Year: 2014

What Do the FBI, and Joe DiMaggio Have in Common?

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An unprecedented streak.

The FBI has now found that all the shootings since 1993, all 150 151, investigated by the FBI, have found the FBI blameless.

Hoocoodanode:

Ending an interrogation in its investigation of the Boston Marathon bombing with a dead body and a host of new questions was not the sort of thing the FBI wanted.

But on May 22, an FBI agent shot Ibragim Todashev – a 27-year old former mixed-martial arts fighter and associate of one of the suspected bombers – seven times, killing him. The agent had just completed a lengthy interrogation of Todashev in his Orlando apartment, part of an inquiry into the already-dead bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. One of the bullets appears to have entered through the top of Todashev’s head.

The FBI’s story, doled out through anonymous leaks, changed several times in the weeks that followed. First, Todashev, who had voluntarily endured hours of questioning, lunged at the FBI agent with a knife, or even a sword. Then it was a length of pipe. Other accounts had him knocking over a table. At least one account held that Todashev was unarmed. The version that currently stands is that Todashev wielded a metal pole – or, perhaps, a broomstick.

Little is known about that mysterious pole-slash-broomstick: its heft, its dimensions, its use. Yet it is likely to be a major difference between vindication and damnation of the FBI’s handling of the case. A Florida prosecutor examining the case is expected to publish the results of an long-awaited investigation into Todashev’s death on Tuesday morning.

Unknowns accumulate in the Todashev shooting. Two Florida detectives reportedly aided the FBI interrogation, and their role during the shooting remains unclear. Florida’s autopsy report, available since July, was barred from release by the FBI. The bureau’s months of silence over the case have compounded the questions it faces.

But the FBI has already reached its conclusion. An internal FBI inquiry vindicated the agent, whose name is not public, months ago. That’s typical for the FBI – between 1993 and 2011, its agents fatally shot 70 people and wounded another 80, and the bureau found no major improprieties in any of those cases, according to records obtained by the New York Times last year.

………

The Florida prosecutor conducting that independent investigation, Jeffrey Ashton, batted away reports on Friday that he has already exonerated the special agent who shot Todashev. He still may, and the bureau has to be hoping he will. The worst outcome for the bureau in the Todashev shooting would be for Ashton to contradict its findings and effectively indict its integrity.

So, the FBI says that everything in hunky dory, and the subtext of this article is that they are leaning on the local prosecutor who is investigating locally.

Just lovely.

So Not a Surprise. The CIA F%$#ed Up, and then Covered it Up

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In Newsweek, of all places, we have Jeff Stein explaining part of why the CIA is trying to suppress and discredit the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture.

Rather unsurprising, torturer and tape destroyer Jose Rodriguez figures prominently in all of this:

The hotel bar TVs were all flashing clips of Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein denouncing the CIA for spying on her staff, when I met an agency operative for drinks last week. He flashed a wan smile, gestured at the TV and volunteered that he’d narrowly escaped being assigned to interrogate Al-Qaida suspects at a secret site years ago.

 “I guess I would’ve done it,” he said, implying you either took orders or quit. But everybody in the counterterrorism program knew what was going on in those places, he said, and he was glad the agency found something else for him to do at the last minute. “Look what’s happened.”

 Four years after Feinstein launched her probe of that interrogation program, her committee and the CIA are locked in a death-struggle over what can be released from the panel’s 6,300-page, still-classified report. The impasse is bringing renewed attention to statements by former CIA and FBI agents that buttress the committee’s all-but-official conclusion that the agency exaggerated the interrogation program’s successes and minimized its abuses.

 In early 2008, for example, the committee heard from Ali Soufan, one of the FBI’s top former counterterrorism agents, who has since gone public with his criticism of the enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs, that CIA contractors had used on top Al-Qaida captive Abu Zubaydah. “The staffers present were shocked,” he wrote in his memoir, The Black Banners. “What I told them contradicted everything they had been told by Bush administration and CIA officials. When the discussion turned to whether I could prove everything I was saying, I told them, ‘Remember, an FBI agent always keep his notes.’ “

 A Lebanese-American who was decorated by both the FBI and Defense Department for his counterterrorism work, Soufan laid out a case for the committee that CIA officials, chiefly Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA counterterrorism boss who ordered the destruction of interrogation videotapes, lied about the value of torturing detainees-to the point of altering the dates on documents to show a cause-and-effect that didn’t exist.

 “In this area, it’s not a question of memory but of factual record,” he later told the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson. “There are now thousands of pages of declassified memos and reports that thoroughly rebut what Mr. Rodriguez and others are now claiming. For example, one of the successes of the EITs claimed in the now declassified memos is that after the program began in August 2002, Abu Zubaydah provided intelligence that prevented José Padilla from detonating a dirty bomb on U.S. soil, and identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Rodriguez has been repeating this claim.

This is why the CIA is terrified.

They are not afraid that their immorality will be revealed, they are afraid that their incompetence and mendacity will be revealed.

They are afraid that meaningful oversight will reveal that there are no adults in the room, which will lead to ……… meaningful oversight.

Damn………

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The 2nd member of the Arisia founding “Gang of Five”, Mary Robison, just died.

It was at her New Years Day party where I made the joke that started the con.

I did not mean it seriously, honest. It was a John Swift-like (I wish) essay called, “A Modest Proposal on NESFA and Boskone.”

I never expected anyone to take it seriously.

Tom Fish died last year, so it’s just Chris Shuldiner, Brian Cooper, and me who are left.

I always figured that I would go first, even though I was the youngest (by only a LITTLE).

BTW, I just realized that the essay is not visible on “The Google”, so I am posting it here, where it will be indexed. (After the break)

I printed it out on a dot matrix printer, and seeing as how I do not have a dot matrix font on my blog, it is in Courier.

If you don’t get the context, which dates back to 1988 fandom bullsh%$ or so, count yourself lucky, and do not Google it.

A Modest Proposal

Concerning the Problems

with NESFA and Boskone

Matthew Saroff


Over the past few years, the character of Boskone has changed considerably. Some philistines have even suggested that the quality of the convention has declined. The official response on the part of NESFA has been to tell people who differ with them that they have the option of going elsewhere.

I would never consider it my place to disagree with an organization with the long and illustrious history of NESFA about the exclusive nature of their once preeminent science fiction convention, Boskone. They believe, and who are we to disagree, that it is their conven­tion, and that they have the right to redirect the focus of their convention.

We should be eager and happy to help this august group in their attempts to redefine their convention. For those who feel that they would prefer a conven­tion more similar to the old Boskone, an effort should be made to present these people with an alternative. This will get these unappreciative ruffians out of NESFA‘s hair.

We are obligated to NESFA for the service provided to the SF community by putting on Boskone all these years, and we should provide an alternative to all those ungrateful brutes who forget everything that NESFA has done for us.

Now comes the time to repay the favor. We should provide an alternative closer to what these ungrateful people want. A convention in Boston on Presi­dent’s Day, 16-19 February 1990, weekend with a focus closer to the focus of earlier Boskones. To stay in the proper E. E. “Doc” Smith spirit, we’ll call it Arisia.

We owe it to NESFA. They have their hands full trying to run Boskone, and having all those pesky fans are a problem. They harass the guests with ques­tions and autograph requests, crowd the events, eat the con suite food, drink the booze at the Boxboro Fandom party, and create a potential security problem are a problem for convention staff. We have a moral obligation to help them get rid of this problem. As shown by the Boskone XXV, NESFA is making a game effort to do this, but they need our help. Let’s help them get those fans out of Boskone and into Arisia. It’s the least that we can do to help them.

Notice:

IF YOU ARE CAUGHT WITH THESE DOCUMENTS YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO EAT THEM

(It works best if you delicately saute them with butter, garlic, and parsley.)

Out Like a Lamb, My Ass!

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They are predicting snow tomorrow.

Seriously.  It’s the Spring, and it’s f%$3ing Baltimore!!!

WWUS41 KLWX 250030
WSWLWX
URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
830 PM EDT MON MAR 24 2014

 DCZ001-MDZ004>007-009>011-013-014-016-VAZ030-031-040-042-050>056-
501-502-WVZ053-250830-
/O.NEW.KLWX.WW.Y.0020.140325T1000Z-140325T1900Z/
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA-FREDERICK MD-CARROLL-NORTHERN BALTIMORE-
HARFORD-MONTGOMERY-HOWARD-SOUTHERN BALTIMORE-PRINCE GEORGES-
ANNE ARUNDEL-CHARLES-WARREN-CLARKE-RAPPAHANNOCK-LOUDOUN-ORANGE-
CULPEPER-PRINCE WILLIAM/MANASSAS/MANASSAS PARK-FAIRFAX-
ARLINGTON/FALLS CHURCH/ALEXANDRIA-STAFFORD-SPOTSYLVANIA-
NORTHERN FAUQUIER-SOUTHERN FAUQUIER-JEFFERSON-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…WASHINGTON…FREDERICK…WESTMINSTER…
GAITHERSBURG…COLUMBIA…BALTIMORE…ANNAPOLIS…WALDORF…
FRONT ROYAL…LEESBURG…CULPEPER…MANASSAS…MANASSAS PARK…
FAIRFAX…ALEXANDRIA…FALLS CHURCH…FREDERICKSBURG…
WARRENTON…CHARLES TOWN
830 PM EDT MON MAR 24 2014

 WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM TO 3 PM EDT
TUESDAY
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON HAS
ISSUED A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW… WHICH IS IN EFFECT
FROM 6 AM TO 3 PM EDT TUESDAY.
* PRECIPITATION TYPE…SNOW.
* ACCUMULATIONS…1 TO 3 INCHES. THE HIGHEST AMOUNTS WILL BE NORTH
AND WEST OF INTERSTATE 95 TOWARD THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS.
* TIMING…SNOW WILL BEGIN EARLY TUESDAY MORNING. THE HEAVIEST
SNOW IS EXPECTED TUESDAY MORNING BEFORE TAPERING OFF DURING THE
AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING.
* TEMPERATURES…LOW TEMPERATURES TONIGHT IN THE MID TO UPPER 20S.
HIGH TEMPERATURES TUESDAY WILL BE IN THE MID TO UPPER 30S.
* WINDS…BECOMING SOUTHEAST AROUND 5 MPH.
* IMPACTS…ROADS WILL BE SNOW COVERED AND SLIPPERY TUESDAY
MORNING AND TRAVEL WILL BE DIFFICULT DURING THE MORNING COMMUTE.
MOST SURFACES WILL BECOME WET TUESDAY AFTERNOON WITH
TEMPERATURES RISING ABOVE FREEZING.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…
A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CAUSE
TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SLIPPERY ROADS AND LIMITED
VISIBILITIES…AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.
&&

This is completely whack!

I Did Not Know This

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I was aware that the Chinese had developed the JF-17 for Pakistan, and that it was dirt cheap, but I did no know that it is technically a MiG-21 derivative:

In 1989, the Chinese Chengdu Aerospace Corporation unveiled a major upgrade for its locally-made F-7 jet fighter, a licensed copy of the classic Soviet MiG-21. The new F-7 variant moved the engine air intake from the nose tip to the sides of the fuselage, making room in the nose for a more powerful radar.

Twenty-one years later, this upgrade—now named JF-17 Thunder—is flying combat missions with the Pakistani air force, so far its sole user. Further enhanced with a new wing, a cutting-edge intake design and a new, more powerful engine, the JF-17 is Pakistan’s most important front-line fighter—and a remarkable extension of a basic plane design dating back to the 1950s.

In essence, the JF-17 is the ultimate MiG-21. In a sector increasingly dominated by American-made stealth fighters, European “canard” planes and variants of the Russian Su-27, the JF-17 is an outlier—a highly evolutionary plane that doesn’t try to be revolutionary.

(emphasis original)

The report is that the agility is similar to that of early model F-16s, which is to say better than that of later, heavier, models.

I’m not sure how much of the original MiG-21 remains.  The fuselage immediately behind the cockpit looks vague similar, as does the landing gear arrangement, but the wing, horizontal tail, and vertical tail are completely different.

At $25 million a pop, it’s dirt cheap, and the new engine should improve range, though considering  the limited range of the MiG 21, this is not a high bar to clear.

It’s a lot smaller than most of the other fighters currently in production.  It’s the size of the Gripen, and smaller than the successor Gripen E/F, though both of those aircraft have significantly greater payload and range.

If I were a budget despot, it would be on my list.

The First Law of Holes is………

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If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. (This is generally attributed to British politician Denis Healey)

Well two weeks after Randa Jarrar wrote a bigoted screed on non-Arabs belly dancing, and was pilloried for this, (I called her a bigoted moron) she writes a followup where she doubles down on her repellent thesis.

Rather uncharitably, my first reaction was a bit of smug self-satisfaction when she appeared to specifically mention my blog, “Other men on racist blogs called me a moron.”

Needless to say, I stand by my analysis of her earlier post, and her most recent article further reinforces the truth behind the Denis Healey quote.

The interesting thing is that from an aesthetic perspective we generally agree on the aesthetics of Middle Eastern dance, we both agree that the westernized cartoonized version of Middle Eastern dance, what I call “Cabaret”, is crap. (Of course, 90% of everything is crap [Sturgeon’s law])

Further we would agree that many, probably most, of the public performances of Middle Eastern dance in the west are crap.

I would go a bit further, and note that the same applies to public performances in Egypt, Turkey, Lebanaon, Syria, etc.

But there is a difference between objecting to the Disneyfication of an art form and saying that some ethnic group should not be allowed to practice that art.

Furthermore in she goes there, and explicitly states that, “It’s not possible,” for her to be a racist, one would assume because she is an Arab.

Bigotry much?

Finally, one of the commenters on this thread posted a Scribd document describing the history of Middle Eastern dance.  It’ is worth a read.

I’ve attached it after the break.

Deep Thought

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When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard. Of course there will still be many people with intense, unsatisfied purposiveness who will blindly pursue wealth-unless they can find some plausible substitute. But the rest of us will no longer be under any obligation to applaud and encourage them.

— John Maynard Keynes
Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (1930)

H/t Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

The Koch Suckers at the Cato Institute Just Came Out Against Investor-State Dispute Settlements

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Yes, Cato has come out against the the ISDS, that secret court that allows private entities to sue countries under arbitrary rules slanted in favor of investors.

This is kind of like Ford recommending General Motors pickup trucks for consumers:

Faced with an increasingly vocal opposition to a landmark EU-US trade agreement, a growing number of backers of the deal are starting to ask a simple question: might the future of transatlantic trade be better served if one of its most controversial provisions was simply dropped?

 Almost nine months after negotiations opened with great hope and fanfare, opponents of the mooted Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, are rallying against a plan that would allow private investors to use the pact to sue governments if they felt local laws threatened their investment.
Environmentalists worry that it would allow big US oil companies to challenge France’s anti-fracking laws and other environmental regulations, while consumer groups fret that it would open the EU’s sacrosanct ban on genetically modified organisms to a challenge from American agribusiness.

 The concerns in Europe over the inclusion of an “investor-state dispute settlement”, or ISDS, mechanism grew so loud earlier this year that Karel De Gucht, the EU’s trade commissioner, announced he would suspend negotiations on the relevant text to hold public consultations.

 But in recent weeks, as both sides have been preparing for Monday’s resumption of negotiations in Brussels, the opposition has spread beyond the traditional sceptics.

 In a paper released last week, Daniel Ikenson, director of the trade programme at the conservative Cato Institute, argued that the investor protection measure had become too toxic. And that in order to defuse the growing opposition, negotiators should simply drop what seemed like a superfluous provision.

 “ISDS is not even essential to the task of freeing trade. So why burden the effort by carrying needless baggage?” Mr Ikenson wrote in his paper, which called for the US to drop ISDS provisions from its push for a 12-country Pacific Rim deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as well.

Cato, and the Kochs, are all about enforcing the primacy of the holders of capital over that of democratically elected government, so this turn around is a big deal, and it’s a good thing.

In an era of historically low tariffs, these increasingly anti-sovereignty provisions in trade deals are being viewed with well justified suspicion.

The old argument, “Because ……… Free Trade,” is simply no longer enough to justify trade deals with draconian IP and investor protections.

It’s a welcome side effect of the financial meltdown.

Oh Crap

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Russia has annexed the Crimea.

This is going to be a complete clusterf%$3 for everyone involved, particularly the people of the Ukraine, about whom all the actors profess to care.

There is a lot of blame to allocate:

  • Some of it goes to Vladimir Putin, because, after all, he is the one sending troops.
  • Some of it also goes to the EU, which is so hell bent on expansion that it ignored the nature of its premature attempts to bring the Ukraine into its its orbit because ……… Europe.
  • Viktor Yanukovych for his abject corruption and venality.
  • Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko for their abject corruption and venality, which is what got Yanukovych elected.
  • The oligarchs, because ……… oligarchs.

That being said, the decision to support and bolster the Fascists in the Svoboda party and the Right Sector militia, and make them the tip of the spear in the protests that drove Yanukovych from power after a deal had already been cut, tripping every switch in Russian psyche, that wasn’t any of them.

That was us.  That was neocon Victoria “F%$# the EU” Nuland and our State Department, and our CIA, and our front groups like the National Endowment for Democracy that put the Fascists in control of the defense and interior portfolios in the new government.

The Neocons have been wrong about everything since before they were Republicans, when they were staffers for Scoop Jackson’s (D-WA) staff, and yet they continue to drive our foreign policy decisions.

Where are the “Adults in the Room” who are supposed to keep the metaphorical firearms out of the metaphorical hands of metaphorical children (neocons)?

Theoretically, Barack Obama, who won the primaries, and later election as president, over his opposition to “stupid wars”, and so should be keeping these people’s hands away from the reigns of power.

The fact that Nuland was promoted from spokesman to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs by Secretary of State John Kerry, but Obama is in charge, and the decision to place a former Cheney aide in such a position is ultimately his decision.

Or, to stretch a metaphor to its breaking point, the Cossacks work for the Czar, which is kind of ironic, because the Cossacks actually come from the Ukraine.

    And I Would have Gotten Away With it Too, if it Weren’t for You Meddling Voters

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    The very rich seem to think that democracy is a drag, because it gets in the way of their making even more money by privatizing essential public functions:

    The newest bit of “wisdom” for public education comes to us from Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings, who is a big charter school supporter and an investor in the Rocketship Education charter school network. At a meeting of the California Charter Schools Association on March 4, he said in a keynote speech that the problem with public schools is that they are governed by elected local school boards. Charter schools have boards that are not elected and, according to his logic, have “a stable governance” and that’s why “they constantly get better every year.”

     Here’s a transcript of part of the Hastings speech, published on stoprocketship.com (and you can watch the video below):

    And so the fundamental problem with school districts is not their fault, the fundamental problem is that they don’t get to control their boards and the importance of the charter school movement is to evolve America from a system where governance is constantly changing and you can’t do long term planning to a system of large non-profits…The most important thing is that they constantly get better every year they’re getting better because they have stable governance — they don’t have an elected school board. And that’s a real tough issue. Now if we go to the general public and we say, “Here’s an argument why you should get rid of school boards” of course no one’s going to go for that. School boards have been an iconic part of America for 200 years. So what we have to do is to work with school districts to grow steadily, and the work ahead is really hard because we’re at 8% of students in California, whereas in New Orleans they’re at 90%, so we have a lot of catchup to do…So what we have to do is continue to grow and grow… It’s going to take 20-30 years to get to 90% of charter kids….And if we succeed over the next 20 or 30 years, that will be one of the fastest rates of change ever seen around the world for a large system, it’s hard. [applause]

    Actually, all charter schools don’t have stable governance and all of them aren’t getting better every year (plenty close because of their lousy governance) and even charter advocates have called for changes to improve governance structures. What Hastings is suggesting is that democratic elections themselves create unacceptable instability in governance of public education.

    Note that Hastings has invested millions in Rocketship charger schools, and while they claim to to be a not for profit, stoprocketship.com does provide numerous links that seem to indicate that much of their activities are structured so as to provide profits for its principals and those who make contributions.

    No wonder Reed Hastings thinks that voters are annoying.  It makes the grifting too hard.

    Note that this is not limited to education, where charter schools do not (when comparing apples to apples) outperform the public school system, and where in the extreme case (New Orleans 90% charters) we are seeing increasing cases of malfeasance and misfeasance requiring greater oversight.

    It also applies to things like trade deals, or the Simpson-Bowles commission.

    Even if this actually resulted in good policy, it would be wrong, but when you look at things like NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP, TTIP, etc., it is clear that all it does is that it creates an orgy of corruption and rent seeking.

    When you decide to take democracy out of the mix, and run this stuff “like a business”, someone gets the profit, and ain’t the taxpayer.

    Rupert Murdoch is Insane

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    I am not referring to Murdoch’s recent meltdown over the sponsors dropping the St. Patrick’s day parade for their gay ban. (The fact that the quintessential Irish brewer, Guinness, has dropped the parade amuses me.)

    Rather I am referring to the fact that Matt Groening has revealed that Murdoch was considering suing the producers of The Simpsons over their parody of a Fox News crawl:

    Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel threatened to sue the makers of the Simpsons over a spoof news ticker, the show’s creator Matt Groening has claimed.

    Mr Groening said Fox News raised the unlikely prospect of suing a show broadcast by its sister channel, Fox Entertainment, because it wanted to stop the Simpsons parodying its famously anti-Democratic party agenda.

    The alleged row centred on a parody of Fox News’ rolling news ticker, which included headlines such as “Do Democrats cause cancer?”

    Mr Groening said the news channel backed down because it would have caused Fox to bring a lawsuit against itself.

    “Fox said they would sue the show and we called their bluff because we didn’t think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. We got away with it,” Mr Groening told National Public Radio in the US.

    “But now Fox has a new rule that we can’t do those little fake news crawls [tickers] on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it’s real news,” he added on NPR’s Fresh Air programme.

    I am so reassured that a media magnate billionaire who is one white Persian cat away from being a Bond villain is wasting his time on this sh%$.

    Thank You Victoria Nuland

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    Thanks to neocon support right-wing nationalists Ukraine, courtesy of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, Ur-neocon Robert Kagan’s wife, a deal got killed, and there was coup in the Ukraine, followed by anti-ethnic Russian legislation, which was in turn followed by the Russian occupation of the Crimea.

    Well, now we have an overwhelming vote for the Crimea to join Russia:

    Russian state media said Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to break with Ukraine and join Russia on Sunday, as Kiev accused Moscow of pouring forces into the peninsula and warned separatist leaders “the ground will burn under their feet”.

    With over half the votes counted, 95.5 percent had chosen the option of annexation by Moscow, the head of the referendum commission, Mikhail Malyshev, said two hours after polls closed. Turnout was 83 percent, he added – a high figure given that many who opposed the move had said they would boycott the vote.

    Western powers and leaders in Kiev denounced it as a sham.

    Underlining how Moscow’s military takeover of the peninsula two weeks ago has driven Russia and the West into a crisis with echoes of the Cold War, Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama spoke by telephone and, according to the Kremlin, the Russian and U.S. presidents agreed on a need to cooperate to stabilize Ukraine.

    This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and Victoria “F%$# the EU” Nuland, and those who have decided to employ her in (Obama, Clinton, Kerry) need to realize that neocon triumphulism has been a recipe for a US foreign policy disaster.

    I’m not saying that neocons should not be employed by the State Department, but I am saying that they should not be put in positions of authority.

    Witness how we are now repeating the South Ossetia debacle all over again.

    It’s like giving an AK-47 to a hyperactive 6-year old child.

    That’s Gonna Leave a Mark (Paul Ryan Edition)

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    Paul Krugman serves a can of whup ass on Paul Ryan for his racist dog whistles:

    There are many negative things you can say about Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and the G.O.P.’s de facto intellectual leader. But you have to admit that he’s a very articulate guy, an expert at sounding as if he knows what he’s talking about.

     So it’s comical, in a way, to see Mr. Ryan trying to explain away some recent remarks in which he attributed persistent poverty to a “culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working.” He was, he says, simply being “inarticulate.” How could anyone suggest that it was a racial dog-whistle? Why, he even cited the work of serious scholars — people like Charles Murray, most famous for arguing that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. [As an aside, when he was a senior in high school, Charles Murray burned a cross next to a police station, which sort of describes his whole career since then] Oh, wait.

     Just to be clear, there’s no evidence that Mr. Ryan is personally a racist, and his dog-whistle may not even have been deliberate. But it doesn’t matter. He said what he said because that’s the kind of thing conservatives say to each other all the time. And why do they say such things? Because American conservatism is still, after all these years, largely driven by claims that liberals are taking away your hard-earned money and giving it to Those People.

     Indeed, race is the Rosetta Stone that makes sense of many otherwise incomprehensible aspects of U.S. politics.

    Krugman makes a point that needs to be made.  Ever since the days of Barry Goldwater’s Southern Strategy, the Republican party has aggressively embraced racists and racism, so the the dialogue within the GOP is permeated with racism.

    So he said something that makes perfect sense within a political party that is lacking in, “mindful human beings,” to quote what Ronald Reagan, Jr. said about Dick Cheney, but it was viewed with horror by much of the rest of humanity.

    And then there is Timothy Egan, who observes that Ryan, who frequently makes hay of the fact that his great-great-grandfather fled the Irish potato famine, which was a product of near-genocidal British policies, which were driven from the Victorian concerns about fostering dependency, which is exactly the same point that he makes when assaulting the social safety net:

    In advance of St. Patrick’s Day, I went time traveling, back to the 1840s and Ireland’s great famine. On one side of the Irish Sea was Victorian England, flush with the pomp and prosperity of the world’s mightiest empire. On the other side were skeletal people, dying en masse, the hollow-bellied children scrounging for nettles and blackberries.

     A great debate raged in London: Would it be wrong to feed the starving Irish with free food, thereby setting up a “culture of dependency”? Certainly England’s man in charge of easing the famine, Sir Charles Trevelyan, thought so. “Dependence on charity,” he declared, “is not to be made an agreeable mode of life.”

     And there I ran into Paul Ryan. His great-great-grandfather had fled to America. But the Republican congressman was very much in evidence, wagging his finger at the famished. His oft-stated “culture of dependency” is a safety net that becomes a lazy-day hammock. But it was also England’s excuse for lethal negligence.

     There is no comparison, of course, between the de facto genocide that resulted from British policy, and conservative criticism of modern American poverty programs.

     But you can’t help noticing the deep historic irony that finds a Tea Party favorite and descendant of famine Irish using the same language that English Tories used to justify indifference to an epic tragedy.

    ………

     On Wednesday, he went further, using the language of racial coding. This, after he told a story of a boy who didn’t want his free school lunch because it left him with “a full stomach and an empty soul.” The story was garbage — almost completely untrue.

     “We have this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” In other words, these people are bred poor and lazy.

     Where have I heard that before? Ah, yes — 19th-century England. The Irish national character, Trevelyan confided to a fellow aristocrat, was “defective.” The hungry millions were “a selfish, perverse, and turbulent” people, said the man in charge of relieving their plight.

    Ouch.

    I Don’t Know Sh%$ About This

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    I am referring, of course, to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

    I do not know what happened. I cannot separate the wheat from the chaff from the various reports.

    So, unlike many blogs, as well as Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow, I’m going to keep my f%$#ing mouth shut, as opposed to speculating on what happened.

    Once there is a report, I may have some thoughts, but right now I admit that I am without a clue on this.

    If the Gripen Were in the US Inventory, It Would Be a World Beater

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    We are getting some new details on the updated Saab Gripen, and its a good example of what happens when you take procurement away from the generals, and give it to procurement professionals like the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV): (paid subscription required)

    Saab, its Swedish air force customer and Selex-ES have disclosed new details of the JAS 39E Gripen fighter, which has been in full development for just over a year following a six-year risk-reduction and demonstration effort. The JAS 39E is a new aircraft in detail, with only a few structural or systems components in common with the current JAS 39C/D, but it shares enough with its predecessor to take full advantage of weapon-integration experience and uses an evolved version of the C/D’s software.

     Compared with earlier Gripen variants, the JAS 39E has a higher gross weight and can carry 2,400 lb. more internal fuel, mostly due to a redesigned main landing gear that retracts into underwing bulges rather than the body. The nose gear has also been changed, from a twin-wheel unit to a larger single wheel that is compatible with emergency arrester cables on runways. The main structure has been redesigned with continuous wing-fuselage frames that extend to the inboard wing pylons, where the outer wings are attached, and the fuselage contours have been changed, partly to accommodate more fuel. However, the redesign has reduced the airframe’s proportion of the empty weight, boosting useful load.

     The JAS 39E will be able to engage stealth targets with a fused, multispectral sensor suite (see article below), according to program officials. It will be able to cruise at Mach 1.25 without using afterburner, and will enter service in 2018 with a full suite of weapons including the MBDA Meteor ramjet-powered air-to-air missile (which enters service next year on the JAS 39C/D). The Swedish air force’s fixed-price contract for 60 complete aircraft, converted from JAS 39Cs but with new engine, avionics and primary structure, equates to a flyaway price of $43 million.

    The JAS 39E is not a classically stealthy aircraft, but the development contract stipulates a significantly lower radar cross-section (RCS) than the JAS 39C. In conjunction with the all-new Saab-developed electronic warfare system, which uses gallium nitride antenna technology and is described as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensor in its own right, and the new Selex-ES Brite Cloud expendable active decoy, the reduced RCS is expected to allow the fighter to survive against advanced threats, including the Sukhoi T-50 fighter and “double-digit” surface-to-air missiles, while avoiding the cost and risk of an F-35-type stealth configuration.

    The first customers, Sweden and Switzerland, are buying only single-seat aircraft, but codevelopment of the two-seat JAS 39F is being discussed with Brazil, which selected the new Gripen to reequip its fighter force in December.

     The JAS 39E is intended to have a lower acquisition cost than the JAS 39C, despite its greater capability, and to have a lower operating cost than any other fighter. The Swedish air force reports an hourly operating cost of $7,500 for the JAS 39C, including fuel. For development costs (also covered by a fixed-price contract), Saab’s goal is to spend only 60% as much as it would have cost using the same tools and processes that were used on the JAS 39C.

    ………

    Gripen Upgrade

    		JAS 39C JAS 39E
    Empty weight, lb. 13,000 less than 14,000
    Internal fuel, lb. greater than 5,000 greater than7,400
    Max takeoff weight, lb. 30,900 36,400
    Engine Volvo RM12 GE F414-GE-39E
    Intermediate/Max thrust, lb. 12,150/18,100 14,400/22,000
    Supercruise No Mach 1.25
    Radar Mechanical scan AESA
    IRST No Yes
    Cockpit display 3—6 X 8 in. 1—8 X 20 in.

    Interestingly, they accomplish this with a remarkably small amount of commonality with the prior models.

    For the upgrade that they offer from the “C” to the “E”, they will, “retain almost none of the previous airframe, but will reuse parts of its fuel and air systems, plus its ejection seat, windshield, canopy and outer wing elevons.”

    They will be producing a completely new aircraft, one that is more capable than its predecessor, with better avionics, more payload, more performance, more range, and lower purchase and operating costs.

    What’s more, it looks that through sensor fusion they may achieve some fairly impressive anti-stealth performance: (Paid subscription required)

    New sensors being developed for the JAS 39E and close to starting flight tests on the JAS 39-7 Gripen Demo testbed will be able to detect low-radar-cross-section (RCS) targets, and will provide the pilots in a Gripen formation with a new level of situational awareness, according to Bob Mason, Selex-ES marketing director for advanced sensors.

    The JAS 39E will have three Selex-ES sensors. The Raven ES-05 active, electronically scanned array radar (AESA), developed by the company’s Edinburgh unit, will be the first production AESA to be mounted on a “repositioner,” a rotating mount that gives the radar a ±100-deg. field of view around the nose. The Skyward-G infrared search and track (IRST) system (from Nebbiano, Italy) is based on experience with the Eurofighter Typhoon’s Pirate IRST and Selex-developed land- and sea-based IRSTs. The fighter also has a new identification friend-or-foe (IFF) system with three electronically steerable antenna arrays, which matches the radar’s range and field of view.

    The three main sensors will cue one another automatically to display to pilots a fused picture of airspace around the fighter; it will also be fused with the JAS’s new electronic-warfare system. Finally, sensor data can be shared between Gripens in a flight via data link.

    One of the interesting things is that they use “kinetic ranging” to get range on target through the IR sensors, where, “the aircraft performs a weaving maneuver and the range is determined by the change in azimuth angle to the target—or the IRSTs on two aircraft can triangulate the target over the TAU-Link.” (The data network that Gripens share).

    Notice how the Swedes, and Saab, have gone pretty much in the opposite direction that the US did on the F-22 and F-35:

    • Segregated as opposed to integrated software.
    • Keeping cost as a primary consideration as opposed to bleeding edge.
    • Seeing the planes as integrated into an open battlefield network, as opposed to being data roach motels.  (Data goes in, but it doesn’t come out)
    • Using existing technology wherever possible. 

    The progress of the Gripen is an example of how defense procurement can work, and how our defense procurement doesn’t work.