Month: May 2015

Obama Claims That Fast Track Will Not Kill Dodd-Frank. Canadian Files NAFTA Complaint to Kill Volker Rule

No Comments

Obama calls the claim lubricious, but the government of Canada has moved to exempt its own bonds from the Volker Rule:

In her attacks on Obama’s pending trade deals, Elizabeth Warren has argued that could undermine US financial regulations like Dodd Frank. The Administration has taken to trying to dismiss Warren as not knowing what she was talking about. More skillful defenders of the traitorous trade deals took the tact of saying that Warren could in theory be right, but the odds of her fears playing out were so remote as to not be worth worrying about.

In a long, careful article in the Nation yesterday, George Zornick explains even with the limited information that we have now about the contents of proposed treaties like the TPP and its ugly European step-sister, the TTIP, Warren’s worries are valid. ………

………

But an example of Warren’s concerns came out of left field yesterday, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

A U.S. rule that prohibits banks from taking risky bets with their own money violates the North American Free-Trade Agreement because it bans U.S. banks from trading triple-A-rated Canadian government debt, Canada’s finance minister said Wednesday…
Canadian concerns about the Volcker rule’s treatment of sovereign debt aren’t new. In 2012, Canada joined European countries and Japan in raising concerns about the law’s reach..

Mr. [Joe] Oliver noted that the Volcker rule reflects concerns about the credit standing of some foreign securities. That concern doesn’t apply to Canada, he said, because Canada’s credit rating is better than the U.S. government and U.S. municipalities…

“I believe—with strong legal basis—that this rule violates the terms of the Nafta agreement,” Mr. Oliver told a securities industry audience in New York that included the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Bruce Heyman. “I hope the United States administration sees that changing the Volcker rule is in its own best interests and that of its biggest trading partner.”

Yep, clearly Obama was right to portray Warren as a hysterical woman over the possibility of the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process will never be used to roll back financial regulations.

When juxtaposed with how Mitch McConnell crowing about how a future Republican President will use Fast Track to run impose the Republican agenda:

If we had a Republican president right now, not a single Democrat would vote for Trade Promotion Authority. So what I’ve said to my members, if we want the next Republican president, who we hope will be sworn in less than two years from now, to have a chance to do trade agreements with the rest of the world, this bill is about that president as well as this one.

Fast Track, the TPP, and the TTIP are seen by the Republicans as a weapon to weild.

Achilles Emerges from His Tent

No Comments

Saying his “desire to serve is stronger than ever,” Democrat Russ Feingold announced Thursday a bid for his old U.S. Senate seat against the Republican who defeated him four and a half years ago — Ron Johnson.

A Johnson-Feingold race would be a rare rematch of Senate opponents, offer voters a stark ideological contrast and easily rank as one of the top Senate races in the country in 2016, fiercely contested by both parties.

Feingold made the announcement in a short video shot at his Middleton home, saying he wanted to “bring back to the U.S. Senate strong independence, bipartisanship and honesty.”

He did not mention Johnson in the video or lay out his campaign message in any detail. He said he was focused on the worries people in Wisconsin have about “their economic well-being.” He also raised a familiar Feingold theme — the role of money in the political process.

“People tell me all the time that our politics in Washington are broken and that multimillionaires, billionaires and big corporations are calling all the shots. They especially say this about the U.S. Senate. And it’s hard not to agree,” Feingold said.

I would expect a Democratic pickup here.

Ron Johnson won in a Republican wave year, and he was to some degree an unknown quantity.

Now, he is known as one of the stupidest guys in the Senate, as well as being a teabagger.

Feingold should have run against Walker in the recall, but he was brooding in his tent at the time.

Sy Hersh’s Bin Laden Story Is Looking a Bit Less Fantastical

No Comments
I mentioned yesterday that Seymour Hersh’s account of the killing of Osama bin Laden, which is at siginficant variance with the official “Zero Dark Thirty” version was a potential bomb shell, but (at least initially) it was a bit light on sourcing.

Well, today, we have some more data points that seem to point to his story being accurate, at least in part.

First, we have a report from NBC saying that there was a Pakistani source inside the country’s state security apparatus:

Intelligence sources tell NBC News that in the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a retired Pakistani military intelligence officer helped the CIA track him down.

 While the Pakistani intelligence asset provided vital information in the hunt for bin Laden, he did not provide the location of the al Qaeda leader’s Abottabad, Pakistan compound, sources said.

 Three sources also said that some officials in the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.

 The asset was evacuated from Pakistan and paid reward money by the CIA, sources said. U.S. officials took pains to note he was one of many sources who provided help along the way, and said that the al Qaeda courier who unwittingly led them to bin Laden, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, remained the linchpin of the operation.

 The U.S. government has always characterized the heroic raid by Seal Team Six that killed bin Laden as a unilateral U.S. operation, and has maintained that the CIA found him by tracking the courier.

 The new revelations do not cast doubt on the overall narrative that the White House began circulating within hours of the May 2011 operation. The official story about how bin Laden was found was constructed in a way that protected the identity and existence of the asset, who also knew who inside the Pakistani government was aware of the Pakistani intelligence agency’s operation to hide bin Laden, according to a special operations officer with prior knowledge of the bin Laden mission.

NBC qualifies as a reputable source, and this appears to be confirmation of a part of Hirsh’s story.

It should be noted though, that this omission from the official story might very well be an issue of “Sources and Methods” as well as diplomatic reality, both of which would mitigate against revealing the complicity of Pakistani security.

What’s more, this is precisely the sort of stuff that Hersh would uncover.

It’s significant, and embarrassing, and makes authorities look far less heroic, which history shows to be Hersh’s favorite kind of reporting.

Another interesting data point is that another reporter,  R. J. Hillhouse, is claiming that he took her story without attribution:

Seymour Hersh’s story, “The Killing of Bin Laden,” in the London Review of Books has a fundamental problem: it’s either plagiarism or unoriginal.

If it’s fiction–as some have implied, it’s plagiarism. If it’s true, it’s not original. The story was broken here on The Spy Who Billed Me four years ago, in August 2011:

“Bin Laden Turned in by Informant — Courier Was Cover Story”

“Questions Raised by Real Story of How US Found Bin Laden”

On August 7, 2011, I wrote, among other things:

………

I have had great respect for Seymour Hersh, arguably one of the greatest investigative journalists of our time. I do not believe his story is fiction. I trust my sources–which were clearly different than his. I am, however, profoundly disappointed that he has not given credit to the one who originally broke the story.

Hillhouse has writeen extensively on the US state security apparatus, including stories on outsourcing of intelligence activities that have drawn responses from the Director of National intelligence.

So, we have confirmation from NBC that someone inside Pakistan’s intelligence establishment came to the administration at least a year before the raid, and two very similar accounts of the events of May 2, 2011 which appear to have been derived from different sources.

What’s more, according to what appears to be an interview with Hillhouse in The Intercept, the account of SEALS throwing bin Laden’s body, or body parts, out of a helicopter because they believed that the official story was going to be a drone strike, was something that she had been told by one source, but could not confirm, which provides some additional credibility to both accounts:

Hillhouse also claims that one of her sources told her a particular detail that she did not include in 2011 because she could not confirm it: that the Navy SEALs threw bin Laden’s body out of the helicopter while traveling over the Hindu Kush mountains from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Hersh’s story includes an assertion from his main source that “during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains.” While this seems bizarre in retrospect, it would be plausible if the SEALs had believed at the time that the Obama administration planned to say publicly that bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike.

Hillhouse believes that “Everything that [Hersh] has said has been spot on” but “You can’t help but notice that everything he is saying in the story, which is true, was first broken by me.”

So this account is definitely plausible.

The journalist “debunking” at this point seems to be loosely sourced accusations that Hersh has gone off the deep end.

The lesson here is that blithely dismissing reporting from Seymour Hersh is not a good idea.

His reporting, at the very least, merits serious due diligence by anyone following that event.

Shoot Me Now

No Comments

Caribou Barbie, aka Sarah Palin has said that she is seriously interested in running for President in 2016:

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told The Washington Post in an interview Friday that she is “seriously interested” in running for the White House in 2016.

“You can absolutely say that I am seriously interested,” Palin said, when asked to clarify her thinking about a possible presidential bid.

My brain hurts.

This is bad for the Republicans, and bad for the country.

The only people to benefit by this are political satirists.

It Looks Like I Wasn’t the Only One Who Thought That Obama’s Attitude toward Elizabeth Warren Was Sexist

No Comments

It turns out that the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, Senator Sherrod Brown, found Obama’s statements about Warren and the TPP dismissive in a way that he never would be to male members of congress:

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown threw a grenade into the ongoing war of words between Sen. Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama, a war that reached new heights with Tuesday’s dramatic setback of Obama’s trade agenda in the Senate.

Brown, one of the top Democratic leaders of the uprising against Obama’s trade push, criticized the president for what the senator saw as “disrespectful” comments toward Warren and suggested that Warren’s gender may have played a role.

When asked how Obama was being disrespectful of the Massachusetts Democrat, Brown replied: “I think by just calling her ‘another politician.’” He continued, “I’m not going to get into more details. I think referring to her as first name, when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps? I’ve said enough.”

Particularly when juxtaposed with a former staffer saying of the Obama White House that, “It actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women,” and his “Sweetie” comment to a female reporter, I think that the burden of proof must be on the President, and not Mr. Brown.

And now Obama, though his proxy White House press secretary Josh Earnest, is not just asking for an apology from Senator Brown, but is insisting that it inevitable that he will eventually apologize.

The word, “Whiny Bitch,” is completely inadequate to describe this.

We Need to Put This on a T-Shirt, and Have People Wear It Whenever Jeb Speaks

No Comments

Less than a week ago, Jeb Bush called his brother, George W., one of his closest foreign policy advisers, and said that he would have invaded Iraq in 2003 as well.

Today, he was giving a speech at a small gathering, and Ivy Ziedrich, who appears to be very sharp said “Your Brother Created ISIS.”

The whole exchange is telling:

“Your brother created ISIS,” the young woman told Jeb Bush. And with that, Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student, created the kind of confrontational moment here on Wednesday morning that presidential candidates dread.

Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, had just concluded a town-hall-style meeting when Ms. Ziedrich demanded to be heard. “Governor Bush,” she shouted as audience members asked him for his autograph. “Would you take a student question?”

Mr. Bush whirled around and looked at Ms. Ziedrich, who identified herself as a political science major and a college Democrat at the University of Nevada.

She had heard Mr. Bush argue, a few moments before, that America’s retreat from the Middle East under President Obama had contributed to the growing power of the Islamic State. She told the former governor that he was wrong, and made the case that blame lay with the decision by the administration of his brother George W. Bush to disband the Iraqi Army.

“It was when 30,000 individuals who were part of the Iraqi military were forced out — they had no employment, they had no income, and they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons,” Ms. Ziedrich said.

She added: “Your brother created ISIS.”

Mr. Bush interjected. “All right. Is that a question?”

Ms. Ziedrich was not finished. “You don’t need to be pedantic to me, sir.”

“Pedantic? Wow,” Mr. Bush replied.

Then Ms. Ziedrich asked: “Why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East when it’s pointless wars where we send young American men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism? Why are you spouting nationalist rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?”

What Ms. Ziedrich said both true and a devastating indictment of Jeb’s and Dubyah’s foreign policy chops.

It’s not just the family thing here.  Jeb Bush described his brother as his most important foreign policy adviser, and he has said, even knowing what we know now, he would have invaded Iraq.

This man should not be a pastry chef.

The Coveted “Biggest Asshole in Silicon Valley” Endorsement., Marco Rubio Haz It

No Comments

I am referring, of course, to Larry Ellison, even if one ignores the persistent rumors of sexual harassment at Oracle, who will be hosting a fundraiser for Marco Rubio’s Presidential campaign.

Rubio is, “Not a mindful human being,” to borrow Ron Reagan Jr.’s phrase,* which is why he accepts Ellison’s money with such equanimity.

Of course, for a Republican Party candidate for President, being a, “Mindful human being,” is a luxury that he cannot afford.

Just look at the amount of fellating that is directed toward Sheldon Adelson by various Republicans, where recent news strongly implies strong ties to Chinese mobsters.

We need real campaign finance reform, if just so that Republicans can tell people like Ellison and Adelson to shut the f%$# up.

*RRJ said about Dick Cheney, “I don’t think he’s a mindful human being. That’s probably the nicest way I can put it,” when describing Cheney’s behavior toward his mom, Nancy Reagan at his Dad’s funeral.†
†The Link is here. The Cliff Notes version is that Dick Cheney escorted her to Reagan’s casket, and he stopped at the bottom of some stairs, and allowed an 80 year old woman with glaucoma to flounder her way up the stairs. (Really classy)

I’m Shocked, Shocked to Find That Gambling Is Going on in Here

No Comments

Cue Captain Renault

A whistle blower at Tiversa is alleging that the company manufactured false evidence of breaches to gin up business:

A bombshell lawsuit is raising eyebrows in the cybersecurity industry.

A former cybersecurity forensic examiner named Richard Wallace is claiming that his former employer — cybersecurity company Tiversa — “would typically make up fake data breaches to scare potential clients,” CNNMoney reports.

Wallace claims that Tiversa would routinely do this then “pressure firms to pay up” by buying its cybersecurity services, according to a federal courtroom transcript obtained by CNNMoney. This came to a head when Tiversa allegedly approached cancer testing services company LabMD about a supposed hack. LabMD refused to buy into Tiversa’s services, so Tiversa allegedly reported the cancer-testing company to the FTC for having a data breach.

………

This lawsuit raises some potentially worrisome issues about practices in the cybersecurity industry.

Gee you think?

It’s the f%$#ing Wild West out there, with no standards of what constitutes a breach, and no meaningful certification of the security firms.

People have been selling cyber Armageddon, with only one concrete example of their horror stories panning out (Stuxnet which was created by the US and Israeli government), why is it a surprise when we discover that people are selling “breaches” that are either non existent or minor.

I guess being a cybersecurity consultant beats working for a living.

This Sh%$ Just Got Real on Fast Track

No Comments

Senate Democrats voted against cloture, 52-47, so the vote failed to reach the 60 vote threshold:

President Obama collided with his own party Tuesday when Senate Democrats stalled consideration of a trade measure that would give the administration greater authority to negotiate more freely with other countries.

The Senate vote was a sharp blow to the president’s efforts to win approval for a new Asia-Pacific trade bill that has emerged as a top agenda item for Obama. Only one Democratic senator, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, voted with the president Tuesday.

Administration officials and Republican leaders immediately said they would bring a measure back to the Senate floor.

But the setback highlighted the president’s failure to convince Democratic lawmakers, labor union leaders and environmental groups that the 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership would help the U.S. economy. Obama has argued that the pact would open markets, promote better labor conditions abroad and protect endangered species and the environment.

I called both of my Senators this morning to ask them to vote now and to vote against cloture.

For the next round, you should do the same.

What didn’t help was Obama’s belittling, and quite frankly chicken sh%$ dismissal of Elizabeth Warren’s concerns:

………

What began with a slight jab at Warren’s trade views — “She’s wrong on this,” Obama told MSNBC three weeks ago — has escalated into a series of daily barbs and retorts carried out on cable TV and Internet interviews, on radio shows and from the official podium at the White House.

Over the weekend, Obama used a rather harsh turn of phrase — “a politician like everybody else” — against Warren, who has carefully constructed an image as a principled voice in the wilderness taking unpopular political stands to help the voiceless working class.

Warren returned fire in interviews and appearances Monday and Tuesday, accusing the president of duplicity because he “won’t actually let people read the agreement” before Tuesday’s procedural vote in the Senate.

………

Allies of Warren were taken aback by the personal nature of the president’s remarks.

“I think the president was disrespectful to her, the way he did that. I think the president has made this more personal than he needed to,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who has led opposition to the trade legislation, told reporters after Tuesday’s vote.

Brown said that some of Obama’s comments were perceived as insults directed not only at Warren but also at other Democratic opponents of the trade deal.

I haven’t heard this about Sherrod Brown, or about Bernie Sanders, or other male Senators.

The Obama administration, and Barack Obama, have a long history of being dismissive of women, with one former aide describing his administration as, “This place would be in court for a hostile workplace. … Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women“. (See also “sweetie“)

In addition to allowing his sexism to show, Obama also was stupid about this, because it is precisely the sort of behavior that gets every Senator’s back up.

I’m happy about this development, though I am concerned that I am on the same side of this as the right wing morons at Pajamas Media, who are, “Rooting for the Democrats to Block Obama’s ‘Fast Track’ Deal.”

Truth be told, part of the nearly unanimous opposition of the Democrats for cloture is not as significant as it seems, as some of the Democrats want to attach related provisions to the vote:

According to Democratic leadership aides, Senators Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, and Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat, have proposed a compromise to Republican leaders: First, hold a separate vote on legislation aimed at discouraging so-called currency manipulation by American trading partners, which could be vetoed by the president. Then, wrap the fast-track authority he is seeking with a more encompassing bill, including assistance for displaced workers, extension of an African trade accord and other trade enforcement measures.

That offer could be the path forward, given that at least eight Democrats who normally embrace trade deals voted no on Tuesday.

So the votes may shift in the next few days.

A note for Delaware voters, there was only one Democratic Senator who voted for cloture, Delaware’s Tom Carper.

Delaware primary voters, and anyone interested in donating to his campaign, please take note.

$82,000 on Snacks? What the F%$# Are You Eating?

No Comments
Somehow or other, Chris Christie managed to spend $82,000.00 of state money on snacks at football games:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spent more than $80,000 of taxpayer money on snacks at NFL games between 2010 and 2011, according to a report from New Jersey Watchdog. Christie used his government debit card 58 times at MetLife Stadium, and his office “did not provide any receipts, business reasons or names of individuals entertained, but defended the expense.”

Christie’s office has defended his use of the expense account, but were clearly embarrassed by the revelation that the governor was expensing quite a few beers while watching the Giants and Jets play because it reimbursed the costs associated with the games.

My first response was shock, of course. Christie averaged $1,500 in concessions at each game and didn’t bother keeping receipts to explain the expenses. But my second response was total envy. Spending $82,000 on snacks is an actual dream of mine. I mean, not the exact amount but the idea of spending the cost of a down payment on a home on queso and hot dogs has always been very appealing to me.

That $82,000.00 is only what he spent at the Meadowlands Stadium for football games, if you read the full report, the total spending on comestibles by Jabba the Governor is actually a bit more than $360,000.00, but that can include things like (for example) state dinners, and other public events.

Spending $1500.00 at a football game though is clearly excessive.

It should be noted that Christie has a long history of being profligate with taxpayer money in order to enhance his own comfort.  When he was US Attorney for New Jersey, he was cited for similar behavior:

When he was a top federal prosecutor, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey routinely billed taxpayers for hotel stays whose cost exceeded government guidelines, according to a report the Justice Department released on Monday.

The report, by the department’s inspector general, examined travel expenses for all 208 people who served as a United States attorney from 2007 to 2009. It spoke of five who “exhibited a noteworthy pattern of exceeding the government rate and whose travel documentation provided insufficient, inaccurate or no justification for the higher lodging rates.”

While the report did not identify any prosecutors by name, the travel patterns of an official called “U.S. Attorney C” — the one “who most often exceeded the government rate without adequate justification” in terms of percentage of travel — match records about Mr. Christie that were released in the 2009 campaign for governor by his Democratic opponent, the incumbent, Jon S. Corzine.

As governor, Mr. Christie, who was the United States attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008, has pushed to cut government spending and waste, making him a rising star in the Republican Party.

………

The report also noted the reimbursements Mr. Christie received for airport transportation costs. Rather than taking a taxi for the four-mile trip between his hotel and the Boston airport, he took a car service costing $236. A similar arrangement for a London trip cost $562.

I really hope that someone in oppo research is paying attention to this stuff, because it’s not going to play well in either Iowa or New Hampshire.

Bernie Sanders Is More Serious than the Media Thinks

No Comments

 And I am not just saying this because the famously curmudgeonly Matt Taibbi  wrote him a political love letter.

In the US, the lifeblood of politics is money, and the fact that the Sanders for President campaign raised $1.5 million dollars in the first 24 hours after his announcement, and raised $3 million in the first 4 days.

Needless to say, unlike most modern candidates on both sides of the aisle, these were small individual donations, not Wall Street and other big donors.  (About ½ of Obama campaign funds came from big donors in 2008)

I think that it is highly unlikely that he can wing the primary, and if he did, we would see the Blue Dog and New Dem wings of the party surreptitiously campaigning against him, much like Henry “Scoop” Jackson and his ilk did in 1972 to George McGovern.

I Really Don’t Know What to Make of This

No Comments

But if Sy Hersh’s account of the killing of Osama bin Laden is even ¼ true, this is the biggest story that he’s ever broken:*

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

 The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’

 This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

The cliff notes version of this, courtesy of The Stranger, is:

  • Pakistani officials knew about the raid and even helped the US pull it off.
  • There never was a firefight, neither in the yard outside the house nor once the SEALs got inside.
  • The story of the courier whom the reportedly CIA traced, leading them to bin Laden, was a fabrication.
  • The story of the courier dying in the firefight was a cover-up “because he didn’t exist and we couldn’t produce him,” a retired senior intelligence official told Hersh.
  • The way the CIA actually found out where bin Laden was is that a “Pakistani walk-in” who wanted the $25 million reward came in and told the CIA about it.
  • Osama bin Laden was not armed, contrary to reports that he had a machine gun and was killed in a firefight, and he was not killed with just one or two bullets but “obliterated.”
  • “Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That’s not going to happen,” that same retired senior intelligence official said.
  • “Despite all the talk” about what the SEALs collected on-site, the retired official said there were “no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks.”
  • The story about bin Laden’s sea burial may be a fabrication.
  • The retired official told Hersh that bin Laden’s “remains, including his head… were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains—or so the Seals claimed.”
  • Obama was going to wait until a week after bin Laden’s death to announce it, and he was going to tell the American people that bin Laden had been killed by a drone, but after the SEALs had to blow up their malfunctioning helicopter on-site, attracting attention locally, everything changed.
  • The story about the vaccination program carried out locally in an attempt to get bin Laden’s DNA—a story that “led to the cancellation of other international vaccination programmes that were now seen as cover for American spying”—wasn’t true.
  • Retired official again: “It’s a great hoax.”

(emphasis original)

The American press has been completely dismissive of Hersh’s report, and, it’s fair to say that the sourcing is not as solid as I would have liked.

Then again, when you look at the biggest supporter of the “Zero Dark Thirty” narrative, the CIA, we know that they are still lying about torture, that they still nave not come clean about spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and basically wrote the movie “Zero Dark Thirty”.

I know that the movie version is false, at least as to whether torture worked, the Senate Intelligence Committee report proved that.

I’m not sure where the truth lies, and any dealing with the machinations of the “war on terror” in general, and the Pakistani state security apparatus in particular. is a bag full of cats.

At this point, I’ll go with Charlie Pierce’s:

What’s clear is that, in the war on terror, or whatever it is in which we’ve been engaged since we handed the military policy over to the spooks and thrown international crisis diplomacy into the vast, deep underbrush of myth and legend generated by the conjuring spells of the intelligence world, that we willingly surrendered self-government to magic and spellcraft. And Osama bin Laden is still dead, and his body is still at the bottom of the sea. Maybe.

I’m not clear what the truth is, except (of course) for the fact that the CIA tortured, that it did not work, and that Langley lies about everything.

I is confuzzled.

*And yes, I mean that statement. If is just ¼ true, this is the biggest story that Seymour f%$#ing Hersh has ever broken. Think about that for a moment.

Oh Sh%$!

No Comments

One of the issues with studying South Polar ice is that you cannot see what is under the ice directly.

Well, using satellite based gravimetric measurements, they were able to get data on mass changes under the ice, and it’s worse than previously estimated:

Study after study shows that Antarctica isn’t in great shape. Its ice shelves are disappearing and its ice sheets are collapsing, hastening swiftly rising sea levels. Sounds terrible.

But just in case you wanted a second opinion, a new study out of Princeton University takes a look at a decade’s worth of satellite data. Their results, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, show that not only is Antarctica melting, it’s melting faster than ever before.

………


They used data collected between 2003 and 2014 by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellites that can measure differences in the amount of water around the world. Since its launch in 2002, GRACE has analyzed the health of underground aquifers, analyzed flooding, and helped show that ice loss in Antarctica was messing with the continent’s gravity.
………

The data showed that between 2003 and 2014, Antarctica lost 92 billion tons of ice per year. That’s the net amount of ice loss–some ice grew back in East Antarctica, but the gains were a drop in the bucket compared to the 121 billion tons of ice that the West Antarctic ice shelf lost during that time.

This story is not going to have a happy ending.

For Once, the Law Applies to the Little Guy

No Comments

The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that the pension gutting law past last year is unconstitutional. I am further amused because it looks like Rahm Emanuel’s equivalent law in Chicago is also covered by the ruling:

The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled unconstitutional a landmark state pension law that aimed to scale back government worker benefits to erase a massive $105 billion retirement system debt, sending lawmakers and the new governor back to the negotiating table to try to solve the pressing financial issue.

The ruling also reverberated at City Hall, imperiling a similar law Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed through to shore up two of the four city worker retirement funds and making it more difficult for him to find fixes for police, fire and teacher pension funds that are short billions of dollars.

At issue was a December 2013 state law signed by then-Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn that stopped automatic, compounded yearly cost-of-living increases for retirees, extended retirement ages for current state workers and limited the amount of salary used to calculate pension benefits.

Employee unions sued, arguing that the state constitution holds that pension benefits amount to a contractual agreement and once they’re bestowed, they cannot be “diminished or impaired.” A circuit court judge in Springfield agreed with that assessment in November. State government appealed that decision to the Illinois Supreme Court, arguing that economic necessity forced curbing retirement benefits.

On Friday the justices rejected that argument, saying the law clearly violated what’s known as the pension protection clause in the 1970 Illinois Constitution.

“Our economy is and has always been subject to fluctuations, sometimes very extreme fluctuations,” Republican Justice Lloyd Karmeier wrote on behalf of all seven justices. “The law was clear that the promised benefits would therefore have to be paid and that the responsibility for providing the state’s share of the necessary funding fell squarely on the legislature’s shoulders.

During the financial crisis, Wall Street made arguments that their obscene pay was contractually guaranteed, and as such, could not be regulated.

At the very same time, they were cutting wages and benefits of auto workers at GM and Chrysler.

I am amused.

Additionally, I am amused because this means that teabagger governor Bruce Rauner is going to be forced to raise taxes.

Heh.

I’ve Heard this Song Before

No Comments

In a Japanese redux of the Obama administrations secrecy on the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Abe administration has reneged on a promise of transparency:

A senior government official has backtracked on his proposal to give lawmakers access to the draft text of a 12-nation Pacific trade pact ahead of a potential deal.

Yasutoshi Nishimura, senior vice minister of the Cabinet office in charge of the negotiations, said his intent was misunderstood when he told a press conference on Monday that Japan will “make preparations to allow lawmakers access to the text next week” at the earliest.

Nishimura apparently withdrew the disclosure plan due to strong opposition from some government officials, who are concerned about differences in confidentiality obligations between Japan and the United States, according to informed sources.

In line with a rule agreed with the 11 other countries, only a handful of Japanese officials can currently read the text, such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, TPP minister Akira Amari and chief TPP negotiator Koji Tsuruoka.

However, the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office has already made the draft Trans-Pacific Partnership text available to U.S. legislators on condition they do not make any part of it public.

Nishimura said Thursday that Tokyo cannot take the same measure as Washington “there is a big difference between the duty of confidentiality” of lawmakers in the two countries.

If this deal cannot handle the light of day, which appears to be the case, it’s a bad deal.

And John Dillinger Feared the “Chilling Effect” of the FBI

2 Comments

Today’s front page of the Baltimore Sun interviews a number of current and former members of the Baltimore Police Department, noting ominously that,  “The result could have a “chilling effect” on officers, preventing them from making “good faith judgments” when making arrests“.

If we eliminate the most significant issue in the whole Freddie Gray case, the fact that a 25 year old man was killed by the callous, brutal, and unprofessional behavior of members of the BPD, we still have the following:

I think that it’s well past time for police to follow the laws that they are sworn to uphold.

I am well aware that the job of being a policeman is a tough one, and I know that it involves tough calls, and I know that human beings make mistakes.

This goes well beyond mistakes.

That’s not the problem.  The problem is the fact that there is a culture of impunity that is nearly universal among law enforcement officers in the United States, and this ill serves both the citizenry and the constabulary.

The Baltimore PD is generating over a million dollars in brutality and misconduct settlements every year, and the very small minority of officers who are responsible for this suffer no consequences.

BTW, I think that one of the things that would help here is if cops got a mandatory 6 paid months off every 3 years, and officers were required to attend mandatory counseling on at least a monthly basis.

I have a friend in the psychological biz, and his assessment is that most police officers who have been on the job for more than a few years suffer from PTSD.

This does not make for a well functioning civil society.

The French Finally Start Making Foreign Sales for the Rafale

No Comments

For a number of years now, the Rafale has been the bridesmaid, and never the bride, on foreign sales.

The logjam broke when India selected the Dassault aircraft as the winner of its MMRCA competition.

The contract was for 126 aircraft, with the first 18 being delivered by Dassault, and the remainder being locally manufactured by state owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

At this point contract negotiations because Dassault was unwilling to offer performance guarantees for the aircraft manufactured by HAL:

After months of seeing Dassault Aviation being browbeaten in the Indian press, French arms procurement agency DGA defended its contractor, asserting that a 2012 agreement to provide India with Rafale fighter jets never committed the company to guarantee aircraft manufactured in India at state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL). However, a recent senior adviser to HAL’s management tells Aviation Week that guaranteeing HAL’s work is not the issue, but that the French are being “rigid” and refusing to stand behind the integrity of the design.

 “Dassault will not be responsible for the whole contract. It is a co-management setup,” says French defense procurement chief Laurent Collet-Billon, who was clear that France will not assume full liability for HAL-built Rafales. “It cannot be a problem, because it was not in the request for proposals [RFP].”

 Speaking to reporters during an annual media address Feb. 9, France’s arms procurement chief said the €10.2 billion ($12 billion) agreement—which has been under negotiation for more than three years—calls for the first 18 of 126 Rafale jets to be built in France. After that, HAL would take over production of the remaining 108 aircraft.

 ………

 Moreover, a retired senior Indian military officer who was involved in the drafting of the original RFP and has been a senior advisor to HAL, tells Aviation Week that “the French don’t want to be accountable in any way. The original equipment manufacturer [OEM] has to stand guarantee with respect to design and integrity of design. The French are trying to get away from the OEM’s responsibility.” He added that the defense ministry would eventually have to choose between the Rafale and the Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA), a HAL-developed variant of the Sukhoi T-50.

 ………

 Dassault’s response to the RFP was influenced by a planned partnership with Reliance Industries, a $75 billion private-sector energy-based conglomerate that planned to expand into aerospace and defense. Reliance would have performed much of the manufacturing work on the locally built Rafales in new-build facilities. However, the Indian government has insisted that HAL build the aircraft. The original manufacturers of the Su-30MKI and Jaguar were not asked for similar guarantees.

The subtext here is that Dassault has absolutely no confidence in the ability of HAL to make Rafales in a timely or competent manner.

After much negotiation, it was offered that HAL be upgraded to co-contractor status, which would have the effect of increasing technical transfer at the cost of HAL being responsible for any guarantees on the aircraft that they build.

While all of this was going on, an actual sales deal was signed with Egypt, which would have 24 jets pulled out of the current pipeline for the French AF, and modified slightly. (Basically pulling wiring for nuclear weapons and going with a non-NATO communications system)

The fact that Rafael finally had some export orders, along with the fact that India has a desperate need for new airframes, (it’s aging fleet of MiG-21s are crashing with alarming regularity) India and France cut a deal for a government to government transfer of 36 of the fighter jets:

India will now negotiate direct purchase of 36 Rafale jets from France through a government-to-government deal worth around $4 billion, without any “Make in India” or technology transfer component, to meet IAF’s urgent “critical operational necessity” for new fighters.

 After Modi held extensive talks with French President Francois Hollande in Paris on Friday, it was announced that fresh commercial negotiations will now be held for the direct acquisition of two Rafale squadrons (each has 18 jets) in “flyaway” condition.

 “France has agreed to fast-track the deliveries and give us better terms for the outright purchase and longer maintenance support for the jets. Finding the money for this contract should not be a problem since it will have to be paid in installments linked to deliveries,” said a source.

Basically, the French came away with the upside of an Indian deal, it removed uncertainty in other nations about being a “first mover” on the export front, which led to the Egypt deal, and they did not have to hitch their wagon to the famously f%$#ed up HAL, which, as evidenced by the 30+ year and counting development of the Tejas lightweight fighter, is something that would have bitten Dassult in the butt at a later date.
.

And now there is the announcement of the sale of an additional 24 aircraft to Qatar.

After what must have been over a decade of uncertainty, it appears that Dassault will stay in the fighter business.