonetheless. The murderous behavior of the Saudis in Yemen demonstrates that King Salman has no interest in peace, justice, or international opinion.

Joe Biden once blurted out this unspeakable truth about Saudi Arabia. (Biden is one of this country's truly great blurters.)

“Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria … the Saudis, the emirates, etc., what were they doing? They were so determined to take down [President Bashar al-] Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

Whenever Biden emits one of his honesty farts, pundits mutter about the vice president's tendency to commit gaffes. Those "gaffes" are the main reason to welcome the idea of a Biden presidency. On the other hand, Hunter Biden's involvement in Ukrainian affairs is more than a little worrisome.

Parry does not mention the name of one candidate who might challenge the war consensus: Jim Webb.

Some aspects of Webb's foreign policy plan bother me -- especially point 4, which is is nothing more than a new way of sucking up to Israel. But his key point, the one that overshadows all others, comes at the end:

7. Congress must step up and restore its relationship with the executive branch.

Senator Webb identified a shift in war-making power from the Congress to the presidency. He drew on Libya and Iraq as examples of executive military maneuvers that bypassed legislative approval. In both cases, Webb felt that no vital national interest was at stake.

When the public applies pressure to Congress, Congress feels it. Right now and for the foreseeable future, the public does not want war.

In 2013, every "respectable" pundit was screaming for Obama to rain hellfire on Syria. Obama, boxed in and seeking a way out, hit upon a brilliant strategy: In a rare (and purely tactical) show of respect for the Constitution, he left the decision up to Congress. After the people of the United States made their feelings known, Congress had to shun Ares.

Although the administration made clear that the Great Syria Dodge was a one-time deal, Webb wants to transform 2013 into the new normal. He clarifies his foreign policy stance here:

However, there is an important caveat to how our country should fight international terrorism. The violation of this principle has caused us a lot of trouble in the recent past. I can do no better than to quote from an article I wrote on September 12th, 2001, the day after the 9 / 11 attacks. “DO NOT OCCUPY TERRITORY. The terrorist armies make no claim to be members of any nation-state. Similarly, it would be militarily and politically dangerous for our military to operate from permanent or semi-permanent bases, or to declare that we are defending specific pieces of terrain in the regions where the terrorist armies live and train. We already have terrain to defend – the United States and our outposts overseas – and we cannot afford to expand this territory in a manner that would simply give the enemy more targets.”

And finally, a warning spurred by the actions of this Administration in places such as Libya. There is no such thing as the right of any President to unilaterally decide to use force in combat operations based on such vague concepts as “humanitarian intervention.” If a treaty does not obligate us, if American forces are not under attack or under threat of imminent attack, if no Americans are at risk, the President should come to the congress before he or she sends troops into Harm’s Way.

Do these words mean that Webb deserves to be called "the peace candidate"? Many of you will say No.

My response: If Webb turns war into a congressional problem, peace will finally get a chance -- because Congress, for all of its many corruptions, must listen to the people. True, many Americans are easily fooled by propaganda. Many Americans are dumber than a rock that failed rock school. But even the more obtuse citizens of the United States understand that the Iraq misadventure cost trillions, and that our nation would now be far more prosperous if Dubya's disaster had never happened. Not all Americans love peace -- in fact, many Americans are bellicose boobs. But nobody wants to run up that kind of debt again.

Reagan adviser Martin Anderson used to say: "In politics, the question is always 'Compared to what?'" Compare Webb to Hillary Clinton, to Bernie Sanders, to Joe Biden. Compare Webb to anyone who participated in the Republican debate. Ask yourself: Which candidate is least likely to let the neocons dictate foreign policy?

What a burn! Or: Bohemian grave

Burning Man is now officially for assholes only. Fucking libertarians always gotta ruin everything.

When I read the article at the other end of that link, I thought: How many times have we seen this process play out? Bohemians (or "hippies," as they were called during one brief historical moment) shout "Freedom!" and initiate Coolness. Rich people respond: "Yeah! Freedom! Freedom for the rich to take over!" -- and then they turn Coolness into Uncoolness.

Many people don't know that the Bohemian Grove -- you know, the thing with the giant owl -- also began with a group of artsy types from San Francisco who sought to create an anything-goes enclave out in the woods. It didn't take too long for a bunch of stuffy bigwigs to take over the show.

This pattern will continue until a new generation of Bohemians finally understands that the pattern is a pattern. Next time the artists and visionaries and crazies construct a Bohemian enclave in the wilderness, they have to erect barriers against the One Percenters: "Sorry, but this is an exclusive club. Only actual human beings are allowed inside. You wouldn't understand."

Speaking of the Bohemian Grove: I just found the damnedest photo...

This is a picture of various members of the Bohemian Club in the woods circa 1904. (The Bohemian Club founded the Grove.) The painting is of none other than Gustav Mahler, then very much alive -- in fact, his best work was ahead of him. Now considered one of the world's greatest composers, Mahler's music was, at that time, thought to be unfathomably avant-garde; he was famous as Vienna's most celebrated and controversial conductor. It seems that his fame had spread to the redwoods of California.

Why had the club fixated on Mahler? Perhaps because he was literally a scion of Bohemia, being born in the center of what later became Czechoslovakia.

There's another possible explanation. In the 19th century, a secretive artist's society called the Schlaraffia (a German term for "fairyland") sprang up. Mahler belonged to this group, although I doubt that he took it very seriously. It was a bit like the Dead Poets Society, and their symbol was the Owl of Minerva (goddess of Wisdom). Writer Terry Melanson argues that the Schlaraffia may have given birth, so to speak, to the Bohemian Club.

There was a branch of Schlaraffia instituted in San Francisco as early as 1884, so there is the possibility of real connections and influence among the two groups.

(He meant "between the two groups.") The intersection of Bohemia and Big Money always seems to fascinate the more easily-gulled conspiracy researchers. Artsy-fartsy Bohemian-types love to play with symbols and riddles and mystical murkiness. Conspiratards consider all of that stuff to be very spooky and scary. Most conspiratards are poorly-educated Christian fundamentalists, and when these apes try to comprehend what the Bohemians have been getting up to, hilarity ensues.

More proof of the unspeakable

Our regional allies back ISIS. Phil Giraldi:

From the start, Turkey, which nominally opposes radical rebel groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, has been curiously absent from the fray, instead arguing that the major effort should be focused on defeating al-Assad. Indeed, when I was in Istanbul last July bearded rebels were observed in the more fundamentalist neighborhoods collecting money for ISIS without any interference from the numerous and highly visible Turkish police and intelligence services. Turkey has also been surreptitiously buying as much as $3 million worth of smuggled oil from ISIS every day, virtually funding the group’s activities. Ankara has allowed ISIS militants to freely cross over the Syrian border into Turkey for what might be described as R&R (rest and recreation) as well as medical care and training. Weapons have been flowing in the opposite direction, cash and carry, some provided by the Turkish intelligence service MIT.

The Kurds have been some of the fiercest fighters against ISIS. Turkey -- which will not tolerate a Kurdish state -- has launched hundreds of air strikes against the Kurds under the pretext of fighting ISIS.

We are now being told that Turkey is finally going to get serious about bringing the fight to ISIS. You can bet your last drachma that we will see more "war by oopsie," as bombs that were supposed to fall on ISIS and Nusra accidentally hit the Kurds.

Remember those alleged "moderate" fighters against the Syrian government? The ones that are forever described as "vetted"? They are few in number, and serve primarily a fig leaf function as Nusra and ISIS do the dirty work of overthrowing Assad.

Recently, a group of those moderates got screwed -- by our friends in Turkey. From McClatchy:

The kidnapping of a group of U.S.-trained moderate Syrians moments after they entered Syria last month to confront the Islamic State was orchestrated by Turkish intelligence, multiple rebel sources have told McClatchy.

The rebels say that the tipoff to al Qaida’s Nusra Front enabled Nusra to snatch many of the 54 graduates of the $500 million program on July 29 as soon as they entered Syria, dealing a humiliating blow to the Obama administration’s plans for confronting the Islamic State.

“Only the Americans and the Turks knew” about the plans for the train-and-equip fighters to enter Syria, said an officer of Division 30, the rebel group with which the newly trained Syrians were to work. “We have sources who tell us the Turks warned Nusra that they would be targeted by this group.”

Propaganda blitz. The Iran deal is one of the few things this administration has done right. But can it survive an onslaught like this?

No sooner had the deal been announced then anti-deal television ads attacking it went up all over the country. AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, launched a massive campaign to pressure lawmakers to nix it, literally marching on Capitol Hill to intimidate Congress into voting no.

The budget for this coordinated campaign: upwards of $145 million.

That kind of money buys a lot of lying.

As the old Rogers and Hammerstein song put it: You have to be carefully taught. In 2003, the American people were carefully taught a lot of nonsense about Saddam Hussein's WMDs. It's happening again...

Three years ago the Chicago Council on Global Affairs asked Americans, in a multiple choice question, what was the assessment of the U.S. intelligence services about Iran’s nuclear program — an assessment that has been constant over the last several years and repeatedly expressed publicly in statements and testimony.

Only 25 percent of respondents picked the correct answer: “Iran is producing some of the technical ability to build nuclear weapons, but has not decided to produce them or not.” A mere four percent erred in the reassuring direction by choosing “Iran is producing nuclear energy strictly for its energy needs.” A plurality, 48 percent, incorrectly chose “Iran has decided to produce nuclear weapons and is actively working to do so, but does not yet have nuclear weapons.” An additional 18 percent chose “Iran now has nuclear weapons.”

It is easy to see how deficient public knowledge on such a subject undermines support for an agreement such as the one before Congress.

Did I call the shot or what?

In previous posts, I gave my view that the Ashley Madison hackers -- the so-called Impact Team -- were political operatives disguised as "Anonymous"-style anarchists. A few days ago, I wrote:

Prediction: The Ashley Madison data dump will feature the names of prominently hypocritical conservatives -- at first. In this way, the true political motive of this operation will be obscured.

And now, this. (The story originally broke on Breitbart, but I won't link to that site.)

Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden says the profile that uses his email address on the hacked “cheating” website Ashley Madison does not belong to him.

“I am certain that the account in question is not mine,” Hunter Biden said in a statement provided to ABC News. “This account was clearly set up by someone else without my knowledge.

News of the account registered to an email address belonging to Biden was first reported Monday by Breitbart News and comes as the vice president is weighing a 2016 White House bid.

Before you scoff at Hunter's words, read this. Such things are quite possible.

Ah, but the tale gets stranger still: It seems that the folks at Ahsley Madison hacked into a competitor's site back in 2012, and may even have manipulated the data.

At the time, nerve.com was experimenting with its own adult dating section, and Bhatia said he’d uncovered a way to download and manipulate the nerve.com user database.

“They did a very lousy job building their platform. I got their entire user base,” Bhatia told Biderman via email, including in the message a link to a Github archive with a sample of the database. “Also, I can turn any non paying user into a paying user, vice versa, compose messages between users, check unread stats, etc.”

If such things can be done to a competitor, such things could have been done to Ashley Madison itself.

Now, I know that feminists of the most fanatical type will dismiss the possibility that I'm raising here. Their logic is unassailable: All men are lying evil penismonsters. Hunter Biden is a man. Therefore, Hunter Biden is a lying evil penismonster. That presumption is what makes an op like this one so effective.

By the way, did you know about this?

Islamic preacher Hamza Andreas Tzortzis has been allegedly "named" on the leaked list of members of the adult website Ashley Madison. However, the well-known preacher has denied that the account belonged to him.

Tzortzis has also denied signing up for an account on Ashely Madison, the infidelity dating website -- which was recently attacked by hackers who leaked the names of hundreds of thousands of its members -- and said that it was a conspiracy by hackers to defame him.

Tzortzis, a member of the Islamic Education and Research Academy, is known for his radical Islamic views.

In a Facebook post, Tzortzis wrote: "It has come to my attention that my details are on the Ashley Madison data leak. This includes my name, address, and bank card details."

"This is an obvious case of fraud. My email address (this website doesn't verify emails, and all the relevant emails went to junk) can be found online and so can my address, as it is linked to my business account, which is registered online."

I am by no means a fan of this Tzortzis fellow, who appears to be just another fundamentalist creepazoid. At the same time, the guy makes a fair point: A frame job would be pretty easy to engineer. True, acquisition of the man's "bank card details" would require a greater-than-average expertise in skullduggery, but such things are possible. As you know, other major hacks have scooped up a great deal of banking information.

Hillary and Joe -- and a quandary

Didn't I tell you that the Hillary email scandal would be used to target her aide Huma Abedin? The Islamophobic right loves to spread obnoxious, racist fear-stories about Huma. And now we have this from Richard Viguerie's site:

"Is Huma Abedin Hillary Clinton's Alger Hiss?"

No. She isn't.

(Moreover, Alger Hiss was not "Alger Hiss." That is to say: I don't think that the guy was a spy. And yes, I know all about the Venona thing: That's not Hiss. Perhaps we'll go through that argument in detail one of these weekends.)

Viguerie and his comrades-in-lunacy may be McCarthyite freaks, but we live in freaky times, and the freakiest among us have a tendency to take over our national conversation. No-one can deny that Hillary -- fairly or unfairly -- has suffered some wounds in recent days. Those wounds may prove fatal.

Where, then, do we turn? There's much talk of Joe Biden running for the presidency -- perhaps with Elizabeth Warren as his running mate. NBC is arguing that a Biden run could actually aid Hillary:

First, it would force Clinton and her campaign to step up their game. "She's a terrible front-runner but she's a marvelous candidate when she gets into the middle of the race," as NBC/WSJ co-pollster Peter Hart (D) put it on "Meet the Press" yesterday. In other words, give her a real Democratic race -- a la what she experienced in the spring of 2008 when Clinton trailed Barack Obama -- and it'll force her to be a stronger candidate. Two, Biden jumping in would swap the scandal-focused coverage of Clinton and replace it with horserace-focused coverage. It has become increasingly apparent that Hillary Clinton might not be able to beat a unified political press corps on constant scandal patrol. But she could beat Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Let me explain my personal quandary to you. As some of you know, I have been apprised of a scandal involving Joe Biden. I'm fully aware that you, the reader, have no reason to take this claim seriously until you see details. Your skeptical attitude is understandable. At this stage, skepticism would be the correct attitude for you to take.

Let me therefore phrase my quandary as an intellectual exercise -- a hypothetical situation.

Suppose that I'm telling the truth. Provisionally, temporarily, for the sake of argument: Suppose that I really have been given some information by a source (or, rather, by a source who talked to a source).

Furthermore: Suppose that this information concerns a story that is rather bizarre and tabloid-friendly. Suppose that there might even be a celebrity or two (or three) involved in this matter, perhaps peripherally.

Suppose we are talking about a story that, if revealed and verified, probably would not make America gasp in shock and horror. (At this point, most Americans don't shock very easily.) Instead, it would make America giggle -- and the resulting fit of giggles might injure the entire Democratic brand.

Again: This is all hypothetical. Just for the sake of argument.

Now ask yourself: What would you do in my situation?

You see, I like Joe Biden, and I honestly would not mind seeing him become president. He is preferable to Hillary Clinton, in my opinion. Moreover, his family has endured a good deal of pain and stress, and I would not care to add to the burden.

But.

If I know about this "Gigglegate" scandal, then it is fair to presume that the Republicans may also have gotten wind of it. (This presumption would explain why publications like the National Review seem so weirdly enthusiastic about a Biden run.)

All of which leads us to the Nightmare Scenario: Biden runs, Biden trounces Hillary in the primaries, Biden nabs the nomination -- and at that point, Gigglegate is unleashed on the country as an October Surprise. The Democratic brand is tarnished. The end result: President Donald Trump (or whoever the GOP nominee turns out to be) is given the nuclear launch codes.

Would it not be better for Gigglegate to come out now, as opposed to later?

Here's another point to consider. I have decided not to name my source. She's a very nice lady, uninterested in politics, and she has no direct link to the scandal that I am provisionally calling Gigglegate. So if I reveal what I know, I won't be able to provide proof. All I will be able to divulge is a name -- a very interesting name.

It will be up to Biden's opponents to research the matter from there -- if they even bother to note what goes on in this humble blog. (They may not). Further investigation by others may confirm that claim. On the other hand, confirmation may never come.

(There will, of course be many harsh words said against yours truly. As if I care.)

This is a horrible situation! If Joe Biden becomes President Biden, I'll be a happy man. But the Nightmare Scenario -- the possibility of an October Surprise -- scares the hell out of me. So I'm asking you to give me the best advice that you can give. Please don't ask for more information, because I can't give it right now.

"Satan worshipers drown women with milk in Planned Parenthood counter-protest"

Satan worshipers drown women with milk in Planned Parenthood counter-protest

I don't have much to add here. I'm not going to pretend that this is an important story. All I'm going to say is that we have discovered this month's best headline of all time.

"Satan worshipers drown women with milk in Planned Parenthood counter-protest." Say it loud and there's music playing. Say it soft and it's almost like praying...to Satan.

At one point during the protest, a man claiming to be a sheriff unsuccessfully attempted to move the Satan worshippers along.

If you live outside the United States, I have to ask: Does anyone in your country still take the United States seriously? If so, why?

Is AP peddling lies about the Iran deal?

Sure looks like it. If this report pans out, then we have another example of a classic political forgery. From The Protocols to the Zinoviev letter to the "laptop of death," these clever fakes have made an awful lot of history -- yet most historians refuse to acknowledge their role.

The search for an alternative

I still maintain that the Hillary Clinton "scandals" are nonsense. See, for example, the latest from CNN: This breathless pseudo-investigation seems to exist for the sole purpose of getting the "Weiner" name into a piece on Clinton.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the Dems are now scrambling for an alternative. Joe Biden has met with Elizabeth Warren, apparently to ask for her blessing and/or advice. It's a bit strange to think of Warren -- who is still rather new to politics -- as a kingmaker, but such is apparently her role. She has yet to endorse anyone.

And this just in: Biden also met (in a separate private confab) with Jim Webb. I'm not sure how to interpret this situation. Here are the tea leaves; read them as you will:

Webb, who is currently running far behind Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic race, gave few details on his meeting with Biden.

“I think private meetings are best left that way,” he said, adding that he “wouldn’t get into another individual’s potential campaign.”

But Webb did say that “it doesn’t surprise me that he’s sitting there and talking to someone who has a strong record on economic fairness issues.”

I like Biden, but he must not run. Scandal lurks in that man's background -- and if I know about it, others must know as well. If he becomes the candidate, and if the bad news pops out at just the right time, President Trump will get the nuclear launch codes.

Jim Webb -- whom I consider the strongest choice -- waded into a minor scandal of his own concerning the Confederate flag. Considering his southern background, that controversy represents a no-win situation for him. At any rate, I strongly doubt that the 2016 election will be decided over a debate over that flag.

Can you imagine a contest between a decorated Marine from Virginia and a flashy New Yawk draft-dodger like Trump? How will that piece of political theater play in the south? It is interesting to note that Webb is a former Republican, while Trump was...well, what was he?

Bernie Sanders is terrific on domestic issues, but much less impressive on foreign policy. He's the preferred candidate of the "bell the cat" voters who refuse to accept reality or reason (a group that I myself am often tempted to join). The man is unelectable. This country simply will not choose as president an elderly man who identifies himself as a socialist.

At 69, Webb is no spring chicken himself. But he's the only Dem likely to "just say no" to the neocons. He's the only candidate who spoke out against the Iraq misadventure at a time when doing so was almost an act of political suicide. Our current president can't really make that claim.

Is there an Overeaters Anonymous for dogs?

George, my recently-adopted dog, head-butted me awake at four a.m. yesterday. He has been doing this ever since he discovered a new meal called pre-breakfast. If you're a Tolkein fan, you already know about second breakfast and elevensies, but George wants credit for the invention of ten-somethingzies and the eleven-forty practice lunch. Around 1 p.m., he embarks upon the dinners-and-suppers portion of his day, an intricate series of events which usually ends around midnight. Four hours later, the process starts all over again.

This dog gobbles up everything, including broccoli. And string beans. Have you ever met a dog who loves broccoli and string beans?

I can't let any zombie movies play in this house. George will get ideas.

The propaganda blitz against the Iran deal

I've put off writing this piece for days, for reasons that will soon become clear.

There's a group called "Veterans Against an Iran Deal" which has been gaining a lot of attention in recent days. Note the terminology: They are not against the Iran deal. The name indicates that they will not tolerate any Iran deal. Although this organization pretends to be grassroots, it's really an offshoot of WINEP and AIPAC -- in other words, we're dealing with yet another Israeli propaganda front.

Lately, they've been running highly emotive ads featuring a wounded vet named Staff Sergeant Robert Bartlett, who says that his facial scars resulted from an "Iranian" IED. Is there any proof that Iranians created this device? No. Phil Giraldi, I am glad to say, is on the case:

As Sergeant Bartlett notes, the weapon of choice for the insurgency was indeed a “bomb,” the EFP, which was frequently deployed along roadsides against American armor. The EFP is very simple to make. It consists of a concave copper disk that is placed at the top of a tube. At the bottom of the tube is a military grade plastic explosive charge attached to a detonator. The detonator causes the explosive to go off, the heat and explosive power turning the copper disk into a molten jet of metal that can penetrate as much as eight inches of steel.

The claim that EFPs deployed in Iraq originated in Iran accepted in part that the EFP was actually a sophisticated weapon that could not be produced by Iraqis without Iranian assistance but there are problems with that assumption. The American military knew perfectly well that the Iraqis were more than capable of making the weapon because both U.S. and British forces captured machine shops assembling such devices. The weapon can, in fact, be made by any reasonably competent machine shop that has a metal lathe and access to explosives. U.S. Army Special Forces training manuals that provided instructions on making and using shaped charges were available on the internet at the time of the Iraq War. They have since been deleted but the information is still available online.

Thus, the oft-heard claim that Iranians killed 170 Americans in Iraq is baseless.

At any rate, let's not ignore the fact that Iran did not invade Iraq. We did. The first Bush administration did not seek Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 1991 because GHWB understood that removing Iran's great regional enemy would empower Tehran.

A few other points:

1. Before the American invasion, there was no sectarian conflict (and no Iranian influence) in Iraq. Sunni and Shiite lived in harmony. Although Saddam Hussein was a dictator, his government was secular.

2. Right now, the Iranians are, arguably, the most effective fighters against ISIS. An American war against Iran would give the leaders of ISIS the greatest gift imaginable.

3. Iran has not invaded any other country since the 18th century. Although there are legitimate reasons to condemn that government, one cannot fairly claim that the Iranians have a history of bellicosity.

God knows, I certainly don't feel comfortable criticizing someone who was wounded in his country's service. In fact, the need to do so makes me feel downright crappy -- hence, in large measure, my reluctance to write this post. Nevertheless, I have no choice but to question both Bartlett's facts and his motives. I would like to know how much he is being paid. It is clear that "Veterans Against an Iran Deal" is a front group.

Yet that group is not the only force at work here. Fox News -- but of course! -- has used the Big Lie technique to spread the notion that, under the terms of the deal, Iranian nuclear sites will be given a 24 day "heads-up." This is simply not true.

Can you name this law?

My ladyfriend watched a video in which some tea partiers were interviewed on the Washington Mall, at a gathering convened by Glenn Beck. One of the people interviewed was a woman who insisted that Barack Obama has passed a law which forbids her (or anyone else) from praying at "national monuments." Apparently, this law has something to do with the menace of communism.

Can you name this law? I mean, is there any law passed since January 2009 which could be interpreted as having any bearing on where one may pray?

Let's suppose that such a law exists. Since laws are made by Congress, not the president, and since Congress has been largely in control of the Republican party, hasn't this tea partier just given us a good reason not to vote for the GOP?

(We have many real problems in this country. I'm continually stunned by the number of people who prefer to be upset by hallucinations.)

Ashley Madison: Random thoughts

* Prediction: The Ashley Madison data dump will feature the names of prominently hypocritical conservatives -- at first. In this way, the true political motive of this operation will be obscured.

* The latest torrent is 20GB in size, which is larger than previously-released torrents. I wonder why?

* The thought popped into my head that Ashley Madison might have been designed as a blackmail operation from the get-go. While I still would not deny that possibility, my research into the history of company founder Noel Biderman hasn't turned up anything obviously spooky. Before he started Avid Life (the company behind Ashley Madison) he was a sports attorney and a real estate wheeler-dealer.

Yes, I know that the guy is Jewish. That doesn't mean he's working with Mossad. A lot of people in Israel were unhappy with him.

* On the other hand, I'm not saying that Israeli intelligence is not involved with this. Did Biderman use ZoneAlarm (Checkpoint) to provide a firewall for his company? Checkpoint is an offshoot of Israel's Unit 8200. Also see here. I can easily see how Biderman might have trusted his company's security to an Israeli firm that I would have considered iffy.

* There's a good chance that we are dealing with an inside job:

In their announcement, Impact Team offered an apology to Mark Steele (ALM Director of Security).

"You did everything you could, but nothing you could have done could have stopped this."

ALM CEO Noel Biderman told journalist Brian Krebs that it's possible the attackers worked for his company at one point and had legitimate internal access.

"We're on the doorstep of [confirming] who we believe is the culprit, and unfortunately that may have triggered this mass publication. I've got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials. It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services," Biderman said.

"Not an employee" but still somehow involved with the company? Interesting. This seems to indicate a private contractor working with Avid.

* Mark Steele has been on the job at Avid for only a brief time. Here is his LinkedIn profile.

* Valerie Plame (remember her?) tries to put the Ashley Madison hack into perspective:

Plame’s covert identity was blown in 2003 by journalist Robert Novak, using information leaked by aides to George W. Bush. Given that history, she’s particularly concerned about the recently disclosed breaches of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)--even if that’s been eclipsed this week by the more salacious-sounding hacker attack on Ashley Madison, the website for people seeking extramarital affairs.

“As long as you’re not involved with it, it sounds funny,” says Plame, who started laughing when informed of the Ashley Madison attack. “The things that keep me up at night are things like [hackers] getting into the software system of a nuclear site.”

But she later added by email: “THIS will get the public’s attention--even if the OPM hack doesn’t!”

That agency's data breaches this spring exposed information on more than 21 million people, some 7 percent of Americans. Worse, the affected data is more sensitive than the by-now-routine names and emails and credit card data that most of us have come to expect will be stolen by cybercriminals at some point in time. The hacked OPM records contained background investigation information on federal employees and job applicants, including information about their family members and potentially even their mental health and financial history.

* On the other hand, the OPM hack and the Ashley Madison hack may link up...

Patrick Skinner, a former CIA operative now with the Soufan Group, doesn’t think so. In an email, he called it “a minor issue in terms of matching names on the Madison data dump and the OPM hack. Might bring up awkward blackmail attempts perhaps. I’m sure people will try. But one can claim the emails are spoofed.”

People in the national security community are already under extra scrutiny, but that can ratchet up if you’re having an extramarital affair, or are spotted trolling for one. That makes you a blackmail risk, and therefore a potential insider threat.

* It should always be recalled that most of the "females" on Ashley Madison were fakes, and that the correspondence was often the work of bots.

* A claimed former employee of the company has offered some amusing and revealing information:

We had WAY more men than women. The men on the site were exactly what you'd expect - horny, middle aged, sexually deprived and willing to do/pay anything for the affair of a lifetime. Poor guys, I always felt bad for them. The legitimate women on the site (we like every dating site had a huge problem with fraud/scammers/cam girls) were mostly single, looking for older married men. Lots of women looking for sugar daddies. We also got a lot of couples, looking to add a third person or another couple to their mix. As the site became more and more popular, I saw a lot more married woman making their way to us but they were far more careful than the men. The men would join, post a picture of their dick and then call two hours later screaming "why has no one messaged me?!?!?!" The delusion was off the charts. I had to explain at least five times a day that sending women pictures of your dick is literally the WORST first impression you can make. 9 times out of 10 they still didn't get it and would just go upload MORE dick pics.

In all honesty, it was one of the best companies I've ever worked for. They treated their employees very well - full benefits, salary pay for ALL positions (no matter how menial) and protection. Because of the nature of the business we received death threats daily and they took every single one seriously.

As I haven't worked for ALM in several years, it is not my place to comment on their current security practices or speculate who is behind the hack. I will say that the programmers and developers at ALM are some of the greatest people I've ever met in my life and everyone over there is worried about protecting the customers' privacy. They have dealt with FAR worse than some small time hackers in the past and this will be resolved quickly and efficiently. In MY OPINION this is the work of a bitter spouse (or group of bitter spouses) of an affair gone wrong. If it's anything else, I will gladly accept it but my gut tells me it is just someone with too much time on their hands. The ALM team are beasts and won't go down without a fight.

* Many Ashley Madison users used .gov and .mil email addresses. Should you be upset that these government employees were fooling around while working for the taxpayers? Be reasonable, and keep things in perspective: Everyone fools around online while on the job. Speaking as a blogger, I can tell you that my stats always go up during work hours. Fewer people read blogs on weekends.

Crap, crap, crap.

Crap! I cannot believe that the Ashley Madison data dump was the work of hackers who had moral objections to the company. Most hackers tend toward anarchism, and most anarchists aren't prudes. Yes, it is true that Ashley Madison is, in a sense, a scam site, since the "female" profiles probably include many fakes. (Bogus females are a problem on all dating sites.) But that fact should not lead us to presume that the hackers are real, or that their motives are as stated.

Ashley Madison's client base was commandeered by a group known only as the Impact Team, which has justified its actions in a singularly unconvincing manifesto. If the stated reason for the hack is not the real reason, then what's going on?

It appears that many of people who signed up for Ashley Madison's services used government email accounts. The political agenda should be obvious.

Thousands of clients using the affair-oriented Ashley Madison website listed email addresses registered to the White House, top federal agencies and military branches, a data dump by hackers revealed.

The detailed data, released Tuesday, will likely put Washington, D.C., on edge. The nation’s capital reportedly has the highest rate of membership for the site of any city.

The hackers were free to shape the list however they wished. As far as we know, the IT could have decided to protect the politicians they like, and to ruin any politicians they don't. The hackers may even have decided to frame prominent people who have never signed up with Ashley Madison. (I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Clinton's name pops up somewhere in this story, although I am certain that he would never use such a service. Who would believe his denials?)

Reddit users have found some telling irregularities in the torrents which contain the hacked data. For one thing, the torrents are of differing sizes.

There's a great deal of intra-party hate going on in conservative circles these days, so any Republicans embarrassed by this operation (example) may have been targeted by a conservative who favors a rival. Perhaps the term "cuckservative" was coined to prepare the way, psychologically, for this new form of political attack. Or is that idea too much of a stretch...?

More crap! Welcome to the wonderful world of bias and propaganda disguised as objective information:

A new report on the freedom of countries around the world ranks the United States 20th, putting countries like Chile and the United Kingdom ahead of the U.S.

People define freedom in differing ways. For example, FDR might have spoken about "freedom from hunger," whereas a libertarian would consider FDR's policies to be encroachments on freedom. So who came up with this report?

...the Cato Institute, Fraser Institute and the Swiss Liberales Institut, which created the study together.

The Cato Institute is, of course, a notorious libertarian think tank, originally called the Charles Koch Foundation. The Fraser institute is a notorious libertarian think tank in Canada, funded by the Koch brothers. The Liberales Institut of Zurich is devoted to promoting "classical liberalism" -- i.e., libertarianism. (So far, I can't find a Koch connection beyond the ideological overlap.)

In other words: The Daily Caller -- founded by Tucker Carlson and Dick Cheney's chief aide Neil Patel -- has just hit us with a shotgun blast of libertarian propaganda. 

Still MORE crap! Conservative Leon Wolf, writing in the Washington Post, argues that the Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to listen to the activists of Black Lives Matter:

That’s why I think #BlackLivesMatter is wasting its time pressing Democrats for answers, or action. The party of big government can’t meet their demands.

For starters, the Democratic presidential contenders have done an infamously bad job of responding to #BlackLivesMatter protesters who’ve attended their events. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former governor Martin O’Malley were practically heckled off the stage at the Netroots Nation conference after they were unable to effectively articulate, let alone posit, concrete solutions to protesters’ concerns. Former secretary of state and Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has been similarly panned by #BlackLivesMatter leaders.

The emphasis should be on asking: Why are police brought into hostile interactions with black people so often in the first place? It’s because of the big-government policies and practices of the supposedly liberal Democrats that the #BlackLivesMatter crowd is petitioning for help.

Don’t take my word for it; take the word of President Obama’s Department of Justice, which set forth, in painstaking detail, in its report on the practices of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department all the ways in which pressure to generate additional revenue to pay for the city’s expenses led the Ferguson police to attempt to maximize city revenue by meeting ticket quotas and goals.

As if Fox News has shown a whole lot of sympathy for black people who have been targeted by the police! As if Republicans have been upset by what happened to Freddie Gray, Michael Brown and Eric Garner! 

In the past, this humble blog has discussed the scurrilous tactics now being used by police departments to generate revenue. I have argued -- here and here -- that libertarian ideology created this ghastly situation.

Libertarians and conservatives are the ones who told us that we should not fund necessary city services by raising taxes on the affluent. Libertarians and conservatives were the ones who promoted "offender-based" financing -- that is, gouging people guilty of minor traffic offenses.

But what libertarians have done to black communities is even worse than that. Allow me to repeat my earlier words:

It's bad enough when libraries and parks are funded by what amounts to a shakedown operation targeting those least able to pay. But what Oliver discusses (at around the 8:45 mark [in the video embedded below]) is something much worse: The money goes to vampire capitalists who contribute nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to our society.

Taxpayers pay the police and the courts to force poor people to feed the vampire capitalists. The vampire capitalists grow fat, and the goods and services necessary to our society remain underfunded. Government actually spends more money to make the libertarian system function.

Libertarians keep telling us that private enterprise is always more efficient. Really? How the hell can anyone say that the old system was somehow less efficient than the legalized robbery inflicted by private probation companies?

The John Oliver segment embedded below explains the situation very well. Lefties sure as hell were not the ones who said that cops should transform traffic stops into revenue machines. That wasn't our big idea.

Only a foolish (or purchased) black activist would argue that black communities will be improved by Koch-funded politicians who want to privatize Social Security and rid the world of food stamps. It was the Republicans who fought tooth and nail to preserve redlining. It's the Republicans who want an end to affordable health care.

In a preceding post, we learned that the alleged "Black Lives Matter" activists who targeted Sanders were actually admirers of Sarah Palin.

What we are seeing here is a series of very devious propaganda operations. If you study the tactics used to undermine Allende in Chile, you may see certain parallels.

Dzhokhar's backpack

As regular readers know, I do not usually hold a high opinion of Alex Jones or of his associates. Even though Paul Craig Roberts is smarter than your average Jonesian, I question the reasoning displayed in his recent piece, which proclaims the innocence of accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev -- who has, incidentally, admitted his guilt.

As it turns out, Dzokhar's aunt Maret Tsarnaeva is a lawyer in the Kyrgyz Republic. With the aid of an American attorney, she has filed an amicus curiae brief in her nephew's case. Thanks to that brief, a number of FBI documents have been made public -- documents which, according to Roberts, prove Dzokhar's innocence.

Roberts:

The documents argue that on the basis of the evidence provided by the FBI, there is no basis for the indictment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The FBI’s evidence clearly concludes that the bomb was in a black knapsack, but the photographs used to establish Dzhokhar’s presence at the marathon show him with a white knapsack. Moreover, the knapsack lacks the heavy bulging appearance that a knapsack containing a bomb would have.

Let's take a closer look at this statement. These are among the photos which have been offered as evidence of Dzokhar's presence in the bombing area:

In the above photo, the boy outlined in blue was one of the victims. All sources agree that Dzokhar was wearing the white cap.

The photo below shows the post-explosion remains of the backpack.

Looks to me as though we are dealing with a backpack that is both white and black. I don't think that we can argue that the post-explosion backpack differs from the pre-explosion bag.

From Maret Tsarnaeva's filing:

Together, these plainly show that Dzhokhar was not carrying a large, nylon, black backpack, including a white-rectangle marking at the top, and containing a heavy pressure- cooker bomb, shortly before explosions in Boston on April 15, 2013, as claimed by the FBI and as alleged in the indictment for both explosions. On the contrary, these photo exhibits show unmistakably that Dzhokhar was carrying over his right shoulder a primarily white backpack which was light in weight, and was not bulging or sagging as would have been evident if it contained a heavy pressure-cooker bomb.

"Not bulging"? One need not be a professional photo analyst to see that the pack contains something with a girth substantially larger than the length of the baseball cap.

Amazon sells a standard cap that is 11 inches long. The FBI said that the bomb was constructed from a 6-quart Fagor pressure cooker, which is also an item sold by Amazon. According to the description, the cooker "Measures approximately 12 by 12 by 13 inches."

Roberts believes that the backpack would sag more noticeably if it contained this cooker, but I am not persuaded. I carry a backpack often -- especially when I have to carry home groceries. I doubt whether an outside observer could easily tell when my bag is filled with bread and eggs and when it is filled with canned goods. Backpack straps are not "stretchy": They look the same whether the burden is light or heavy.

I still suspect that we have not been told that full truth in this case: Oddities remain, and they deserve investigation. But our focus today is not on the case as a whole. Right now, we are looking at the argument presented by Paul Craig Roberts, which is hardly convincing.

His argument comes to this: An innocent Dzokhar was somehow convinced to visit the bombing site wearing a backback which contained something that was not a pressure cooker, even though it was the exact same 12"x12" size as a pressure cooker. Later, he would confess to being a bomber even though he really wasn't.

Seriously, does that scenario make sense to you?

Hallelujah

Absolutely brilliant. Here's the website. Yes, John Oliver's new church will accept actual cash donations. However, he makes it clear that the "church" will shut down soon and that all donations will be passed along to Doctors Without Borders.

I still have enough of the conspiracy crackpot in me to note that the preachers targeted by Oliver have "spooky" last names: John Tilton and Miles Copeland were among the more notorious operatives of a Certain Interesting Agency. Could family connections play a role here?

Although lists of the ten wealthiest televangelists do not agree, most such lists include a surprising number of Nigerians: Bishop David Oyedepo (who is not an actual bishop), Pastor E A Adeboye, Matthew Ashimolowo, Chris Oyakhilome and Temitope Joshua. That's half your top ten right there: All Africans. Why didn't Oliver target any of these guys for ridicule? I suspect that the visuals might have made his audience feel icky.

Understandable. But the ax of truth should swing at all deserving targets.

Why don't political candidates do this more often?

Interviewed by the NYT, Bernie Sanders was asked an inane question. Check out his response...

Do you think it’s fair that Hillary’s hair gets a lot more scrutiny than yours does? Hillary’s hair gets more scrutiny than my hair?

Yeah. Is that what you’re asking?

Yeah. O.K., Ana, I don’t mean to be rude here. I am running for president of the United States on serious issues, O.K.? Do you have serious questions?

I can defend that as a serious question. There is a gendered reason — When the media worries about what Hillary’s hair looks like or what my hair looks like, that’s a real problem. We have millions of people who are struggling to keep their heads above water, who want to know what candidates can do to improve their lives, and the media will very often spend more time worrying about hair than the fact that we’re the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people.

In 2004, Chris Matthews asked John Kerry "What's your favorite movie?" -- and later insisted that he had asked a serious question. There's always a way to rationalize anything.

We'd have a better country if both Republican and Democratic candidates brusquely -- even rudely -- told idiot interviewers to stop talking about nonsense.

Quick notes

Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This story is truly horrifying -- and no, I don't think that it's propaganda. (Although if you have evidence that it is, please pass it along.)

As I read the article, one question popped out at me: How could we have this level of detail about what al-Baghdadi has been doing and not be able to target him? I'm not a big fan of drones, but Obama has certainly authorized their use on less-deserving targets.

Bob Parry on the Great Neocon Comeback. Memories of the Iraq war disaster are making it difficult for the neocons to push the U.S. into war with Iran. Parry focuses on Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, a notorious booster of the Iraq debacle. Hiatt says that anyone who brings up his past is a meanie who won't play fair. On the topic of Iraq, Hiatt sounds like he's trying out for the broadway version of Duck Soup: "To war, to war, to war we're going to go..."

Hiatt also faults Obama for not issuing a serious war threat to Iran, a missing ultimatum that explains why the nuclear agreement falls “so far short.” Hiatt adds: “war is not always avoidable, and the judicious use of force early in a crisis, or even the threat of force, can sometimes forestall worse bloodshed later.”

Good god. This man is a maniac.

Why shouldn't we maintain the peace with Iran? The Iranians are not bellicose. The last time they started a war, men in this country were still wearing tricorner hats.

Parry reminds his readers of the shameful role Hiatt played in the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame affair: When Wilson and his wife would not go along with the Bush administration's program of deception, Hiatt made it his personal crusade to drive the couple out of DC. Why didn't Hiatt lose his job years ago? And why do criminally insane deception agents like Fred Hiatt continue to have listeners? Are memories really so short?

Emptywheel on Hillary. The always-superb Marcy Wheeler checks out the Hillary email story, and arrives at pretty much the same conclusions that I came to: This is a Nothingburger dipped in Nothingsauce on a Nothingseed bun, with a side order of fried Nothing. And a Coke Zero.

Again, nothing obviates all the blame that Hillary chose to rely on an unclassified email system, but it’s one thing if Hillary were sending Top Secret information across an unprotected server, and yet another thing if she received emails that might have been derived from Top Secret information, but were not marked as such or even evidently sourced from Top Secret information. Or even — given that some of the people and agencies in question aren’t entirely trustworthy when they make claims of secrecy — that publicly available information was deemed Top Secret.

At least according to the AP (in a story sourced to US officials, so potentially some people in DiFi’s immediate vicinity), that’s what happened.

Meet our new mascot

As regular readers know, we lost our beloved dog Bella (pictured to your right) in March of this year -- on National Puppy Day. We still put a flower on her grave every day. For more than ten years, she functioned as this blog's mascot. For more than fifteen years, she was my best friend.

Such a friend is, of course, irreplaceable. Yet happy circumstances have given this blog a new mascot -- an eleven year-old rat terrier named George (pictured below). His previous owner was forced to give him up. Since senior dogs are not easy to place, he was in danger of the pound.

When we found out about George's predicament, we were overjoyed to take him on board. He is one of the great canines -- quiet, intelligent, well-trained. Despite being a bit large for his breed, he still has the vim and vigor of a dog half his age. I have to admit that it was a little difficult to get used to a dog who bears so little resemblance to Bella -- and no doubt George found it hard to get used to us. But when he found out that we have a very lenient "human food" policy, he adapted to his new family rapidly.

Incidentally, the term "rat terrier" appears to have been coined by none other than Teddy Roosevelt. Just such a terrier lived at the White House during TR's time, ridding the presidential mansion of a seemingly intractable rat problem. There are those who say that rats returned to the White House after TR moved out. If these reports are true, Mr. Obama is free to borrow my dog -- as long as he promises not to eat my dog.

Speaking of fine dining: George now begs to be fed roughly twice an hour, in furtherance of his newfound ambition to become the fattest pet in all of Maryland. He is particularly fond of ravioli. This picture may be considered his "before" photo...

 

Follow up on Hillary, ISIS and more

I thought that the preceding post would attract attention. ISIS and chemical weapons: Who wouldn't be interested in that?

Surprise: Nobody cares. At least, nobody living outside of northern Iraq.

Maybe people are simply tired of reading about the wars in that region. An understandable reaction, that: The situation in the Middle East is usually grim and hope-resistant. Still, I urge you to read this brilliant Moon of Alabama post, which analyzes the latest made-in-America mythologizing about the Syrian war. MoA's "B" (not the same "b" who occasionally comments on this humble blog) is at the top of his game here. (Is B a he? I think so...)

I would also like to take another brief look at the domestic story that everyone seems to think is Big News. If you read nothing else about the Hillary Clinton email pseudoscandal, check out this important TalkLeft analysis. BigTentDemocrat made the some of the same points I had hoped to make, but he did a much better job of it than I would have.

Remember those golly-gee Top Seekrit emails which we're supposed to think are the most important leaks ever? The ones that have rightwingers screaming that Hillary Clinton is the new Kim Philby? Well, the most controversial of those emails is a discussion of a published news story about -- wait for it -- drones.

Drones are classified, right? Therefore, if you talk about drones, you are, in essence, discussing classified information. This is true even if you are chatting about that drone story in yesterday's Washington Post.

By that standard, this blog discusses classified topics nearly every day. So do many other blogs.

BTD refers to this AP story:

The officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity work in intelligence and other agencies. They wouldn't detail the contents of the emails because of ongoing questions about classification level. Clinton did not transmit the sensitive information herself, they said, and nothing in the emails she received makes clear reference to communications intercepts, confidential intelligence methods or any other form of sensitive sourcing.

To which BTD responds:

Let's review this again - (1) Clinton did not transmit the sensitive information herself and (2) nothing in the emails she received makes clear reference to communications intercepts, confidential intelligence methods or any other form of sensitive sourcing.

Frankly, this puts Clinton completely in the clear. This story SHOULD be over as far as Hillary is concerned.

Now let's turn to the latest NYT story about that email server.

Specifically, the inspector general told members of Congress that two emails should have been classified as top secret...

"Should have been." Meaning they weren't. Meaning that the classification was retroactive. Meaning that Hillary did nothing wrong.

Is the email scandal is a non-story? No. There is a story here, and it concerns our news media. Why do so many journalists fall for every single ginned-up anti-Clinton story that the Republicans concoct? Throughout the 1990s, newsfolk continually presented right-wing propaganda points as The Real Shit. They did this day after day, week after week, year after year. They still do it.

American journalism has crossed the line separating gullibility from culpability.

Let me once again state: There are legit reasons to be unenthusiastic about Hillary's candidacy. I didn't like much of what she did as SoS, and I still think that she should not have taken the gig. Domestic policy is her strength -- and by "her strength," I mean that's the area where she doesn't make me want to scream at my computer monitor every time she opens her mouth.

Where did ISIS get those chemical weapons? I give you the unspeakable theory...

There are credible reports that ISIS used chemical weaponry against the Kurds in Northern Iraq.

While reading this story, my mind immediately flashed on the August, 2013 sarin attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, an outrage which was immediately ascribed to Bashar Assad's military. At that time, only a few irresponsible oddballs, such as yours truly, dared to suggest that the real culprits were the anti-Assad rebels.

(The term ISIS was not much used then, but the rebels of that time included many warriors now fighting under the black banner.)

John Kerry assured the world that we irresponsible oddballs were wrong, and that only the Syrian army possessed the rocket launchers necessary for such an attack. Kerry's information came from a Human Rights Watch report -- a report which I read carefully, and which I considered very unpersuasive.

Obviously, the anti-Assad forces do possess rocket launchers, and no doubt had access to such weaponry in 2013. As I demonstrated in many posts published throughout that year, the rebels were getting supplies from outside nations which want to see Assad toppled. 

As we shall soon see, the question of "What happened in Ghouta in 2013?" has a direct bearing on the question of "What happened to the Kurds in 2015?" Thus, much of this post will make reference to the earlier event.

The Iraq theory. The big question that everyone is now asking is a simple one: How did ISIS get the chemical weaponry used against the Kurds? Here's one theory...

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "If they do possess these kind of weapons ... my guess is they're more likely to have gotten them as old weapons left over in Iraq from the old WMD program there than they were likely to obtain them in Syria in some kind of a hidden cache of the regime's."

I didn't say it was a good theory. In fact, I would classify this particular suggestion as pure bullSchiff.  

Adam, Adam, Adam...! The American military occupied Iraq, did it not? And the military scoured the place for anything that might be construed as a WMD, did it not? Do you seriously expect us to believe that the military left a bunch of nerve weapons just lying around where ISIS could snatch it all up? Seriously?

Everyone knows that the spooks control nearly everyone on the intel oversight committees. The fact that Schiff felt compelled to offer up such a preposterous theory tells us that something important is being covered up here.

By the end of this post, I will suggest a much likelier scenario -- one which you will not see discussed in mainstream news sources. But first, let's look at another popular suggestion.

Did ISIS get it from Assad? The Times of Israel has bypassed the bullSchiff in favor of a different explanation:

The official said the US was never able to verify the Bashar Assad regime had actually destroyed its stockpile of the nerve agent in 2014, and it could have been hidden away and wound up in the hands of Islamic State fighters instead.

Also see here:

ISIS could have gotten hold of mustard gas in Syria, where weapons inspectors suspect President Bashar al-Assad hid small stockpiles when he agreed to hand over or destroy his chemical munitions in 2014.

In fact, the destruction of the nerve agents occurred in 2014. Although the right-wing press has recently made the claim that some of Assad's chemical weapons escaped the notice of international inspectors (a claim not verified by objective sources), there is no evidence that the facility mentioned here fell into the hands of ISIS.

Mainstream journalists and pundits are trying very hard not to mention the possibility that the anti-Assad forces got hold of chemical weapons before the 2013 Ghouta attacks. This idea is considered unspeakable for one obvious reason: They don't want anything to upset their tidy little "blame Assad" scenario. They don't want you to suspect that the U.S. government -- not to mention our neocon-friendly press -- lied about whether the rebels had access to chemical weaponry at that time.

Nevertheless, the Great Forbidden Thought has wafted into the discussion on a nearly-subliminal level. It lurks in the background of this report:

A senior U.S. official told WSJ that they have "credible information" that a mustard gas attack occurred, although the specific place and number of casualties were not given.

The newspaper wrote that IS could have obtained the blistering agent in Syria, where the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad admitted to having large quantities of it in 2013, when it agreed to give up its chemical arsenal. The Journal said the Syria scenario "makes the most sense," but that there was still a possibility that the militants acquired the mustard gas in Iraq.

Media control. Many news articles about the recent chemical attack on the Kurds have referenced the 2013 Ghouta affair. If you carefully read current media references to the Ghouta attack, you may notice something extraordinary: The lack of an actor. Here's an example (from the afore-linked Times of Israel story):

Following a chemical weapon attack on a suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus in 2014 that killed hundreds of civilians, the US and Russia mounted a diplomatic effort that resulted in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government agreeing...

Yada yada yada. Notice that the wording does not actually say that Assad did it. The implication is there, but no actual culprit is named. Similarly, here:

In 2013, the United States threatened military intervention against Syria's government after sarin gas attacks that year killed hundreds of residents in Ghouta, a rebel-controlled suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus.

Again: No responsible party is named. And this is the case in news story after news story. Our journalists are displaying remarkable discipline.

Indeed, they are so very disciplined that they refuse to mention the fact (which we have known since early 2014) that Obama halted the rush to war with Syria because voices within the American intelligence community warned him that the "blame Assad" theory was probably wrong.

(Of course Assad did not do it: Simple logic tells us as much. An attack on civilians in Damascus could never have benefited Assad in any way. It would have been idiotic to stage a militarily useless chemical attack at a time when outside inspectors had just arrived in Damascus. From the start, the attack made logical sense only if understood as a false flag operation by the rebels. The tide of civil war had recently turned against them, and they hoped to prod the U.S. into joining their fight.)

Fake evidence. The only evidence "proving" Assad's responsibility for the Ghouta crime came from an alleged intercepted telephone call provided by Israel's notorious Unit 8200. The problem: Israel has been known to concoct this kind of evidence in the past.

For example, the Israelis fabricated evidence that Libya was responsible for the 1986 bombing of a discotheque in Germany. Acting on cleverly faked signals intelligence (relayed to the Americans by way of a device called a Trojan), Ronald Reagan launched an aerial attack on Libya.

The parallel to more recent events in Syria should be obvious.

The Turkish theory. Sy Hersh's bombshell report on the 2013 Ghouta attack has never been successfully countered.

Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal.

Sy points the finger at Turkey.

Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’

Did a lightbulb just go off over your head? I hope so. (The phrase "other Islamist rebel groups" means ISIS.)

In recent months, Erdoğan -- an ally of Israel, the Saudis and the United States -- has been making war on the continually-beleaguered Kurds. This is an appalling turn of events: The Kurds have been among the most effective opponents of ISIS. The Turkish government has pursued this war under various covers -- for example, Turkey has pretended that airstrikes against the Kurds were really intended as strikes against ISIS; somehow, by accident, the bombs fell on the wrong people. (Oopsie.)

Although NATO has supported Turkey, much of the world condemns Erdoğan's bellicosity. More to the point, the Turkish attacks have infuriated the government of Iraq. In case you have forgotten, we are supposed to be supporting the Iraqi government.

All of which brings us to one final theory of how ISIS got hold of the chemical weapons used against the Kurds of northern Iraq. It makes sense for Erdoğan to use ISIS as proxies in his war against the Kurds, does it not?

If Sy is right -- and I think he is -- then the Turks gave chemical weaponry to the anti-Assad rebels in 2013. If the trick worked then, why not do it again?

As always, our first and best question is Cui bono? If you want to know which state actor supplied ISIS with the chemical weapons which were against the Kurds, ask yourself one simple question: Which state actor wants to see Kurds get killed?

Of course, it would be foolish to expect our highly-disciplined media to mention this obvious possibility.