Unbelievable

Furthermore, the United States had known since 1994 that the Saudis were supporting Pakistan's nuclear development program, ultimately contributing upwards of a billion dollars. More recently, because Saudi law does not allow foreign agencies to directly question Saudi citizens, the FBI has not been allowed to interview Saudi suspects, including the families of the fifteen Saudi hijackers, about the 9/11 attacks. For more than a year after September 11 Saudi Arabia refused to provide advance manifests for flights coming into the United States—which could have led to a basic and potentially fatal breach of security. Although there are plenty of possible al Qaeda members awaiting trial, as of this writing there hasn't been a single Saudi arrest related to 9/11—not even of a material witness.
...
Consider the case of the Carlyle Group—a private investment company, founded in 1987, that almost since its inception has been conducting immensely profitable business with Saudi Arabia. From 1993 to 2002 the chairman of Carlyle was Frank Carlucci, who served first as Ronald Reagan's National Security Adviser and then as his Secretary of Defense. Carlyle's senior counselor is James Baker, who served as Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush—who in his post-presidency also happens to be a Carlyle adviser. Others who hang their hats at Carlyle include Arthur Levitt, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission under Bill Clinton, and now Carlyle's senior adviser; John Major, a former Prime Minister of Great Britain and the current chairman of Carlyle Europe; William Kennard, who chaired the Federal Communications Commission during the second Clinton Administration; Afsaneh Mashayekhi Beschloss, a former treasurer and chief investment officer of the World Bank; and Richard Darman, who ran the Office of Management and Budget under the first President Bush and also served as deputy secretary of the treasury under Reagan.

The Fall of the House of Saud - Robert Baer

Read all three parts. I don't know if it is true, but it certainly is an interesting piece to read. Btw, Robert Baer is the guy depicted in the movie Syriana.

It's all too beautiful

Looks like the Russians are a bit "tense" over the US deployment of its anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system in Poland and the Czech Republic plus the latest verbal hostilities from the US. The Russian RIA Novosti has some interesting articles:

Russia missile forces ready to quit INF Treaty

Russian missile forces will add ABM sites as targets

(only as a translation from the German version)

A comment:
Washington's meat may be Europe's poison

And the bonus:

Russia to sell weapons, air-defense systems in the Middle East

(via fefe, in German)

Playing right now: Small Faces - Itchycoo Park

Over Bridges of Sighs
To rest my eyes in shades of green
Under Dreaming Spires
To Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been
What did you do there? - I got high
What did you feel there? - Well I cried
But why the tears there? - I'll tell you why
It's all too beautiful, It's all too beautiful
It's all too beautiful, It's all too beautiful
I feel inclined to blow my mind
Get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun
They all come out to groove about
Be nice and have fun in the sun
I'll tell you what I'll do - What will you do?
I'd like to go there now with you
You can miss out school - Won't that be cool
Why go to learn the words of fools?

God, Inc

"How did the earthquake go?"


"Are you the guys who got me into Princeton."
"I could look it up."


"Well then I question the intelligence of his design."


Flower Tucci. A squirter. Nice. :-)


"I'm going to put a butterfly on my profile."


"You cure one disease, I have to invent another one."

Give the evidence to the MAFIA

[A] team of men wearing R.I.A.A. jackets was responsible for boxing the CDs and carting them to a warehouse for examination.

Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - New York Times

Isn't this just grand? The police lets the R.I.A.A carry off the evidence. The ones who profit from a conviction. Fucking great.

But I think that the music industry has finally realized that the problem is not the consumer, it is the artists. Once there are no more artists, no more music and no more music "theft". Bravo!

(via fefe, in German)

I really hate violence...

... and I don't want to promote any kind of violent ideology, whether it is American, Iranian, Christian or Islamic. But I stumbled upon this video while searching for the meaning of the word Moronican and wanted to share it with the world, just to give you an idea why the US have already lost the war in Iraq and how they are creating that kind of "evil" they claim to be fighting. And not even pork bullets are going to make the US win. Just listen to the song they are using as background music. If I would live in Iraq, with such beautiful music, I would pick up a RPG and fight infidels.

LiveLeak.com - Video of Islamic State of Iraq Shooting Down an American Chinook Helicopter in Al-Karma

(The images you see if you click there show an US helicopter being shot down. If this disturbs you, don't click. Other than that, this video shows no graphic violence, which is far less than any Hollywood movie depicting the war in Vietnam. I guess in twenty years, we will see the movies showing how the Iraq war really was and everybody is going to say "Never again" and forget it when the government warns of a new danger, a new Emmanuel Goldstein)

As to the quote:

Military officials are growing increasingly concerned that Iraqi insurgents are successfully adapting their tactics to be more effective against American aircraft.

A CH-47 Chinook is a 40 year old unarmored helicopter. I guess you could shoot it down with anything that is bigger than a small caliber weapon, a starting or landing Chinook could be downed with a AK-47, some skill and some luck.

I'm probably the only person in the world who likes this

Strong Bad Email form Homestarrunner. I think it is just hilarious.

Warning, contains lethal dosages of Flash-animation, may cause seizures.

What is the Meatrix?

What is the Meatrix?

Real nice Flash-Animation.

Cognitive Dissonance

• For years the US have being "fighting" against a relentless terrorist threat on US mainland and no attack has happened since 2001
  
• For years the US have being "fighting" against a relentless inflow of drugs into the US mainland and every year hundreds of tons of drugs have slipped through
  

So what is the story here?

Either

• There is no terrorist threat

or

• There is no "war on drugs"
  

or

• Both

Sans the Lizards

David Huddleston playing Jeffrey Lebowski

Webster G. Tarpley playing himself (rather badly)

Finally I found that video from the Webster Tarpley presentation again (90 minutes).



It is nice to listen to Tarpley, he makes a wonderful presentation. No I did not check his facts, but he gives a really good lecture of patsies and 9/11. And he talks a bit about the "controlled demolition and cruise missile" blah blah bullshit as if he does not believe it, just to mention it. The main point he makes is that 9/11 was a coup, which is a interesting theory. The good thing about him, he does not feel mentally unstable like Alex Jones and does not talk about lizards like David Icke. Alas, I can't shake the feeling that he wants to sell me something, maybe it is just the suit and the tie.

Which brings me to this video of a presentation by Mike Rupert, who just feels like he's from the cast of some TV cop show from the eighties.

And by the way, I can see a game of Top Trumps with conspiracy theorists cards:

- Sentences said before being cut off by TV crew?
- 1
- 5! Alex Jones wins!
- Times being shot at?
- Zero
- Twice! Mike Rupert wins!

(Stole some ideas for this posting from Stef)

Just like a monkey...

... I have dutifully marked all "*bank"-spam messages as "phising" at the webinterface of my mailprovider. But what is the difference between spam and phising anyway? Yes, I know, phising is directed at the login information for my bank and other financial services. But spam mail wants to part me from my money as well. So in the end, what is the difference? I should mark all spam as phising...

I honestly did not know this

The Bavarian Illuminati

A movement of freethinkers that were the most radical offshoot of The Enlightenment — whose adherents were given the name Illuminati - was founded on May 1, 1776 in Ingolstadt.

Illuminati - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And I was born in Ingolstadt. Fuck, I honestly did not know this. This is a FNORD moment for me.

There are too many things I don't know.

Why Iran will not be next

I could be wrong. I was wrong before, boy was I wrong before. Last summer, I thought Iran would be next, I thought the bombs would be falling within weeks. I thought the US would invade Iran. Or Syria. Or both. In 2003 I thought if the US would invade Iraq, it would be a good thing for the Iraqis. Boy was I unillumined and naive back then. And wrong, wrong, wrong.

Right now, we see the same bullshit fabricated intelligence as we have seen in 2003. But do the same means lead to the same ends?

To understand what will happened next, we have to know what happened before. I hope I have learned since then and can make an educated guess now. If I get this wrong, what I say will not have any relation to reality.

So why was Iraq attacked? Some people claim that it was some fuzzy "Old-School US Imperialism ™". Modern US imperialism has different means. Some claim that it was "For Oil". I don't think so, there are other countries with oil, more valuable countries. Why not go for Venezuela or Nigeria?

As I have said before, I think Iraq was attacked because some people wanted to transfer shitloads of tax-money into the accounts of the arms industry and into their own pockets. What better way than to start a war. Not something too big, but something that smolders for a very long time. Just like something we are seeing right now in Iraq. Perfect.

So what's the worst that could happen? Just imagine you have to show some PowerPoint slides to the executive board of some bigshot arms manufacturer in the US the day after an Democratic President has declared to pull out of Iraq and has been greeted by congressmen of both parties as an "American Gandhi". Oops, wrong meeting.

So what would happen if the US invaded Iran. Two things would be possible.

1. The violence would tail off. In which case the president could declare "Job well done" and pull out. It was only Iran behind all that violence (which I don't think)
2. The violence would not tail off. The US military would find itself awfully stretched. It would show that Iran wasn't behind all this insurgency business. The calls to pull out, which are getting louder already without a mess in Iran, would get even louder. It would be suicide for a president not to give up Iraq or Iran or both. "Leave the suckers to themselves" would be the American motto du jour.
   

So, to keep the US military in the mess it is right now, we need a reason, a plausible reason why the US military has to stay in that mess. To achieve this, the people in charge would need a "device" with which they could put pressure on who ever becomes president NOT to pull out. What better device than an Iran that has to be curbed? So, if the US president should think about pulling out, he could be pressured to stay the course or be called a traitor who endangers the US security.

When they have learned one thing from the end of the cold war, it is that not having an enemy, not having something you need protection from, can be a very dangerous thing if you are in the business of selling arms. I guess the war on terror is loosing steam, there is only so far you can go with a phantom terror organization and a phantom terror-leader. So what better than to have Mini-Soviet threat? It worked for over forty years with the Russkies, why not give it a try with the Mullahs now? And if it doesn't work out, there is allways Russia or China to fall back as the enemy du jour. Better prepare them as enemy now.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last Wednesday the United States had to prepare for the possibility of combating major armies and that it also needed significant Special Forces because he did not know what might happen in Russia, North Korea, Iran and China in the future.
...
"In principle, as defense minister, I can understand this statement. All sorts of tricks are used to approve the budget," RIA Novosti quoted [Russian defense minister] Ivanov.

As I said before, I could be wrong, but I think what the people currently in charge want is not another war, they want to make sure this war keeps going the way it has been going since the beginning. In my opinion, Iraq has not become another Vietnam for the US because their leaders have made mistakes. Their intention from the first moment was to turn Iraq into another Vietnam.

This got me thinking...

Shape charge? Road side bombs? Armored vehicles? Somehow, this rings a bell...

(And no, I don't think that Shiites or Sunnites killed Herrhausen, but I think whoever killed Herrhausen was trained by the same people that have shown the Iraqi insurgents how to bomb. And as Herrhausen was criticizing the World Bank and demanding Third World debt cancellation, he might have become an annoyance to some within the US. Just thinking...)

A little Gem for Stef

I think Stef would like this:

C’est ne pas une Orwellian Nazi-Uniform.

Found this advert in the first German edition of Vanity Fair. I like the little party badge, even if it isn't golden.

ORWELL - Search no more for your Nazi-Orwell Styles ™

(see more on orwell.de, but they don't have any more "Uniforms")

Oil for us all

To stay at the topic of found gems: While at a friend to play a board game, I found this nice one, sponsored by BP. Teach your childeren how to control the world and quench your thirst for oil.

And no, we didn't play it, I didn't even look at anything other than the cover.

Not Really European...

eXile #151 - Feature Story - 18 Ways to Hate Your Neighbour

(via fefe as well)

The song remains the same

Saturday's New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the "deadliest weapon aimed at American troops" in Iraq. The author notes, "Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile."

What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than "civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies."

Sound pretty convincing? It may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

'NYT' Reporter Who Got Iraqi WMDs Wrong Now Highlights Iran Claims

(via fefe in German)

Russia to support NATO in Afghanistan - Ivanov says "No troops from us, thank you very much"

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who joined the talks Friday, said Russia would provide economic support for Afghanistan including a review of the country's US$10 billion (€7.7 billion) debt to Russia, and would step up logistical support for the NATO force, including transport through Russia.

However, he ruled out sending any troops to the country, where the Soviet Union lost around 15,000 troops in the 1980s.

Britain, U.S. play down NATO differences over Afghanistan - Herald Tribune

I think the Russians are going to wait a couple of decades (like the British) before they send troops to Afghanistan again.

IAEA halts aid on nuclear technology - NOW?

The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Friday suspended nearly half of the technical aid it now provides Iran, in line with sanctions imposed on the country for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency already suspended aid to Iran in five instances last month in line with Security Council sanctions calling for an end to assistance for programs that could be misused to make atomic weapons. Diplomats emphasized that the freeze was temporary and subject to review and approval by the 35-nation board of the IAEA next month.

IAEA halts aid on projects with Tehran - AP

We are talking about the same Iran that the West since months accuses of building a nuclear bomb and wanting to "wipe Iran off the map"?

(via fefe in German)

Desperate people, doing anything to get a job

Carrie Fisher Star Wars Audition

And the same horror from Cindy Williams:



If I hadn't seen the movie, I wouldn't watch it now. I guess.

More fun:

Public Service Announcement

So now you are relaxed and had some fun, on to something depressing:
Don't order brides by mail from Russia.

What happened next: all charges were dropped.

gareth_rees: Those terrorist plots in retrospect

Via Stef.

Airport Security

George Carlin - Airport Security

Thanks Stef for pointing to George Carlin!

Just as a reminder

Current dispersal of U.S. troops around the world. Darker colours signify U.S. usage of military facilities, or nations with fewer than 10,000 troops present. The lightest nations represent U.S. presence of 10,000 or more.

Military history of the United States - Wikipedia