Daily Kos :: Chinese Sunburn

Chinese Sunburn
by Soj

Sat Dec 11th, 2004 at 08:31:04 CDT

I was reading through the Russian news (ok, I read a LOT of different news) and couldn't help but be struck by this article:

MOSCOW, December 9 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov will participate in a session of the Russo-Chinese interstate commission for military and technical cooperation, a source in the ministry informed RIA Novosti on Thursday.

The Russian minister will visit the capital of China, Beijing, on December 12-15, where he will take over the function of co-chairman at the session.

According to the interlocutor, Mr. Ivanov intends to discuss the expansion of military and technical cooperation with China, prospects of new projects in the sphere and issues of combat against international terrorism and the settlement of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region.

Mr. Ivanov is also expected to meet with representatives of Chinese military leadership.

China is Russia's strategic partner in the sphere of military and technical cooperation. Recently Russia has offered a supply of Su-27 aircraft to China and licensed their production in China and sold two 956 destroyers (Sovremenny) equipped with unique 3M-80-E supersonic cruise missiles (Moskit).

There's a subtle shift going on in geopolitics amongst the "great powers" (not quite "superpower") in the world - India, China and Russia. Russia just increased its military budget by a staggering 27.7% for next year and is in the midst of arms sales to India.

But I wanted to focus on this particular issue of the "Moskit" missles, also called the SS-N-22 Sunburn missile. They are ship-based cruise missiles with supersonic speeds. A quick analysis of its capabilities:

A high supersonic speed was specified to reduce the target's time to deploy self-defense weapons, indeed the weapon was designed specifically to strike ships with the Aegis command and weapon control system and the SM-2 surface-to-air missile.

The 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles have the fastest flying speed among all antiship missiles in today's world. It reaches Mach 3 at a high altitude and its maximum low-altitude speed is M2.2, triple the speed of the American Harpoon.

When slower missiles, like the French Exocet are used, the maximum theoretical response time for the defending ship is 150-120 seconds. This provides time to launch countermeasures and employ jamming before deploying "hard" defense tactics such as launching missiles and using quick-firing artillery. But the 3M82 "Mosquito" missiles are extremely fast and give the defending side a maximum theoretical response time of merely 25-30 seconds, rendering it extremely difficult employ jamming and countermeasures, let alone fire missiles and quick-firing artillery.

I mention this because it's clear the Chinese are stepping up naval exercises, including the detection of one of their subs a couple of weeks ago near Japan.

China's main military target for its navy is clearly Taiwan, which has been a source of tension in the region for 60 years. That Aegis defense system quoted above is the one used by the American Navy and its allies, including Taiwan. Essentially it's a sophisticated system of radar (usually with help from planes above) that detects incoming missiles and fires counter-missiles, large caliber shells and chaff to try and destroy or confuse the incoming missile.

Daily Kos :: Chinese Sunburn

Last time Church & State were united

bishopssalutehitler_2.jpg">

Bush babies

Daily Kos :: Gulf War: New Thalidomide Baby BOOM?

Papap Bush created at least 200 deformed AMERICAN babies, offspring of Gulf War 1 veterans. And countless in Iraq..

Jr, err... GW Bush has created his first one recently

He and his dad did it, might as well take the credit.

Bush baby is also a little fury animal in Africa, with very sad eyes...



http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/329.shtml

We have to protect people'

President Bush wants 'pro-homosexual' drama banned. Gary Taylor meets the politician in charge of making it happen

Thursday December 9, 2004
The Guardian


What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? 'Dig a hole,' Gerald Allen recommends, 'and dump them in it.' Don't laugh. Gerald Allen's book-burying opinions are not a joke.

Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. 'Oh no,' he laughs. 'It's my fifth meeting with Mr Bush.'

Bush is interested in Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that 'promote homosexuality'. Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support 'positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle'. That's why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?

No, nothing like that. 'It was election day,' he explains. Last month, '14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman'. Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and 'moral values in this country' were 'the top of the list'.

'Traditional family values are under attack,' Allen informs me. They've been under attack 'for the last 40 years'. The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is 'Hollywood, the music industry'. We have an obligation to 'save society from moral destruction'. We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from 're-engineering society's fabric in the minds of our children'. We have to 'protect Alabamians'."

Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | 'We have to protect people':

Mind Hacks: Hack #102 : Alter Input With Expectations

This Figure (pop-up window) shows a classic example of how our perception is affected by what we know [1].

If you haven't seen this before you might not spot at first that it is a dog in the snow. Once you've seen it, you can't un-see it. It's not a conscious decision on your part; rather, your perception is now dominated by the top-down information about how this stimulus is organized. If you were just using bottom-up information, the picture would remain a picture-without-any-interpretation-a collection of light and dark splodges. But because you now know that there's a dog in the picture, you brain imposes that knowledge on our perception and you can't help but read the picture that way.

How it Works

So we're always trying to fit what we're sensing to what we know. If we just used bottom-up information only - trying to deduce what we are seeing without any expectations and assumptions - it'd be too ambiguous and too slow. But if we just used top-down information we'd only see what we already know-there'd be no surprises and we'd get caught out whenever things differed from our expectations.

You can see your top-down processes at work best in situations where the bottom-up processes are weak. With vision this might be in the dark, or where you only glimpse something or someone for a fraction of a second. In hearing this might be where background noise is loud. Poor resolution, brief or noisy information tips the balance in favor of top-down information. What we see comes to reflect more of what we already know and what we expect. Hence we see things in the dark: our brains fill in what is most likely there, what might be there, or what we fear could be there, based on small clues from what actually is perceivable there.

There's a balance between experiencing the world just as it is without any interpretation and experiencing the world just using expectations. Neither extreme is possible; it always has to be a compromise. Looking at the extent of physical feedback looks in the brain, it turns out the balance between working out the universe from first principles every time (bottom up) and imposing our expectations on what we perceive (top down) is ever so slightly in favor of bottom up. In terms of connections, it's 55% vs 45%.

Mind Hacks: Hack #102 : Alter Input With Expectations

Armor Factory: We're prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per month

They just never got the order..

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Armor Holdings Inc., the sole supplier of protective plates for the Humvee military vehicles used in Iraq, said it could increase output by as much as 22 percent per month with no investment and is awaiting an order from the Army.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday the Army was working as fast as it can and supply is dictated by ``a matter of physics, not a matter of money.''

Jacksonville, Florida-based Armor Holdings last month told the Army it could add armor to as many as 550 of the trucks a month, up from 450 vehicles now, Robert Mecredy, president of the company's aerospace and defense group said in a telephone interview today.

``We're prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per month,'' Mecredy said in the interview. ``I've told the customer that and I stand ready to do that.''

Bloomberg.com: Top Worldwide

Daily Kos :: The Dollar and Economic Balance

The Dollar and Economic Balance
by sck5

Fri Dec 10th, 2004 at 11:18:04 CDT

There is a tendency among some people to think that the economic problem is to devalue the dollar enough to make our trade balance come back into equilibrium. This is misguided.

The basic problem isnt that our exports are uncompetitive or that we cant match the quality of imports, but that we are SPENDING TOO MUCH compared to our income.

Diaries :: sck5's diary ::

As a country we are spending more than we are making. Given near zero rates of savings in the private sector the massive deficit in the current account is basically the mirror image of the government's deficit. Fixing the problem in the most direct way means that the government has to either spend less or tax more.

Even so, there IS an exchange rate change big enough that it will solve the problem. But to induce the savings/income change needed only through the exchange rate channel is a very very painful way to go about it. (Ask any of several LDC's)

To reinforce the point I am trying to make I sometimes tell students there is a very sure-fire way to get instant balance in the balance of payments - Drop an atom bomb and kill everyone. You will get perfect balance. It will be at a level of zero, but there will be balance.

That is the problem before us - How to achieve balance (or at least be close enough) AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL POSSIBLE IN TERMS OF INCOME. Using only the exchange rate isnt the way to do that.

And that is why the guys in Washington right now are scary. By doing nothing they are forcing the exchange rate to take all of the burden of the adjustment - and that will mean that balance will be achieved at a much lower level than could be done if they would come to their senses. With the reappointment of Snow it doesnt look like they will.

Hold on. It could be a bumpy ride.

Daily Kos :: The Dollar and Economic Balance

Eternally Rumsfeld

Eternally Rumsfeld
The year is 2016, and the defense secretary is disturbingly familiar.


WASHINGTON, Dec. 8, 2016 -- President-elect George P. Bush announced today that he would reappoint Donald Rumsfeld to another term as secretary of defense. Rumsfeld has served in that position since he was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001. After serving two terms in George W. Bush's administration, Rumsfeld served an additional two terms in the subsequent administration of President Jeb Bush. His 16 consecutive years heading the Pentagon is the longest uninterrupted tenure of any defense secretary, and that doesn't include the nearly two years he served in that post under President Gerald Ford. Rumsfeld is 84.

Sources close to the president-elect say that failing to reappoint Rumsfeld would be taken as a criticism of his uncle, former president George W. Bush, whose decision to invade Iraq in the spring of 2003 has bogged down U.S. forces there in a bloody and ongoing conflict that has lasted nearly 14 years. "George W. is mighty proud of independent Kurdistan," said one former official who is close to the Bush family. "He may have regrets about the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Basra, particularly since they got the bomb, and the PTCZWBOS [Permanent Temporary Curfew Zone Where Baghdad Once Stood], but he'll never admit it."

Rumsfeld does not plan on serving all four years of President-elect Bush's term, one Defense Department official said today. "As soon as things turn up, the moment the Green Zone is secured, he's out of there."

One figure in the outgoing and incoming administrations who argued strongly for Rumsfeld's retention was Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, who first worked with Rumsfeld in the Ford administration. Cheney himself is about to begin his fifth term as vice president, a record-breaking tenure brought about in part by the decision of his cardiologists in 2008 that he could not safely be moved from the vice president's office.

Both Presidents George W. Bush and Jeb Bush periodically found themselves compelled to mount strenuous defenses of Rumsfeld's lengthy tenure. In a memorable 2006 news conference, a visibly exasperated President George W. Bush argued that wartime presidents had traditionally stuck with their commanders for the full duration of their conflicts. "Lincoln didn't dump McClellan, and I'm not dumping Rumsfeld," the president declared, leading the White House press office to issue its now-famous clarification that the Civil War had actually ended in 1862.

Rumsfeld's most recent term was marked by controversy over the extended tours of duty that many of the U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq have been compelled to serve. With enlistments in the armed services down to a trickle, and with Congress unable to find the votes to pass the so-called Sensenbrenner Plan to staff the armed services with unpaid, undocumented immigrants, many of the front-line U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been serving there since 2004, their terms of enlistment repeatedly extended by Rumsfeld's order.

Since the Mutiny of 2009 Defense Department officials have been concerned that bringing the "colonial army" home would risk infecting stateside troops with a crisis of morale. "We're fighting low morale in Iraq," one general said, "so we don't have to fight it here at home."

Rumsfeld's decision to remain at the Pentagon's helm may not have been dictated entirely by his desire to stay until the PTCZWBOS is secured. "Don took a bath when the dollar tanked back in 2005," one prominent Republican said, "and hasn't done all that well since the dollar was pegged to the yuan. In the absence of Social Security, he can't afford to quit."

American Prospect Online - ViewWeb

Daily Kos :: Rumsfeld Exchange Even Better Than WeThought

Diaries :: Descrates's diary

Wow. Ackerman at TNR went over the transcript from Rummy's Q/A with the troops yesterday. He, as always, handled things with grace and dignity.

Q: Yes, sir. I was wanting to know why I cannot enlist as a single parent in the regular Army, but I can enlist in the National Guard and be deployed?

...

Q: Specialist Skarwin (Sp?) HHD 42nd Engineer Brigade. Mr. Secretary [Cheers] my question is with the current mission of the National Guard and Reserves being the same as our active duty counterparts, when are more of our benefits going to line up to the same as theirs, for example, retirement? [Cheers] [Applause]

...

Q: Good morning, sir. Staff Sergeant Latazinsky (sp) 1st COSCOM (sp), Fort Bragg, [Cheers] North Carolina. Yes, sir. My husband and myself, we both joined a volunteer Army. Currently, I'm serving under the Stop Loss Program. I would like to know how much longer do you foresee the military using this program?

What happened to Rumsfeld today in Kuwait is a potential watershed for his (renewed) tenure. Previously, his conflicts with the Army have centered around the service's senior leadership. Today, he came face to face with pissed-off frontline soldiers. And he treated them with the same arrogance and condescension that their superior officers have come to expect. To the question about unequal retirement benefits for equal service, Secretary Marie Antoinette replied, 'I can't imagine anyone your age worrying about retirement. Good grief.' About Stop Loss--a policy to keep veterans from retiring after returning from their service, otherwise known as the 'backdoor draft'--he remarked: 'It is something that you prefer not to have to use, obviously, in a perfect world. But if you think about it...' Somehow, I suspect Staff Sergeant Latazinsky has thought about it a lot harder than Donald Rumsfeld. But Rumsfeld can rest assured that he has indeed given the troops--and the country--quite a lot to think about for the next four years.


Something tells me he won't be having many more of these.

Daily Kos :: Rumsfeld Exchange Even Better Than WeThought:

What is afflicting Viktor A. Yushchenko ?

in July at left, and in November? Doctors are stumped.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2004/12/04/international/04oppositionCA01ready.html

Daily Kos :: Rummy feels their pain

Rummie thinks soliders in Iraq are girly men.
Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, which is made up mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly two years after the war started.

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.

Rumsfeld replied that, "You go to war with the Army you have," not the one you might want [...]

And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.

"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up," Rumsfeld said.
This insensitive fuck -- "If we gave you armor, you could still blow up" -- just got a new, four-year lease on his job.

Daily Kos :: Rummy feels their pain

"back-ass-wards (4.00 / 10)

You build the army you need for the war you have to fight.

Thats why you shouldn't fight wars that you don't need to. You end up using the army in ways it isn't properly equipped or trained for."

Daily Kos :: Dissent is a sign of Mental Illness ?!?!?

Daily Kos :: Dissent is a sign of Mental Illness ?!?!?

(1) US in U-turn over Gulf war syndrome
(2) SKEWED diagnosys of Mental Illness
The book asks how psychiatric theories of ‘unexplained illness’ have managed to gain ascendancy and shape the diagnosis, research funding and public perception
(3) American Health Association reacts with free ‘post-election selection trauma’ counseling... in South Florida
(4) We just lit 'em up with gunfire
In one 48-hour period, we killed over 30 civilians in vehicles that got past our roadblocks. We just lit 'em up with gunfire. .. Massey returned to the Marine base at 29 Palms, Calif., and was told to report to the mental health clinic.. "Woman, this isn't my military because the Marine Corps I enlisted in was run by the Geneva Conventions. We didn't kill civilians, and we damn sure didn't cover it up.

See also

* Daily Kos :: Killing Witnesses
* Daily Kos :: US Marine admits killing civilians
* Soldiers' Mental Traumas Surfacing
* uniformityville_horror: Marines Self-Destruct
* Daily Kos :: Mandatory mental screening still on, no parental consent needed
* Daily Kos :: MANDATORY Mental-health screening of children
* Daily Kos :: US Vets from Iraq Showing Up in Homeless Shelters
* Peter Linebaugh: Torture and Neo-Liberalism with Sycorax in Iraq

Daily Kos :: Bush voters ashamed of Bush

Bush voters ashamed of THEMSELVES (none / 0)

For having supported this idiot's plan to go to war, the PA act, etc..

Like you said in #3, they think that abandoning a losing boat gains them nothing but scorn. But if they can prove the end result is good, then they will feel less ashamed of staying behind this idiot President during all his atrocities

Daily Kos :: Bush voters ashamed of Bush
Bush voters ashamed of Bush
by John Kennedy

Wed Dec 8th, 2004 at 10:37:42 CDT

I write for a small town newspaper in the western mountains of North Carolina, and tried to poll the small town before the election. There were similarities between my results and the actual voting on Election Day, and the exit polls results in states like Ohio and Florida and the actual vote tallies for Bush and Kerry.
The flawed way in which I conducted my poll has led me to believe that a significant percentage of Bush voters were ashamed of their vote.

1. Buncombe County in Western North Carolina is a strongly registered Democratic County; we have both Dixiecrats and liberals here. Two weeks before the election I polled a small town inside Buncombe County. Being a single reporter and responsible for 6-8 news stories an issue for the weekly paper, I conducted the poll in manner which was easiest to me. I handed out over 300 polls to public schools teachers, to retirement homes, to town employees, and to private employers. Two days later I collected 127 polls that had been completed. Kerry - 55%, Bush - 39 %, Undecided - 6%. But on Election Day, Bush narrowly won in Buncombe County 51% - 49%. Although my numbers were off significantly, my poll did reflect the voting trends for the Democratic ticket, that Gov. Easley and Patsy Keever had more support than Kerry or Erskine Bowles.
I have been wondering why my poll was so far off, as I have been wondering why the exit polls in Ohio and Florida were so far off. I am willing to entertain the idea that there has been some election fraud, but I think equally likely that a significant percentage of Bush supporters did not want their political views publicly known.
Why? They were not proud their vote.

2. If this theory is true, then why did Americans vote for Bush? Was it because of moral values? The war on terror?
Simply, Americans don't, 'know when to hold them, and know when to fold them.'
The biggest example of this phenomenon is in the stock market. American investors are coached to sell winners and keep losers. Investors are told to cash in on their winnings, and that they only lose on a stock if they sell it while it is low, so it is better keep a hold of it.
Sure, Americans voted for Bush for moral values, and because of the war of terror, but also because they didn't want to cash in on a falling stock. If Bush creates a viable democracy in Iraq, which spreads across the Middle East and stops terrorism, then all the diabolical horrors of this Administration (lying to go to war, torture, denying rights to individuals, civilian casualties, etc...) will be forgotten and forgiven. But if we changed president at this time, then America in general, and Bush supporters in particular, would have to come to terms with the fact that the U.S. has grown into a power that is not benign but malignant.

3. Now, the counter argument to this issue of shame is that Bush supporters do not trust or like the media, that's why some refused to be polled.
But 'Denial' in not only a river in Egypt. That is the main reason why the moral crusade of this election was so important to the current administration's winning the election. Ask children in conservative Christian communities what they know about Kerry, and they will say, 'Kerry kills babies.' No kidding. Bush maybe a warmonger, but Kerry kills babies, and Kerry wants to destroy the institution of marriage and the American family. Yes, it is insane, but conservative Christian voters needed the moral assurance that they were voting for the 'good' candidate, even if their assurances came from fantasyland. "

4. What now? As we here about more torture allegations, about more civilians casualties, more troop casualties, what now? We will ride on the dark river of denial through the night. We will ride on and on until all is bad and none is good.

Organic, natural health-care is under attack

As in food supplements

Health incorporated - Health Supreme: "Health incorporated
Legislation


Organic, natural health-care is under attack. If the current trend continues, say Helen Fullerton and Martin Walker, the world�s health may soon be entirely in the pockets of the mighty pharmaceutical corporations. These are the opening lines to an article published in March 2000, but still a very interesting read.

We now are in the midst of an all-out concerted attack on natural remedies, supplements, non conventional cures - anything that could compete with the pharmaceutical paradigm in medicine. That outdated paradigm is dear to the hearts of both investors in pharmaceutical fortunes and those in government who are supposed to promote public health but have ended up promoting pharmaceutical profits instead.

How did we get into the current pickle? The article by Helen Fullerton and Martin Walker brings us up to speed on the events of the last two decades leading up to the current confrontation."

DU - To the citizens of Dirtsville USA: Quit grieving for NYC.............

Since tomorrow is the anniversary of the "excuse" the cowboy uses to attack anybody he wants to. I'm bracing myself for the ongoing images of people in small red state towns exploiting the victims of 9/11.

CNN is already showing people in small town Texas CRYING over New York City's loses. Well, you know what. You never liked New Yorkers. You hated New Yorkers remember. If you really cared about the victims of 9/11 you would vote for John Kerry because that's the only thing they want you to do. But NO! Instead you brought the Bush bastard's convention to ground Zero and thought NYC would be glad to see you.

Instead of getting flowers and candy you got protesters, a half a million of them that said. GO HOME. Do you remember the Evita song...
DON'T CRY FOR ME DIRTSVILLE TEXAS..........
Let's get this straight, Dirtsville, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN TO YOU and it never will because no self respecting terra-rist would ever attack something so unimportant. It would be like the USA attacking Goatsgrave Yemen. It's never going to happen.
The bottom line is, you don't care about NYC or the pain, all you care about is getting Boosh re-elected and fighting a Holy pissing contest with the darkie Muslims. All in the name of Jesus which you're sure is coming back the day after tomorrow.
Nobody needs this shit, especially the people of NYC who still watch airplanes when they fly overhead. The people in big cities are in more danger than ever thanks to the cowboy's invasion of Iraq. But that's something the good people of Dirtsville don't have to worry about.
So take your flags, your prayers, your rodeos and your country music and stick it. You're waging war because you want too, because you like it and you're not fooling anybody. You're only happy when you have an enemy, if it wasn't 9/11 it would be something else. Like "libruls". At least have the decency to admit that.
Put on your public grieving shows tomorrow because you already have them planned but spare us the DRAMA next year. It didn't happen to you. Get over it.

I know this is harsh and I know not all people in small rural towns are Republicans but they ARE voting for Bush, who is only making big cities more dangerous. This is how I feel about it. Flame away.

Sterling: "Here here. I'm from Oklahoma and places like that are full of people who are causing most of the problems in the world. There are some very good people in those places but they generally have little political power."

sandnsea: "It "was". But the poster is right, it isn't anymore. Now it's about waving the big hick d*ck and kicking @ss because that's what they like to do. I don't know why they have no self esteem unless they're putting somebody else down, but that's the way it is. The poster is exactly right and if New York City doesn't want George Bush, maybe the rural people who will never be hit by a terrorist attack ought to listen."

OnionPatch: "Hear Hear!!! I'm out here on the left coast and I've long wondered why all these smalltown rednecks are so quick to get teared up about 9-11 but insult people from the big cities every day. Remember the anti-Howard Dean commercial that made fun of everyone who drinks latte and drives a volvo? They hate New York. They're a bunch of phonies. The same as their patriotism."

BiggJawn "Thank you. I was out in "Dirtsville Indiana" last weekend, and I was mildly disgusted at the local volunteer firemen walking around the festival in their beer guts and "FDNY" hats and "Never Forget" T-shirts like they were some f*cking honorary members of FDNY or something.

Bet most of them never even been to a trailer fire.

Hey, shout-out and hugs to any NYC folks who still hurt, but you know what? it didn't happen here. I'm sick of seeing the locals 1,000 miles away from NYC here in the corn belt acting like they breathed the smoke or something."

PROGRESSIVE1: "Here Here!!! As an East Coaster who is only an hour from NYC... I thank you for this rant. Granted that good people do exist in Middle America, there are many more who want to use our National Tradgedy to hurt the world and to show their own "David Duke" Bigotry.

They can take their UNAMERICAN "Ku Klux Kountry Hate Music" and shove it!

All we here from the the middle of the country is how bad the coasts are. If we are so bad and "immoral" than why do you care what happens to us?"

devinsgram: "You are right on the money. Could not have said it better. I was thinking the same thing the other day. Everybody in middle American crying, putting out their flags and their show of emotion. Phooey on them, they are the ones responsible for what happened in NYC on 9-11. They are the ones who put this idiot in office.

Democratic Underground Forums - To the citizens of Dirtsville USA: Quit grieving for NYC.............

Separated at Birth ?

CAMP PENDLETON, California (AP) -- President Bush, appearing before cheering U.S. forces Tuesday



A large crowd of Marines clad in tan-and-green camouflage uniforms bellowed "hooah," as Bush, who donned a tan military-style jacket with epaulets, thanked U.S. forces. He said the bravery and sacrifice of the troops has made America safer.

CNN.com - Bush meets with Pendleton Marines - Dec 7, 2004

51 Capital March - "You Stole My Vote"

51 Capital March - "You Stole My Vote"

Daily Kos :: Part Deux: Why Sibel Edmonds Will Never Talk

This is the follow-up to my popular diary from Friday entitled Why Sibel Edmonds will Never Talk (9/11).

In that diary I explained why I believe that Sibel Edmonds found evidence of foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks when she was interpreting or translating documents from Azerbaijan.

I also provided links for people to learn about the secret mission that Laos and Iran-Contra veterans, Richard Secord and Heinie Aderholt, took to Azerbaijan back in 1992.

Daily Kos :: Part Deux: Why Sibel Edmonds Will Never Talk
And I explained some information about Farhad Azima: his cargo airliner Baku Express, his role in modernizing Azerbaijan Airlines, and his business relationship with the owner of Huffman Aviation, Wally Hilliard, who trained two of the hijackers to fly.

In this episode, I leave Mrs. Edmonds alone and pursue a Pensacola connection to the tragedy of 9/11"

Daily Kos :: Why Sibel Edmonds will never talk (9/11)

Why Sibel Edmonds will never talk (9/11)
by BooMan23

Here are several important Sibel Edmonds' links.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/050704SibelEdmonds.shtml

http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=2917

http://www.prisonplanet.com/Pages/230904_edmonds.html

http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/

There is a good reason that the Justice Dept. is putting a muzzle on former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.
Chris Deliso: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?
Sibel Edmonds: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison

Edmonds has made several damaging accusations. She has questioned many facets of the Translations Department operation at the FBI. She has questioned the hiring practices, the qualifications of employees, the accountability procedures and much more. She also claims that the FBI had a lot of advance warning that 9/11 was coming and should have issued major FAA warnings no later than spring of 2001.

Diaries :: BooMan23's diary ::

And she claims that certain well known politicians in this country have been receiving illegal campaign contributions from organizations involved in drugs and arms trafficking, and terrorism.

That is a lot of information to process. But the most important, or interesting, fact about Sibel Edmonds is that she does not speak Arabic.

Chris Deliso: So you were in the first category, a full linguist?
Sibel Edmonds: For Turkish and Azerbaijani I was, yes. But since I hadn't been practicing Farsi for practically 25 years, I was just allowed to be a monitor in that language. I passed all the FBI exams in written Farsi, but not all for speaking. So I didn't do, say, live interviews.

Edmonds was hired after 9/11, but one her first jobs was to look at previously untranslated (backlogged) intercepts and documents that might shed light on the 9/11 plot. These documents would not have been in Arabic, since she didn't know Arabic. Some might have been in Farsi (Persian/Iranian), but she was not qualified as a full linguist in that language. The bulk of them would have been in Azeri (Azerbaijani) or in Turkish. Edmonds claims to have been the only full linguist in Turkish on staff at the FBI.

(Pertaining to the FBI sending an unqualified Turkish translator-Kevin- to Guantanomo):

Sibel Edmonds: Aside from sending Kevin, the FBI had only two options, neither of them good for them. They could send me, as I was the only qualified Turkish linguist, but this raised a red flag considering that I had already started to make a fuss about how the game was being played. Their other choice was to humbly ask the NSA or DIA or another agency to borrow a Turkish-language translator. But they couldn't do this because there is all this intra-agency competition.

From other comments she has made, it is clear that she was only the second full linguist on staff in Azeri.

From the preponderance of the evidence, I believe that she discovered evidence of the 9/11 plot in the Azeri language. Why would that be?

In August 1998, the Azerbaijani branch of the "Islamic Jihad" organization, which by then had merged with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, reportedly coordinated the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and wounded nearly 4,600. The FBI was able to trace about 60 phone calls made from the satellite phone used by Bin Laden to his associates in Baku and from them to operatives in East Africa. The U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan also feared an attack, but as a local radical claimed, they did not attack the Embassy so as "not to spoil their good relations in Azerbaijan" (Zerkalo 7/22/00; Bill of Indictment in U.S.A. vs. Bin Laden et. al. 4/01; Washington Post 5/3/01; Ekho 8/28/01).

By 1998, Ayman al-Zawahiri's organization (Egyptian Islamic Jihad) had taken up residence in Baku, Azerbaijan. It also merged with bin-Laden's organization that year and issued a fatwa targeting American civilians. Zawahiri had spent time in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Albania, Bulgaria and Poland. All of these places are major transit lines for the heroin trade from Asia into Europe.

That fact is extremely important because Edmonds claims that she discovered evidence of the 9/11 plot in intercepts that were not part of counter-terrorism investigations, but that were part of counter-intelligence investigations related to money laundering. And that money laundering was for cleansing the proceeds from arms and drug smuggling.

Most likely, she was translating intercepts of Azerbaijani businessmen or politicians that were involved in laundering large quantities of cash raised by Afghan heroin smuggling. She has also made clear that the drug dealers and the arms dealers are mixed up together and that the divisions become blurred between these organizations.

So, what kind of people have experience in money laundering, arms smuggling, and drug smuggling, but who also are known to have been involved in Azerbaijan?

The most famous Americans with such experience are the veterans of the Laos war during Vietnam. Many of them were later implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, which, of course, involved money laundering, arms, and drug smuggling. Among these crafty spooks are such veterans as Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, Farhad Azima and Richard Armitage. To this list, we must also add a little known charlatan named Gary Best.

Do any of these folks have any interest in Azerbaijan? In fact, yes, they all do. They also have links to the mujahideen from the Soviet-Afghan War.

For the links between Secord, Aderholt, and Best, see Spooks in Azerbaijan

For the links between Richard Armitage, Farhad Azima and Azerbaijan see:
U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce

Please note the other political luminaries that are members of the USACC.

But do any of these folks have any relationship to the 9/11 hijackers? Good question. Yes, they do.

The owner of the Flight School where Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained is Wallace J. Hilliard. And Wally Hilliard seems to be an acquaintance of Farhad Azima, as we can see here:

Business Partners

less than three weeks after hijackers Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi began flying lessons on July 6, 2000... A Lear jet belonging to "the true owner of Huffman Aviation, financier Wallace J. Hilliard, 70, of Naples, Fla., was seized by federal agents at the Orlando Executive Airport after they discovered 43 pounds of heroin onboard." -Green Bay Press Gazette 3-22-2004

More in the next episode...

Daily Kos :: Why Sibel Edmonds will never talk (9/11)