CBS stenographer gets ass kicked in cairo

CBS, via NYT

i don't much go for celebrity reporters -- in fact have always been uneasy with the media outlet being the story, or part of the story. so, i wouldn't have even  heard of lara logan, if not for her criticisms of wikileaks and rolling stone's michael hastings for breaching the protocol of deference to, and protection of, people they're supposedly covering.

then, of course, there was the story about how her mercenary boyfriend knocked her up in iraq, and they got married.

today's headline was that anderson cooper was shocked and appalled that she's been attacked and sexually assaulted by bad guys in cairo, while covering the exit of the dictator mubarak. according to the NYT's "media decoder" column:

Ms. Logan, 39, the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, was covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square in central Cairo with a camera crew and an unknown number of security staff members. The CBS team was enveloped by “a dangerous element” within the crowd, CBS said, that numbered more than 200 people. That mob separated Ms. Logan from her team and then attacked her.

it's a terrible thing, to be sure, and i wish her a speedy recovery. i admire journalists who risk their lives to tell stories that the world needs to hear -- even ms. logan.

it is worth noting, however, that someone as embedded into the corporate media culture as lara logan abets  the very same forces that brutalized her in the streets of cairo when she allows herself to be used as a stenographer for the forces of exploitation and oppression -- the same folks she literally loved in baghdad.

while no one deserves the kind of abuse logan suffered, when you're a booster for US imperialism around the globe, you are also complicit in the various forms of repression that are used against subject populations.

how many victims of extraordinary renditions ended up being tortured and brutalized by the same thugs that lashed out at logan? how many thousands suffered even worse fates at their hands, while apologists for US corporate state policies carried on their cynical business as usual?

study questions gov't case? you're kidding!

the 2001 anthrax attacks are one of the great unsolved mysteries -- even if the FBI told an fib about how ironclad the findings of its investigation were:

Study Questions Government Case on Anthrax Attacks - ScienceInsider: "The science behind the U.S. government's investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings does not rule out the possibility that the spores used in the attacks came from a source other than the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Frederick, Maryland. That's the conclusion of a just-released National Academies' review of the scientific evidence related to the case, which was formally closed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice in February 2010-more than 9 years after the letters killed five people and terrorized the nation."

remember how terrified the nation was? omigod, envelopes leaking white powder were turning up everywhere, and every crank with a gripe against someone -- but too gutless to confront them -- was getting into the act. it still happens from time to time even today.

somebody -- anybody -- please tell folks that weaponized antharax is extremely difficult to manufacture and handle -- unlike cake mix.

meanwhile, the FBI went on a reckless campaign of harassment against their prime suspect, hounding him, trying him in the press, ruining his career and finally... finally they changed their minds and fingered somebody else.

that guy wasn't tough enough to take the FBI's "treatment," so he killed himself instead -- which saved the government the trouble. everything neatly resolved, and it only took 'em 9 years to do it! talk about crack investigative talent!

the FBI is good for one thing, and one thing only: persecuting critics of the corporate state, and providing cover for elites when they don't want you to know what the fuck is going on... the anthrax investigation being a prime example.

it stands to reason that the only people with the expertise to handle these types of biological weapons are US government scientists -- or their quislings in the research community. c'mon, with such a limited group of potential suspects, you're trying to say it took almost 10 years and one botched attempt to narrow the investigation down to one poor dumbass?

not buying it...

Anonymous: US Security Firms 'Planned to Attack WikiLeaks' | Common Dreams

from the guardian:

Anonymous: US Security Firms 'Planned to Attack WikiLeaks' | Common Dreams: "Anonymous also claims to have obtained access to Stuxnet, the sophisticated computer virus reportedly developed as a joint Israeli-US cyber attack against Iran's nuclear facilities, in HBGary Federal's computer system."

if there was any doubt that the US corporate state wasn't into cybercrime up to its ass, this would have to be the smoking gun. the story this is pulled from talks about how HBGary and other security firms proposed a conspiracy with BofA to attack wikileaks. bad as that is, this revelation takes it to a whole 'nother level!

stuxnet is probably a joint israeli/US effort to sabotage iran's uranium enrichment facilities by mucking with the programming of the siemans centrifuges. it is by all accounts the most sophisticated computer worm ever devised -- and this one wasn't the chinks, our ready-to-order villains whenever some diversionary smokescreen is needed for our own chicanery.

the bastards. by their acts you shall know them.

now, you have no reason to believe that you and i are next, if we ever become a problem...

left is 'livid' over budget cuts? who cares!

the obasm budget is out, and as predicted it takes aim squarely at the trough at which the needy grub for a handout. the banksters were made whole in 2008 when they should've taken a bath -- if held to the same standard they hold others to -- but those lacking in wherewithal to purchase life's necessities will just need to make other arrangements.

is there something fundamentally askew with this picture? speaking of honesty in political discourse, why don't we simply declare that when we talk about "painful" budget cuts and austerity, that what it means in plain terms is that millions will suffer grinding poverty amidst the splendor of their overlords in the corporate state.

how bad are we willing to tolerate it becoming before there is a backlash against a fundamentally lopsided social and financial arrangement in the USA? is the point to suffer an egypt-like malfunction before there's a honest discussion of where we're headed as a nation?

the momentum since the beginning of the reagan revolution has been on the side of the economic neoliberals. ending progressive taxation on the wealthy and revoking government regulation on business has been the twin tines of the fork to skewer working-class people. trickle-down theory was going to send not shit, but big money, rolling downhill to the groveling millions. but it never happened. instead, government became an appendage of corporations, which milked the government for every loose dime that could be pilfered and wasted boosting somebody's bottom line. what was sold as a movement to shrink the size and cost of government was exceptionally proficient at sending both through the roof.

the public has by and large countenanced this profligacy because in tandem with the corporate raid on the treasury for wars and subsidies and no-bid contracts, the common folk were given easy access to credit -- funny money, as it were -- which allowed us ape a lifestyle we couldn't honestly afford.

indeed, if you look at the trajectory of the nation's fiscal binge, it's been enabled by mad money coming out of the FED that has lubricated this ersatz perpetual motion machine and led us to the current fiscal precipice. there's so much money out there, so much debt, that up until now has made everyone's wildest dreams seem tantalizingly within reach...

well, now the grapes are suddenly been whisked away, and all that's left are grubby hands reaching out to the thin air. get used to a fistful of air, sucker!

this project on the part of the banker class has been underway for a lot longer than 30 years, incidentally. it's been going forward for better than a century. it was only interrupted for a couple of generations by the unfortunate events of the 1930s. it's simply, however, a dream deferred.

the wealthy are always looking for a way to maximize profits, and corner markets on whichever assets they currently have their eye on. the whole funny money game being run on wall street is just a sideshow to a bigger racket that has its eye not on a bunch of essentially worthless paper, but on real, tangible assets with  real intrinsic value.

after you have mortgaged yourself to the banksters, they take your real property -- anything they can add to their possessions that was obtained by your labor. this is how they convert your life to their profit. making an entire population serfs to serve their feudal overlords has a long and distinguished history in the annals of human endeavor.

when we think in terms of human progress, the evolution of society has been moving toward the goal of providing security, order and in general creating an environment and institutions to enhance the lives of all its members. it's been a long, slow process, but we've been getting there. over historical epochs we've moved from one form of organization to the next, from monarchy and authoritarianism, to democratic republican governments. we almost universally consider that a highly evolved, enlightened society will provide for the general welfare of its citizens. that has been at least the theory since the enlightenment.

now, however, after the various isms of the last century, mutated that goal into a more animalistic, winner-take-all mentality -- a law of the jungle, in effect, as a reaction to the humanistic goals of the enlightenment.

i think we're being herded into a state of heightened anxiety, so when our overlords make the call, we can be stampeded over a cliff. this is the work of the propaganda arm of the reactionary movement, the FOX news hawkers, who sell fear and resentment to people over-invested in paranoia.

they blindly call for "cuts" to the federal budget, but are oblivious to where the ax falls. they're mesmerized by the auto-erotic conspiracies outlined by beck, and fatally misdirected against saps who are worse off than they are. they'll get no balance, either in their budgets or their news, from FOX.

the real cuts are coming, and it won't be in taxes, but in paychecks and standard of living. that's what austerity really is, the siphoning off of what little the little people have, which is being sent up the line to those who have it all.

i'm on the left, being left-handed and left behind just generally not among those who have a lot to protect. (i think that's kind of what it comes down to.) i'm not exactly livid about these cuts, however. if anything, i find them slightly amusing.

it's a shell game, at best. nothing substantial gets cut, the money just gets reallocated to other, more pressing demands. the banks, which are responsible for the largest chunk of deficit spending through both their bailouts and the interest payments, are both raising the red warning flag, but also holding a hand out to be showered with even more of society's largess -- there are bigger bailouts yet to come!

that, in the final analysis, is what makes me really livid. this crisis, such as it is, has been manufactured and cultivated over decades by wealthy interests, and sticking the rest of  us with the bill. they have dragged us through a series of pointless overseas adventures and obscene cost, which is amalgamated through the system of corporate "privatization" of pentagon and government generally. they have used the bloated and malevolent military machine to terrorize and exploit millions around the world, in order to expropriate the wealth of other nations, again at our expense.

if you were honestly looking for cuts, and for a more sane and rational ordering of national priorities, these seem like nice, fat targets one could easily zero in on, but of course they are untouchable.

on the other hand, take the single government program that i have utilized, and have derived the most benefit from: a university education at modest cost through a state institution. this has given me the skills and opportunity to benefit not only myself, but society generally, through my productivity and tax payments.

this is, instead, the type of program that will be brutalized by the coming austerity. not the institutions themselves, as my alma mater is now a behemoth, a huge brick-and-mortar blight on the landscape -- all parking decks and monolithic structures plastered by their sponsors' corporate logos. students enter eagerly, and leave burdened by unconscionable loads of debt. it is quickly becoming a terrible deal to waste one's mind becoming a slave to bankers.

i feel truly fortunate that i got my degree without a cent of debt to dog me for the next decade of two of my life -- unlike those who followed.

the contrast is stark, where against the backdrop of these megalithic structures stand lines of the homeless and hungry, waiting for a handout from people looking to earn brownie points in heaven. i mean, it's better than nothing, but how can we reconcile these disparate worlds that coexist in our midst, and inevitably will accelerate into a bifurcated society of have-somes and have-nots.

living as refugees in one's own country, in squalor amidst opulence, is a better reason to be livid.

why lie about it?

in our political discourse here in the USA, we're constantly bombarded by lies -- outlandish, brazen, bald-faced lies. whoppers, big ones, stinkers. it's a growth industry.

of course, no one would tell lies if they weren't effective. and the reason they are so effective is not that they aren't challenged. it's because people want to believe them. in effect, they're outlandish, they're beyond the pale and completely unsupported by evidence, and yet their adherents cling to them with clenching fervor, the thin reed on which their entire world order is balanced.

they're all around us, so let's simply consider one of the more egregious, well-known ones, which typifies the phenomenon:

president obasm's birth certificate is an official document on file with the bureau of vital statistics in hawaii, where he was born on aug. 4, 1961. there's nothing more to the story. it's as ordinary and mundane an event as death and taxes, and subject to the same government record-keeping as the others.

in obasm's case, however, the skeptics and conspiracy theorists are convinced that the president was neither born here nor legally qualified to hold the office to which he was elected. uniformed military personnel have refused to obey their orders on the grounds that the commander-in-chief lacks authority. (they receive their discharge papers.)

the lie is that obasm is a foreign imposter, and not the real president. the truth is, the so-called "birthers" are racists who refuse to acknowledge that a black man won the last presidential election fair and square.

there are plenty of reasons not to like the president, especially because of differences in political inclinations, but citizens fight those out at the ballot box, and in congress and the courts. the yahoo contingent, however, takes a long, cool drink of the kool-aid of an ideological fantasy. they aren't willing to own up to their twisted and malignant motivations, so they repackage their racism as an imaginary conspiracy, one that encompasses all the things they instinctively, irrationally hate.

when it comes right down to it, they're nothing but cowards. they may be loud, they may strut around with their guns and try to intimidate anyone who disagrees with them. but beneath all the bluster and the certitude and self-righteousness, they are nothing but liars who don't have enough of the courage of their convictions to state them openly.

they are racists, xenophobes, and they want to deny equal opportunity to people who don't look like them, talk like them, go to the same church or profess the same politics. they basically feel that the loss of the confederacy in the civil war was an injustice, that the civil rights movement was the beginning of the end of "their" america, and that any government program that benefits anyone besides themselves is an affront to people like themselves.

they are so cowardly and ashamed of owning up to their own beliefs that rather than answer criticism, or defend their racism openly and honestly, they impute their own reprehensible beliefs to their enemies. glenn beck, for example, seized the initiative in the cultural war with obasm by declaring to this faithful minions in TV land that the president is a racist who hates white people. nothing like going on the offensive, eh glenn?

there's no credible evidence to this effect, but this is what needs to be said and believed, and it simply was said and believed by those who need it. obasm may have turned out to be something besides what he campaigned as, but contrary to what is believed by those who hate him, he has done precisely nothing that benefits black people to the detriment of other races. nothing, nada, nyet, zilch. the man works tirelessly on behalf of the wealthy elites who fund his political campaigns, and it would never cross his mind to offend these mostly older, mostly white bankers and tycoons.

nevertheless, the campaign to build animus against the president is relentless. sean hannity asks his focus group after the state of the unions speech is obasm is a christian american, and at least half the group insists he is neither. and when johnny boner is asked on the sunday gab-gaggles whether he has any responsibility to set the record straight, he insists it's not his job to tell people what to think.

that's the right-wing infotainment media's job. he simply smiles and let's lynchmob inc. take care of the messaging for the palinist goon nation. fair and balanced has nothing to do with honesty and accuracy. true americans eschew complicated distractions, and prefer a simple, red-meat narrative that creates anxiety and resentment -- not to mention a run on glock 9mm pistols.

speaking of glock pistols, did you notice how quickly the tucson shootings, with their lone gunman who tried to assassinate a democratic politician, has been assimilated into the black hole of political amnesia?

why didn't mama grisly step up and take credit for her handiwork, instead of using it as a opportunity to once again portray herself as a victim? she was bold and audacious when she came out with the bulls-eye iconography on the congresswoman's district, and paired the imagery with ballistic rhetoric: don't retreat, reload!

c'mon sarah, instead of hiding behind murdoch's crony media thugs, why couldn't you have come out and take a bow for what you'd accomplished?

again, palinism is a convoluted stew of ignorance, misinformation and pure incitement that dares not speak its name. after firing up the base, the craven cowards leading the movement duck for cover when the shooting starts. they refuse to own up to the simple fact that they are the real birthers -- and sarah palin is the midwife to a professionally produced, astro-turf movement of brainless miscreants fed hateful slanders about people less well-off than they.

why hide the truth that they're hateful, resentful, and that they're lashing out at easy targets because the real authors of their misery are beyond their reach -- and they really don't understand the way things work well enough to know precisely who or what they're against?

someone needs to tell these folks, next time they're nailing the 10 commandments up on the schoolhouse wall, that one of the biggies is, thou shalt not lie.

hello, darling!

seeing as how it's valentimes day tomorrow (and yes, i do know how it's spelled), i thought about offering a few timely photos... as well as a couple with no relation whatever. my inconsistency is your reward.

balloons everywhere -- they expect to sell a lot tomorrow!

the doughnut shop was more crowded than i'd ever seen before. the girl at the cash register couldn't explain it.

why do we have a fascination with unknown wrecks?

a shout out to uncle dick and the family

looking sharp!

did you ever have a deer bark at you? or stamp its foot? odd.

mundane history tour

i kind of know how the folks in egypt feel, living as they do in the shadow of a glorious past. of course, they had the pharaohs and pyramids, whereas here in virginia we have the patriots and state capitol designed by tom jefferson. in fact, old tom was raised down the road on tuckahoe plantation, just a couple of miles from here.

when i have some time on my hands, like on a weekend afternoon when the weather's not too severe, i like to head into some of the more historic -- if not hysterical -- avenues and byways of this historic commonwealth. virginia, mother of presidents, has slipped a long way since the glory days, unfortunately. now we've got kenny-boy cuccinelli, the darling of the gun-slinging, anti-obama, tea party revolutionaries, who doesn't seem to understand how the excesses of the past are the harbingers of sorrow in the future.

Jefferson's state capitol building

this is the embodiment of the classical ideals that animated the age of reason. the american revolution and french revolution both grew from the seeds of the enlightenment, and the founders were men of the age. they weren't christers, and this wasn't founded as a christer nation, as much as today's money-grubbing, gun-loving, fag-hating born-agains may insist it was. whether it be george washington, in his letter to the hebrews, assuring that all were welcome regardless of religious persuasion, to the early treaty with the Muhammadans, wherein the US government explicitly proclaimed itself NOT a christer nation, the historical record is clear.

nevertheless, virginia today is a hotbed of religious fanaticism, whose footsoldiers are in open rebellion against the federal government -- in spite of the unseemly dependence of the state economy on federal largesse. yet while they decry federal laws they disagree with, they aren't nearly as dogmatic as to eschew the power of the state when it comes to forcing their morality on others (read, reproductive rights, subverting science education with religious dogma).

Let's go to yonder whorehouse!

the politicians in virginia wanted to bury washington under this monument on the state capitol grounds, but he declined. i suppose he got enough of the bullshit that runs rampant here in richmond during his lifetime -- and had no interest in spending eternity here. he's a prime example of a founding father who was not a christer, nor particularly hung up on the hand of the almighty in the affairs of men. the deists, which i think he was, believed that the creator, such as it was, started the ball rolling when the world was created, and then couldn't be bothered by the trifling preoccupations of puny humans. i wholeheartedly agree: no supreme being could be the least bit interested in the silly machinations between "players" that we are so obsessed with. check out washington's secretary's account of washington on his deathbed for a better portrait of the man's beliefs than i'm giving.

this statue was a gift from 'english gentlemen'

it's a bit difficult to read the inscription on the pedestal, so let me help. thomas j. is better known as "stonewall" jackson, one of the south's most beloved generals. check out his wikipedia biography. we was a gifted military tactician, and his death -- shot by his own men -- proved to be a grave setback to the confederate cause. it's no great surprise that one of the south's great generals would be memorialized in capitol square, but check it out: it was presented to the state by "english gentlemen", and was "gratefully accepted by virginia in the name of the southern people." in 1875, the war had been over for 10 years, but it appears that the ardor for the cause of these "southern people" appears to have endured in spite of the south's crushing defeat. but wasn't all.  

william who?

this is william smith, who lived to be 90 years old. he had an extensive resume, the highlights of which are recounted on the statue: governor, congressman, confederate representative and general in the southern army. he was also, it is recounted, "a man of strong convictions, bred in the strict states rights school." of his military career, it was noted that the only criticism of his performance was his propensity to put himself in harm's way. he was evidently quite a hot-head: "when the storm of war burst, his voice was in his sword." this type of martial bluster will no doubt buck up the modern day, tea party revolutionaries, who are at heart chomping at the bit to fight the civil war over again. states rights is still the call to arms of the cuccinelli storm troopers, and all the other bozos in their tri-corner hats who think they, and they alone, have a proper understanding of the constitution.

they fancy themselves eagles, but they're only pigeons

this is what i think the suckers of the tea party movement are setting themselves up for. they seem to have remembered the glories of the past, and forgotten general william tecumsah sherman and his famous march to the sea. when the south had the initiative, the brave boys in their smart grey uniforms marched off to defend the south's way of life, only to come back to a war-ravaged wreck. they've had 146 years to stew over it, and to forget that the US government, when it finished tearing their asses out the frame, turned their attention to the native peoples, and exterminated them. what's the chance that once the plutocrats have gotten what they wanted from the tea partiers, that they won't throw them under a bus, too? useful fools, but fools nonetheless.