Several articles today have asked "What's the matter with Kansas?" Actually, writers have relocated that query to Wisconsin. More broadly, the problem can be stated thus: Why do so many working class citizens vote against their own interests?

This blogger pulls no punches:

But, say lefties like Michael Moore, poll after poll shows that Americans usually come down on the progressive side of the issues. Well, maybe, but election after election keeps putting reactionary Republicans and conservative Democrats back in office. Why is that?

I don’t care what any poll says. This country is firmly, staunchly, stupidly center-right. It doesn’t matter if a poll says most Americans favor single-payer health care, because those same people will turn right around and vote for some right-wing demagogue who cries that it’s “socialism!”...

Jonathan Haidt, in the Guardian, addresses the same topic.

Here's a more painful but ultimately constructive diagnosis, from the point of view of moral psychology: politics at the national level is more like religion than it is like shopping. It's more about a moral vision that unifies a nation and calls it to greatness than it is about self-interest or specific policies. In most countries, the right tends to see that more clearly than the left. In America the Republicans did the hard work of drafting their moral vision in the 1970s, and Ronald Reagan was their eloquent spokesman. Patriotism, social order, strong families, personal responsibility (not government safety nets) and free enterprise. Those are values, not government programs.

Dakinkat discusses the Haidt article in a recent Skydancing piece.

So, these are the same motivators that drive people to guns, bibles, and tribal thinking that demonizes the ‘other’. Is the angry right just a bunch of folks that are scared shitless?  It’s an interesting theses.

I think that Haidt needlessly complicates a straightforward matter. Propaganda works. Propaganda constricts our perception of acceptable solutions. Propaganda tells people to concentrate their fury on THIS issue instead of THAT issue.

Propaganda can convince anyone to do anything. Think of all the soldiers -- on all sides, in all wars -- who, motivated by propaganda, have run headlong into bullets. Propaganda has literally convinced people to kill themselves.

I'll give you a much subtler example.

About nine years ago, there was an effort to separate the San Fernando Valley from Los Angeles. This people spearheading this effort were property owners who wanted to escape L.A.’s rent control law. That law applied only to continuously inhabited apartments in older buildings; if a tenant moved, the rent for that unit could zoom up. Some tenants — seniors, mostly — stayed put for decades. The landlords wanted to jack up rents on old people living on fixed incomes.

At the time, rents in southern California were skyrocketing, due to the housing boom. Landlords could get $900 a month for a single that would have cost $400 just a few years previously.

I talked about this situation with a social services worker who despaired at the growing number of homeless families. She actually told me: “I’m sure things will improve if the Valley secedes.”

“What the hell makes you say that?” I asked. “It’ll make things much worse. Old people will suddenly see their rents double. How can you say things will get better?”

She seemed uncomfortable. “I dunno. It’s what they say on TV.”

Turns out she had been watching a TV "news" segment in which libertarians argued, with their usual casuistry, that an absolute lack of regulation would magically create the lowest possible rents for everyone.

She was not a conservative by nature, or she would not have had the job she had. Nevertheless, propaganda had worked its magic on her mind.

If you can find it, read Death in Washington by Donald Freed and Fred Landis -- specifically, read the chapter on the "Quartered Man" campaign in Chile. Landis, who did the research for that chapter, also wrote this must-read article on CIA propaganda techniques.

Landis discusses how the right (funded by the CIA) controlled the media in the run-up to the coup against elected Chilean leader Salvator Allende. The newspapers and magazines created the impression that the country had devolved into chaos and mass murder.

The next theme is social chaos. In almost every country there are bizarre incidents which a conservative newspaper normally will not touch. Suddenly this National Enquirer-type material fills the front page: Violence, chaos, permanent crisis, unnatural events, omens from heaven, death, gruesome food stories, household pets who eat their masters, children who inform on their parents, servants who turn on their employers, etc. The difference is that after creating a climate of tensions, this situation is blamed on the government: First on the ideology that the government represents (socialism) and then on the government itself; first by insinuation and then explicitly; first with humor and then with terror; first with character assassination and then with physical assassination.

Strategically, the attack on government ministers proceeds like a chess game in which one eliminates the pawns and works up to the king.

More:

Baeza Flores, writing in Radiografia Politico de Chile: "I arrived like a traveller feeling a bit dizzy from the gas of propaganda and counter-propaganda of psychological warfare, a little seasick from the ideological gas."

Oscar Waiss, writing in La Nacion: "The purpose of the CIA is to create a national psychosis, including an insane repetition of themes, which could serve as background music for a horror film."

(Emphasis added.) Obviously, the exact same thing is happening in this country right now. See: Fox News under Roger Ailes. See: Andrew Breitbart. See: Clear Channel, backers of Rush Limbaugh and financially linked to Mitt Romney. TV, internet, radio.

Have intelligence operatives played a role in these three networks? It's hard to think otherwise, especially since Landis describes the CIA's usage of the exact same techniques. In the future, I intend to devote much of this blog to uncovering the "spooky" links to America's propaganda networks.

What's the matter with Kansas (or Wisconsin)? Propaganda. That's what's the matter. Permalink

Yes, there's more Evil Brett crap going around, and all of the right-wing blogs are doing their best to create hysteria. Michelle Malkin is in high dudgeon mode, caterwauling about "the crucial battle between truth-telling bloggers versus convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin and his band of malicious online thugs."

What band of online thugs?

If this band exists, why won't Memeorandum link to their writings or websites -- y'know, just to give us curious folks an idea of how thuggish these thugs can get? Memeorandum links to pretty much everyone -- to Malkin, to all of the Breitbarters, and even to my humble self. Alas, we see no links providing a single example of Kimberlin-loving online thuggery in action.

Nevertheless, Malkin assures us that those thugs are out there somewhere, scuttling about in the criminal night. They must exist. Michelle Malkin wouldn't lie to us, would she?

In their crazed zeal to push this meme, the Breitbarters have brought in some fairly heavy hitters: Hermann Cain, Glenn Beck, the National Review, and now Congressman Kenny Marchant and Senator Saxby Chambliss. All of them are screaming about a conspiracy that, as far as I can determine, does not exist.

Everything started when a couple of right-wing bloggers asserted (without presenting objective evidence) that they were SWATted -- that is, targeted by fake 911 calls to the cops. (The timing of those incidents was pretty suspicious, as discussed in previous posts.) Even if we stipulate that these SWATs took place as described, so far I've seen no evidence linking Brett Kimberlin -- an unlikable Charlie Nobody with a serious rap sheet -- to the events. Nevertheless, the rightwingers keep shouting that he is the mastermind of a left-wing terror conspiracy. When a claim receives endless repetition, it begins to seem true.

The ancient question Cui Bono? tells you who really did the deed. Nobody on the left could possibly benefit from such an inane and otiose stunt. The benefit to the right is obvious: They get to play "martyrella" (as one of my former ladyfriends might have put it). James O'Keefe, Breitbart's private spook, is on record as favoring "false flag" attacks.

More recently, a little-known blogger named Aaron Walker, who had relentlessly promoted this nonsense about The Great Kimberlin Conspiracy, was punished by a Maryland court for violating a restraining order. To the right-wing nutcases, the judge's decision proves that the Great Kimberlin Conspiracy is so immensely powerful that it controls the justice system.

The best summary of this nonsense is on The Moderate Voice.

Earlier, I told you about the manufactured scheiss-sturm about somebody nobody has ever heard of by … THE ENTIRE RIGHTIE BLOGOSMEAR. (“The Ghouls of May“)

And now, we find the interesting spectacle of no major media having picked up the kerfluffing of a self-manufactured kerfuffle, so the Breitbarts, the Malkins and the rest of the flying monkey corps have pressed two members of congress into service...

Behind the scenes, a couple of other liberal-ish bloggers -- better known and more influential than I -- have kept an eye on the Breitbarters and their surreal theatricals. They are unsure as to when, if ever, would be the right time to speak. Although these "bigger" bloggers agree that, right now, it would be best not to give Malkin and co. further publicity, there is a general sense that the rightists are up to something sinister.

Their actions are simply too coordinated. There must be a plan.

(For all of their caterwauling about the dangers of "collectivism," the Breitbarters know the value of concerted action. Have you ever heard anyone other than a conservative say "There's no I in Team?")

So what's the endgame? In the words of the Moderate Voice writer: "The teapot grows ever more tempesty. But WHY this. And WHY now?"

In part, this bizarre campaign seems designed to create the impression that Kimberlin-allied terrorists killed Andrew Breitbart. And they call me a conspiracy theorist! 

But I will posit an even darker scenario.

(Before I do, this warning: What follows is speculative. We all know the double standard at work in our society: Breitbarters and Fox Newsers are allowed to spew conspiracy theories relentlessly, while liberals may never do likewise. Therefore, if you wish to be considered a serious personage, you are well-advised to offer a pro-forma denunciation of that bastard Cannon and his irresponsible, paranoid ways.)

Suppose -- just suppose -- that tomorrow you wake up and the headlines tell you that a Big Bad went down. We're talking about a big Big Bad: Falling airplanes. Toppling buildings. The electric grid goes kablooey. Whatever.

Al Qaeda doesn't cut it as a bogeyman anymore. Everyone knows that the group has been rendered nearly impotent.

Moreover, everyone knows that people like Michelle Malkin want to live in a world where left-wing writers are suspected, interrogated, rounded-up, spied upon, imprisoned. Ann Coulter once said that conservatives need "...to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

Malkin and the Breitbarters are creating the foundation for that kind of concerted anti-left action. "The Kimberlin conspiracy" is a scarecrow designed to frighten the gullible. But in the hysteria following a major terrorist incident, that scarecrow will look more animated than Ray Bolger ever did, and it will seem a lot more threatening.

If that's the intended outcome, then the better-known liberal scribblers have to find some way to talk about this bizarre -- but brilliantly coordinated -- operation. Permalink

If a Republican woman were raped by the Hulk, Fox News could convince her that she's still a virgin.

Paul Krugman is responsible for today's post-that-everyone's-talking-about: Reagan was a Keynesian. He makes exactly the point that I made earlier -- that Reagan the politician got the U.S. out of a slump by using Keynesian methods that Reagan the speech-maker would have deplored. I used the term "military Keynesianism" (a phrase which actually saw some circulation in the 1980s), while Krugman prefers "weaponized Keynesianism."

Krugman also points out that the military build-up doesn't tell the full story:

For the truth is that on at least one dimension, government spending, there was a large difference between the two presidencies, with total government spending adjusted for inflation and population growth rising much faster under one than under the other. I find it especially instructive to look at spending levels three years into each man’s administration — that is, in the first quarter of 1984 in Reagan’s case, and in the first quarter of 2012 in Mr. Obama’s — compared with four years earlier, which in each case more or less corresponds to the start of an economic crisis. Under one president, real per capita government spending at that point was 14.4 percent higher than four years previously; under the other, less than half as much, just 6.4 percent.

O.K., by now many readers have probably figured out the trick here: Reagan, not Obama, was the big spender. While there was a brief burst of government spending early in the Obama administration — mainly for emergency aid programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps — that burst is long past. Indeed, at this point, government spending is falling fast, with real per capita spending falling over the past year at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.

Why was government spending much stronger under Reagan than in the current slump? “Weaponized Keynesianism” — Reagan’s big military buildup — played some role. But the big difference was real per capita spending at the state and local level, which continued to rise under Reagan but has fallen significantly this time around.

Sorry for the long quote, but this stuff is important.

What amazes me is how much has been forgotten. The points Krugman makes are not arcane; they were widely known and discussed during the Reagan years. At the time, everyone understood that Reagan ran up a deficit that outdistanced the debt of all previous administrations combined. This fact provided the basis for Dick Cheney's later claim that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

In the 1980s, everyone also understood that Reagan raised taxes to combat the recession. During most of his time in office, the top tax rate was above 50 percent.

Such things were known then. They are not known now.

If I had a working camcorder, I'd like to go to the Inner Harbor to interview a hundred passers-by. I'd like to ask: 1. Did Reagan increase or lower the national debt? and 2. Were tax rates under Reagan lower or higher than under Clinton and Obama? I'm betting that the vast majority of respondents younger than 40 (in a "blue" city) would say that Reagan presided over a miniscule deficit and a low-tax paradise.

Many of the comments appended to Krugman's column demonstrate that this historical revisionism has taken hold. Example:

Obama's agenda and Reagans presidency cannot be compared in the fashion you are proposing. Reagans intent was clearly that of a true patriot who was trying to reduce government spending and strengthen our military. Obama the socialist-marxist intent is far more sinister. He is destroying the economy and weakening our military and the powerful presence that America presents to the world has become a byword. The two men are at opposite ends of the political sprectrum with Obama playing the role of the un-American. Krugman, your sorry socialist-marxist agenda is hanging out all over but that has never stopped you or your clever cohorts in the lamestream media from bellowing out that agenda at every opportune moment.

These people will never believe you if you tell them that Obama's "stimulus" package was largely a matter of tax cuts. (Tax cuts don't work. Tax cuts don't work. Tax cuts don't work.) Vast numbers of your fellow citizens think that they are paying more in taxes than under Dubya, despite the evidence of their own financial histories.

Americans can be programmed to believe anything. Propaganda trumps both history and experience. If a Republican woman were raped by the Hulk, Fox News could convince her that she's still a virgin. Permalink

I met Ray Bradbury on a number of occasions. That statement is neither a boast nor an example of name dropping; it is simply another way of saying that I lived in Los Angeles in the 1970s. The dude got around. It was impossible not to meet him.

Many of his admirers may not know that Bardbury loved movies. He often popped by Filmex, the Los Angeles International Film Exhibition, where one usually saw him in the lobby of the larger Plitt theater, surrounded by admirers vying for the honor of driving him to his next destination. There's no mystery as to how he got around without a car; the mystery is how he ever found a moment to think his own thoughts. I'm not sure he wanted any such moments. By that point, his career was being Ray Bradbury.

The last time I saw him was roughly eight years ago at the Cinerama Dome, where a gorgeous 70mm print of Lawrence of Arabia filled one of the world's largest screens. What a strange night! It seemed to be a remembered thing even as it was occurring. I knew that I never would see him again, just as I knew that I'd never again watch a classic film as it was meant to be watched. (Proper film projection is rare outside Los Angeles.) There was a time when I lived for great cinema done right. That part of the world I loved is gone.

Although Bradbury was a movie buff, his work has had an uncertain relationship with that medium. Truffaut's adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 is, in my view, quite under-appreciated. In that film, Julie Christie's self-absorbed TV addict offers an accurate portrait of what America would soon turn into, and the fake newscast at the end predicts journalism under Murdoch. On the other hand, the Twilight Zone adaptation of "I Sing the Body Electric" makes me cringe every time I try to watch it. Many foolish people presume that fidelity to a literary original is a cinematic virtue, but that's not always true. Sometimes dialogue works well on the page but not on the screen.

Bradbury's great rival was Theodore Sturgeon. Actually, one should not speak of rivalry, since people did not, in those days, routinely reduce art to a competition. One can, however, say this: At a time when literary critics deprecated science fiction, those who defended the genre usually spoke of Bradbury and Sturgeon before discussing anyone else.

Sturgeon was a family friend -- which is another way of saying that he had the hots for my mom, which is another way of saying that she was female and he knew of her existence. Sturgeon and Bradbury wrote the first two "evil carnival" novels, The Dreaming Jewels and Something Wicked This Way Comes, both fine works and still in print. I forget which came first. In that saner era, nobody felt a need to say that one book ripped off the other; enjoying both was perfectly permissible. Back then, even geeks understood that art is not sports. That understanding is gone.

My favorite Bradbury stories stand outside genre. I loved Dandelion Wine when I was young. Would I still like it now? I hope so. Other favorites include "The Anthem Sprinters" and "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" and "A Medicine for Melancholy" and...

The short story.

Whatever happened to it?

We live in an age of Attention Deficit Disorder, yet many people who buy 900 page novels will snub a nine-page short story. Short stories are still written, but they no longer serve as cultural reference points; when a modern short story writer walks into a movie theater lobby, crowds don't gather. The form no longer provides a way for people like Ray Bradbury to master their art and affect the way we think.

Another part of the world I loved is gone. Permalink

Once again, we're hearing noises about Hillary for veep. This time, the noises are coming from the respected Democrat Brent Budowsky. One can't fairly call Budowsky a friend to this blog -- I don't know if he even reads it -- but he is a friend to a friend, and has been helpful on a couple of occasions. Here is the gist of his pro-Hillary argument:

If President Obama makes the bold and historic decision to run with Hillary Clinton in 2012, an Obama-Clinton ticket would launch a rocket of enthusiasm throughout a rejuvenated and mobilized Democratic base.

An Obama-Clinton team would reduce the dangers of a generation-long Supreme Court rightist majority on a court that is already far to the right of two centuries of American jurisprudence with decisions such as Citizens United, in which five unelected justices have put under aggressive and hostile attack the core American notion that our Founding Fathers shared.

President Clinton might sometimes make the White House nervous, but he, and Hillary Clinton, stand for a Clinton presidency that was a great and well-remembered economic triumph and for an Obama presidency that has done great good, with much more great good to come.

Am I convinced? No. To repeat points made in an earlier post: Veeps don't get unveeped unless they've done something truly bad, and Biden's worst sins have been a few silly gaffes. Few love Biden, but few despise him.

For years, the Republican propagandists have chosen not to go after Hillary because they sought (and still seek) to exploit the 2008 fissures between the Clinton and Obama camps. That situation would change the moment Hillary climbed aboard the ticket.

We would relive it all: Monica, Whitewater, Waco, Mena...all of your favorite hate-memes from the 1990s. And the hate would come in hyper-concentrated form. It would feel like getting a blast of pure sulfur or capsaicin in the face, every minute of every day for months.

There is, however, an argument in favor of choosing Hillary: If Obama looks doomed, then he would need to grab attention with a grand, "game-changing" move. McCain chose Palin for similar reasons. As a lot of people now forget, the trick almost worked: Just before the Wall Street collapse, the Palin factor put McCain ahead of Obama.

Are things bad enough for Obama that he needs to resort to a headline-grabbing stunt? No. But the situation may soon reach that point.

In the public mind, the right's fantasy version of Obama has overtaken reality; such is the power of incessant propaganda in a time of economic hardship. Thus, we have conservatives like Jennifer Rubin getting away with utter hogwash like this:

Obama also has wrecked havoc in the the Democratic Party. He’s firmly affixed the “tax and spend” label to it ...

In fact, taxes have gone down, and so has spending. The "stimulus" program was mostly a matter of tax cuts -- a fact which conservatives never tell you. There are fewer federal employees now than there were under Bush.

Just a few days ago, I received yet another opportunity to interview a couple of right-wing clowns offering a hyperbolized version of these same talking points. (Apparently, I'm on some sort of toxic sludge mailing list.)

President Obama's policies of Keynesian stimulus, printing trillions of paper dollars out of thin air and government intervention in the free marketplace have “completely failed” and are now dragging the U.S. back into recession, stagnation and high inflation.

This is sludge in concentrated form. Hell, it's the concentrate they use to make concentrate.

As Paul Krugman details in his excellent new book End This Depression Now, there was no Keynesian stimulus; the largest item in the stim package was tax cuts. As for "printing trillions of dollars out of thin air" -- when? When did that happen? I'd be grateful for a citation of evidence. There has been no government intervention in the free marketplace except for the Wall Street bailout (which really happened under Dubya, and which was demanded by both parties) and the aid package offered to GM, which worked out well.

Seriously: What the hell is it with the rightists and their caterwauling about "high inflation"? Do you see any inflation? Why do right-wingers love to pretend, against all evidence, that we're living in a perpetual Wiemar state? Yes, we've seen some prices rise due to unregulated commodity speculation. But if home prices and wages remain depressed, then there is no fucking inflation -- by definition.

Nevertheless, the right continues to paint Obama as some sort of left-wing zealot. Here's the latest attempt: Apparently, the National Review has discovered a story which Cannonfire covered more fully back in 2008. Most of the credit goes to a contributor called G.

The National Review ideologues thinks that Obama's one-time dalliance with the New Party proves that our president is "trying to move the United States toward European-style social democracy." Oh, if only!

G and I argued that Obama's stances of that time were pure opportunism:

He took far-left positions when doing so served to advance his career, and now repudiates those same positions in order to advance further.

At each step of the way in his political career, Obama has risen by convincing people that he's on "their" side. When Ken Adelman and Noam Chomsky endorse the same politician, you know something's seriously wrong.

Alex Parenne found just the right words today: Barack Obama is "a passionless former left-wing poser." Years ago, Obama made certain fleeting alliances with various lefties because he rose to prominence in a very left-wing sector of Chicago. Even then, many of the people in his district considered him a phoney who didn't really care about progressive ideals.

If the guy is going to take the socialist rap, then couldn't he have given us at least a little bit of old-school liberalism? Like, couldn't he have given Geithner's gig to someone like Krugman or Stiglitz?

The Obama of right-wing hallucination has obscured the real Obama. The real one deserves our condemnation, albeit for very different reasons. Matt Stoller puts the case against the president brilliantly in his piece on the Wisconsin debacle:

I wish I could say I had a new insight, but it’s basically the same problem I’ve been writing about for years.  Put simply, it’s that Obama’s policy framework is now the policy framework of the Democratic Party, liberals, and unionism.  Up and down the ticket, Democrats are operating under the shadow of the President, associated with unpopular policies that make the lives of voters worse and show government to be an incompetent, corrupt handmaiden to big business.  So they keep losing.

Here's Stoller's most important point:

And if Obama loses, the recriminations will start, and liberals will take the blame for not allowing Obama to be centrist enough. 

(Emphasis added.) We cannot let that happen. We cannot let that happen.

We cannot allow a false narrative to take hold. Obama screwed us not by imposing Keynesianism but by his refusal to consider such a solution. If a President Romney chooses to save his nation -- a questionable proposition -- he'll do it the same way Reagan and Hitler did it: Military Keynesianism. Huge armaments spending, on the credit card.

(If you're now dying to snarl at me about Godwin's law, screw you. My point is historically accurate. Military Keynesianism is exactly what Hitler and Reagan did. FDR too, arguably.)

Can Hillary salvage Obama? I don't think so, but if the Democrats face a sufficiently dire situation, fortune may favor the bold. The future of the Supreme Court remains a compelling consideration. Permalink

An ultra-weird story appeared in the NYT yesterday:

Starting Tuesday, look out for an unusual warning atop your Gmail inbox, Google home page or Chrome browser. It will not mince words: “Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer.”

Which state? Google won't say. Neither will the NYT -- at least not directly. However:

The announcement is timed just one week after security researchers discovered Flame, a massive, data-mining virus, had been spying on computers in the Middle East– predominantly in Iran– for at least the last four years.

Researchers say they believe the Flame virus is sponsored by the same entity that commissioned Stuxnet, a virus co-sponsored by the United States and Israel, that destroyed thousands of Iranian centrifuges in 2010.

If you've been following Marcy Wheeler, you know much about the story of Stuxnet, a computer virus -- actually a worm -- designed to take down Iran's nuclear program. It was created by the NSA and a little-known, but ultra-important, Israeli agency called Unit 8200. The worm has turned into a massive problem, since it has infected innumerable systems outside Iran; there's a good chance that it's on your computer right now.

Worse: The worm was supposed to have a kill switch; it was intended to deactivate itself after a certain date. But someone killed the kill switch -- and all signs point to Israel. A story by David Sanger for the New York Times claims that a briefer told Obama that the Israelis modified the worm. Lo, it shall be with us always.

 Flame, another U.S.-Israel joint venture in cyber-war, may be even worse.

Last week the New York Times quoted an Iranian cyberdefense official who said the virus's encryption looked like Israel's handiwork. Kaspersky Lab, a Russian antivirus company, said Flame might have been created by the same contractors who were responsible for Stuxnet, working with a different team of programmers. Flame is a targeted virus, just as Stuxnet was, but while the latter was aimed at industrial control systems, Flame doesn't appear to be targeting any particular industry or system -- just Windows PCs in the Middle East.

Flame is a huge virus -- 20 megabytes of various modules, databases, and varying levels of encryption. It's 40 times larger than Stuxnet, and it's been operating for at least two years without having been detected. So far researchers have a pretty good idea of what it's designed to do -- steal and transmit information from infected machines -- but because it contains so much code, it will take years to fully analyze. So far we know it can activate a computer's built-in microphone to record Skype conversations, siphon contact information from an address book, and transmit screenshots of user activity.

In spite of its fairly conventional data-theft tactics, the consensus is that it's the work of a nation-state rather than just a group of programmers -- Finnish security firm F-Secure said that it was "most likely launched by a Western intelligence agency."

Even UPI admits that Unit 8200 created Flame. This background briefing on 8200 is downright jaw-dropping. This story on Flame strongly indicates (without actually stating) that the Flame virus is, in fact, the "state-sponsored" malware prompting Google's unprecedented warning.

Here are the questions we must answer:

1. Why did the Israelis put this thing on all of our computers? What is the ultimate plan? Iran seems to be the excuse, not the target -- at least not the sole target.

2. To what degree is U.S. intelligence a witting partner in this cyberwar, and to what degree have our own intelligence services been used, compromised or bamboozled? Although Stuxnet began as a U.S./Israeli co-venture, I feel that the American side wanted to keep the thing targeted on Iran.

3. Will it ever be permissible to discuss such matters without being subjected to accusations of anti-Semitism?

Final note: A Unit 8200 veteran went on to found Check Point. In case you don't know, Check Point is that nice company which allows you to download the Zone Alarm firewall -- for free! Gosh. You think ZA will protect you against Flame and Stuxnet? Permalink

Our media blamed the Houla massacre on the dictatorial Syrian regime. But we're seeing growing indications that something else occurred...

Take the photo the BBC used to illustrate the atrocity: it showed a young boy jumping over piles of corpses neatly laid out in preparation for burial. Very dramatic, and very disturbing – except it wasn’t a photo of anything that happened in Houla. Instead, it was a photo taken by Marco Di Lauro in Iraq, in 2003, and appropriated from his web site. The stolen photo was accompanied by a caption that read:

“Photo from Activist. This image – which cannot be independently verified – is believed to show bodies of children in Houla awaiting funeral.”

That sort of media manipulation happened a lot in the early days of the 2003 war against Saddam Hussein. Fox News conjured up an entire battle which never occurred; the fall of that infamous statue was staged by Chelabi's imported goons; TV news aired unrelated footage to convey the impression that Baghdad fell after combat, when in fact the enemy commanders were simply paid not to fight.

The Daily Cheeto (and we must never forget Moulitsas' CIA background) hilariously argues that the fake photo run by the BBC was really part of an Assad regime plot. I doubt that the Damascus government has much ability to manipulate the British press, and I doubt that they're capable of what we might call an "11 dimensional chess" strategy. 

More on Houla:

...for example, one of the victims was a candidate in Syria’s recent elections who had refused to stand down at the demand of opposition “activists.” He, too, was brutally murdered, and the question is – by whom?

...there was the case of “Syria Danny,” whose on-camera antics were exposed in flagrante delicto as he staged a Syrian army “attack” for the benefit of CNN. And don’t forget the fake “blogger” who purported to be “Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari,” a 35-year-old lesbian living in Damascus, supposedly kidnapped by the Syrian regime and abused. “Amina” turned out to be a middle-aged married American schmuck and “Middle Eastern activist,” one Tom MacMaster, studying for a degree at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland.

For more on the "Danny" deception, see this very important post.

The original news accounts said that the victims were murdered by heavy artillery. We now know that this simply is not true: They were killed at close range, by small arms and knives.

There's a long history of western intelligence planting stories in the left-leaning Guardian. And it looks like that's been happening vis-a-vis the Houla massacre. This article effectively demolishes recent Guardian and BBC pieces on the Houla massacre.

The video at the top of this post demonstrates that the current actions against Syria are part of a plan formulated soon after 9/11. The appalling thing is that the Obama administration -- and let us not blind ourselves to the role played by his Secretary of State -- is continuing this neocon policy.

But don't expect better from Romney. His foreign policy adviser is Michael Hayden of the CIA and NSA. He's neocon to the core.

So we're screwed either way. Permalink

This blog used to be all about election fraud, until the right hijacked the topic with their claims of voter fraud -- a very different animal.

The term "election fraud" refers to schemes to miscount already-cast votes, usually through rigged electronic voting devices. The term can also refer to other shady tactics, such as robocalls which tell people to go to the wrong precinct.

The phrase "Voter fraud" is used to describe a scenario in which people pretend to be eligible to vote even though they aren't. All studies have proven that this problem doesn't really exist.

Nevertheless, millions of Americans believe that this country faces an epidemic of voter misidentification. This triumph of propaganda serves the interests of Republicans pushing for draconian ID laws which will keep seniors, students, the homeless and the poor away from the voting booth.

Wisconsin provides a prime example of this myth-meme in action. From the right-wing blog The Gateway Pundit:

Democrats in Wisconsin are busing in supporters from Minnesota today for the recall vote against Governor Scott Walker.
On Twitter Democrats say they are driving in from across America.

Notice how the Pundit does not humor us with examples or screen caps proving that these tweets exist and that they came from actual Democrats. You know damned well that if such evidence existed, we would see it. The Pundit does, however, favor us with a very unconvincing clip from the 24/7 lie machine known as Fox News.

There’s more…  A man called into the Chris Plante Show today. He said Democrats are giving away free stuff to supporters who go vote in Wisconsin. The caller said Democrats have four buses coming into Wisconsin from Michigan to vote Democrat.

As Sherlock once said: "Bleat, Watson. Pure Bleat!" Those mythical buses drive through Blogistan Right during every close election. The evidence proving their existence is about as believable as the eyewitness accounts of Goatman.

You want shady activity? Here's the real deal. In the previous post, I asked if it was possible to track misleading robocalls to their source. Indeed it was: Some of those calls came from a phone connected to a Wisconsin phone bank controlled by the GOP. Although we may not yet have a clear narrative of what happened, we do have something tangible to investigate.

I predicted a Walker win weeks ago; his victory did not upset me. My focus is on propaganda. The important battle is the one for the minds of men and women. The important election has not yet been held. It will occur in the near future.

Suppose that, a week from now, you say the following words to someone you just met: "There was election rigging in Wisconsin." What, in all likelihood, will be the first image to pop into your listener's mind? Will he or she think of those fictional -- but much publicized -- buses? Or will he or she think of that very non-fictional GOP-owned phone? 

If the average person picks the bus instead of the phone, then this country will have voted -- yet again -- for hallucination over reality, for propaganda over the provable. That's the truly important election. Unless we find a way to win it, democracy can't work Permalink

Guess the Walker recall election in Wisconsin must be closer than I thought. The Walker forces are putting out misleading robocalls which tell voters that they don't have to cast a ballot today if they signed a petition for the recall.

Personally, I would favor a law to insure that any campaign resorting to such tactics automatically loses the election. The problem with such a law is obvious: How would you know which party or person initiated the robocalls?

But that brings us to our tech question. In this day and age, how could we not know? Phone companies keep records. Calls made from computers may be traced, ultimately, to an individual IP address. If a phone call provided a clue to identifying a murderer, investigators would find some way to trace it, no matter how cleverly the caller tried to hide his tracks. Well, why not apply that same investigative zeal to solving the murder of democracy?

Of course, as we've seen in a previous post, even if the robocalls were traced to a specific computer, there is the problem of RATs. A Remotely Accessed Trojan is a type of malware which allows you to commandeer an innocent person's computer for mischievous purposes, such as making phone calls which cannot be traced back to you.

This Canadian article traces robocalls made there to disposable cell phones. But even those can be traced.  

Incidentally, right-wingers are very quick to denounce robocalls when the trick is used against them. See here. Permalink

The HBGary/Anonymous scandal -- a bizarre tale of cyberspying and counterspying -- became public early last year. Remember? HBGary, a tony computer security company run by a guy named Aaron Barr, used underhanded means to gather info on left-wing critics of the Chamber of Commerce. In response, hackers from Anonymous broke into the firm's systems, filched a whole bunch of emails and unleashed unholy hell. The company has since been sold -- to a very interesting firm, as we shall see.

Although that brouhaha broke out two Februarys ago, the past (as they say) is never truly past. In recent days, a number of stories have refocused attention on the great HBGary cyber-intrusion -- which, though not the world's most important hack, was certainly the wittiest. One could only smile at the spectacle of a high-priced computer security firm being invaded, undermined and kicked into the corner by a gaggle of goofball anarchists.

You simply must read this excerpt from Parmy Olsen's new book on Anonymous. Even if you're a technophobe, you'll be hooked.

Lately, the Breitbarters have been writing about the affair, always defending the honor and integrity of HBGary's Aaron Barr. In the conservative blogosphere, these defenses tend to intertwine with diatribes against Evil Brett Kimberlin, the right-wing bogeyman du jour. Why have the two topics have become conflated in the right-wing mind? I dunno. Read this and this; maybe you can explain it to me.

This much is certain: Olsen's version of events establishes that "security guru" Barr was hacked and hacked easily. Yet HBGary charges a very hefty fee for their services.

If you go to the HBGary website now, you'll see their malware-fighting products but not their prices. When I first visited the place in 2011, prices were posted -- and they were steep. (Five figures, if I recall correctly.) At the time, I asked myself: "What's the difference between HBGary's expensive security suite and the free stuff you get from a vendor like AVG or Avira? How good can anti-malware really be?"

And now here comes the punchline....

HBGary uses AVG !

Yes it's true I've been ploughing through some of the released emails and that's what they use. Make what you will of that, but i'm more than surprised, to say the least

Hmmm.

Theoretically speaking -- just theoretically, mind you -- is it possible for a company to repackage already-extant computer security software and sell it to corporate/government clients for oodles of cash? There are well-heeled people out there who simply don't feel comfortable purchasing anything unless they've paid top dollar.

And while you ponder that, ponder this...

Personas non grata. The right claims that HBGary was viciously maltreated by Anonymous, the famous/infamous hacker collective. Yet HBGary itself was (is?) in the business of malware and hacking -- and they targeted the left. In February of 2011, I posted an article on the company's dirty dealings which offered some juicy quotes (from here):

Indeed, malware hacking appears to be a key service sold by HBGary Federal. Describing a “spear phishing” strategy (an illegal form of hacking), Barr advised his colleague Greg Hoglund that “We should have a capability to do this to our adversaries.” In another e-mail chain, HBGary Federal executives discuss using a fake “patriotic video of our soldiers overseas” to induce military officials to open malicious data extraction viruses. In September, HBGary Federal executives again contemplate their success of a dummy “evite” e-mail used to maliciously hack target computers.

Nothing Anonymous has ever done (that we know of) rises to that level of malevolence.

HBGary wanted two million bucks a month to spy on the enemies of the Chamber of Commerce. One of the targets was Brad Friedman, who responded thus:

In addition to Barr's email offering personal information on me and my family, the H&W scheme by Team Themis, created for the U.S. Chamber, also included a Power Point presentation in which I am personally highlighted, with photograph, along with my wife "Martha" and "2 boys, James and John Friedman" at our "home at 1055 Raywood Ln, Silver Springs, MD".

Of course, I'm not married and have no children and don't live in MD...

As noted in a previous post, no-one named Brad Friedman lives at that address -- in fact, the address doesn't exist. As I said last year: "Looks like HBGary just made shit up. Then they said: 'Two million dollars, please.' Nice work if you can get it!"

More ominously, they also mounted a dirty tricks campaign against Glenn Greenwald.

Even more ominous is this tidbit from Wikipedia:

HBGary had made numerous threats of cyber-attacks against Wikileaks. The dossier of recently exposed emails revealed HBGary Inc. was working on the development of a new type of Windows rootkit, code named Magenta, that would be "undetectable" and "almost impossible to remove."

In October 2010, Greg Hoglund proposed to Barr creating "a large set of unlicensed Windows 7 themes for video games and movies appropriate for middle east & asia" (sic) which "would contain back doors" as part of an ongoing campaign to attack support for Wikileaks.

For more on Magenta, go here and here. Let's not minimize the dangers: The Stuxnet scandal -- about which we may soon have much to say -- tells us that malware attacks have a bad habit of getting out of hand.

(Side note: A theme can contain malware? News to me! I was under the impression that a theme is little more than a jpg image for your desktop and a few icons.)

Perhaps the most important revelation to come out of the HBGary scandal concerned the creation of "personas" to flood blogs with manufactured opinion. One manipulator in one location can create the appearance of a mass movement.

Revealed: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people

Though many questions remain about how the military would apply such technology, the reasonable fear should be perfectly clear. "Persona management software" can be used to manipulate public opinion on key information, such as news reports. An unlimited number of virtual "people" could be marshaled by only a few real individuals, empowering them to create the illusion of consensus.

I remain convinced that Obama got into office via a similar tactic.

A year ago, HBGary unconvincingly tried to deny the importance of these revelations. Today, the right-wing bloggers still pooh-pooh the significance of the Air Force contract, since it was never fulfilled. Rest easy, folks: The AF didn't actually do it -- they simply tried to do it. I'm reminded of that episode of The Simpsons in which Sideshow Bob decries the unfairness of being jailed for attempted murder: "Do they give Nobel Prizes for attempted chemistry?"

Some of you may be wondering why the Air Force would want to manipulate public opinion in this way. There's a long tradition, going back to the '50s, of the Air Force functioning as a cut-out for the CIA -- which is barred by statute from operating domestically. On the other hand, see here.

ManTech and the spook connection. Barr is out, and HBGary has been purchased by a firm called ManTech. We have mentioned this company in connection with the Cunningham bribery scandal, and in connection with a now-forgotten scandal involving an Arizona congressman named Rick Renzi. Basically, ManTech provides technical services to the government, to law enforcement, and to the intelligence community.

How does the disgraced former congressman Duke Cunningham figure into this? He wrote a remarkable letter from prison in which he admitted that he particularly regretted taking money from a spooky guy named Mitchell Wade. (Remember him?) Wade had a very close relationship with a defense contractor named Gray Hawk Systems, which pretty much is ManTech.

Congressman Renzi got into trouble when he pushed legislation favorable to Man Tech, the employer of the congressman's father.

At about the same time ManTech purchased HBGary, the company made an interesting hire...

ManTech International Corp. has hired Dean May, Ph.D., as vice president of intelligence solutions for its Mission, Cyber and Intelligence Solutions (MCIS) group.

He spent most of his career in CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, leading research and development efforts across directorates in an effort to enhance our nation’s intelligence capabilities.

In other words, May is sorta like "Q" in the James Bond movies. There are those who say that one never really leaves the Agency...

Lo and behold, we find that HBGary is now under the aegis of MCIS. Now pay attention, 007: This means that CIA guy Dean May runs HBGary. Yes, "Q" now controls the very same HBGary which masterminded attacks on left-wing writers, and which is now staunchly defended by the Breitbart crew.

And so we are left with two conundrums...

Conundrum 1: With ManTech running HBGary, do you think that they're no longer spying on progs or using "personas" to manipulate opinion? Do you think that Magenta is non-operational?

Conundrum 2: Just what is the link between last year's HBGary scandal and this year's ginned-up Kimberlin affair? Why do the Breitbarters conflate the two? What the hell is going on there? 

(Bonus conundrum: Why would a high-priced security firm like HBGary rely on AVG, a free antivirus system?) Permalink

If you want the damnedest things to pop into your mailbox on a daily basis, write a blog and get some readers. A fellow named Michael Brown wants me to interview him. Actually, that's Doctor Michael Brown to you, pipsqueak. He has a Piled Higher and Deeper in Near Eastern Languages, which I guess means he can read the Bible in the original Jewish.

Here's his self-promotional letter of introduction:

DC COMICS’ NEW SUPER QUEERO: Gay Activism Turns the Green Lantern Pink

For whatever reason, being gay is popular right now.

Schools are crossing parents to introduce homosexual themes into the curriculum, Chaz Bono is getting headlines as Dancing With the Stars’ first transgender contestant, Barack Obama is coming out as the first American President to openly support gay marriage…

And now, the homosexual agenda marches on, gaining the publicity foothold inside one of our culture’s most traditional media—the comic book—with the announcement that 70-year-old DC Comics superhero, the Green Lantern, will relaunch as a gay character.

So, if homosexuality is becoming mainstream, what’s the problem?

For culture war leader, sexual morality scholar and seminary professor, Dr. Michael Brown, that IS the problem—that, as the gay agenda continues its unrelenting effort to normalize and promote homosexuality, primarily to our children, the morals on which our nation is based continue to erode. …And DC’s latest stunt just proves the point.

“For years, people have been asking me, ‘Why should I care about the gay agenda? How does it affect me?’ Well, now they have their answer,” says Brown. “It has even infiltrated the comic books your children read. And one of their longtime heroes has now ‘come out of the closet.’

From the courts, to the churches, to the cinema, to the comic books, gay activism is having a dramatic effect. And, if we ignore it today, we will have to apologize to our kids and grandkids tomorrow.”

But why? What do we stand to lose?

Call Special Guests now to book Dr. Brown, author of the highly controversial book entitled A Queer Thing Happened to America, and prepare for a compelling argument that even the progressives find frustratingly inarguable.

“I am open to having a public dialog or debate with any qualified scholar, minister, activist or GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender) spokesperson dealing with any topic covered in my book…” says Brown.

He wants to talk to ministers and activists, but not just any ministers or activists. Only to ones who are qualified.

And Brown's qualifications are....what, exactly? I can see how he might be your go-to guy if you have a question about the finer points of classical Syriac grammar. (Remember: Keep your adjectives in the absolute state when they're predicative, but make sure they agree with the noun when they're attributive. I can't tell you how many times I've made that mistake!) But I'm not sure he knows much about popular culture.

The sad truth is that kids don't read much of anything -- not even comics. Comic books haven't been for children in decades: Only seven percent of readers are under 17, and the largest age category is the 30-40 age bracket. Those oldsters can, I feel, deal with the unmitigated horror of a gay Green Lantern. Hell, in their world, sexuality is mostly a matter of theory.

Being in a somewhat older age bracket, I have a problem with the revamped Lantern. To me, Green Lantern will always be Hal Jordan, a daring young test pilot who has the hots for his boss -- the beautiful Carol Ferris, CEO of Lockheed (or similar) and occasional dabbler in supervillainy under the name Star Sapphire. Telling you more might injure my argument about the maturity of modern comics.

Odd that Brown didn't criticize another revamped character: Batwoman. Back in the '50s, she was hetero and wore a really awful yellow costume. Now she's a gorgeous lesbian who likes to dress up in tight black leather. For some reason, this character doesn't bother people.

You know who does bother people? Doc Brown. Part of me wants to interview him. Being an arrogant sunvabitch, I'm not even slightly terrified that he might lay down an argument I'll find frustratingly inarguable. One wonders just how many progs the good doctor has left frustrated.

Honest, doc -- if a young male spends all his time reading comic books, he's not going to catch gay. But he might catch virginity. Permalink

1. Am I the only one who thinks that people who watch television shows about hoarders are psychologically screwier than the hoarders themselves?

2. Why don't police helicopters use infrared to track the Batmobile to the Batcave?

(Important update!)

3. The Invisible Man throws up. Is the vomit visible? Is it visible before it leaves his body? What about when he eats? Do we see the food in his digestive tract, and if so, at what point does it become invisible? Okay, now let's talk toenail clippings...

4. As long as we're doing the H.G. Wells thing, let's re-ponder a question we have pondered previously. The Time Machine is not a Time-and-Space Machine. So when our time traveler goes forward in time, why doesn't he end up floating in the void? The Earth moves around the sun.

5. You've seen the Avengers movie, right? Okay. Who the hell just gives a motorcycle to the penniless, homeless Bruce Banner?  Permalink

Bill Clinton spoke at a hastily-arranged rally in Wisconsin, outlining the case against Scott Walker. By all accounts (here's one and here's another), the last Democratic president did a magnificent job.

What intrigues me is the reaction over on Daily Kos. Remember what the Kossacks were like back in 2008? The very mention of the Clinton name transformed these "progressives" into the left-wing equivalent of Glenn Beck's foamy-mouthed followers. They accused Bill Clinton and his wife of racism, murder, rape, drug importation and every other evil. (Well, I don't think anyone mentioned kiddie porn.)

My, how the worm hath turned! Suddenly, everyone (or nearly everyone) at Kos likes Clinton.

If you click on that link, you won't see much praise for Barack Obama. Oh, sure, maybe you'll see some pro-forma election year rah-rah, but that sort of thing is to be expected. Here's what they're saying about Bill Clinton:

Clinton gave an awesome speech in which he talked about shared sacrifice and responsibility instead of divide and conquer.

But we're glad for what we get, and for Bill Clinton to get here gave me reason to thank the gods again that we have him.  He understands -- not only the need to support the people of the party (and to "press the flesh," which he so loves to do and did today) but also what hit us here. In seventeen minutes, he summed up the last sixteen months amazingly well.

Sic'em, Big Dog!

Clinton was, as he usually is, charismatic and persuasive.

Big Poppa Bill has come out. Things are lookin up.

There was only one discordant note (this, in reference to Clinton's praise of Romney's "sterling" record at Bain)...

The older Clinton gets, the more he reminds me of Harold Ford.

Which, sad to say, comes fairly close to my own feelings. And I say that with great sadness because I've long admired the Clintons.

If you're interested in the Democratic Underground reaction, here's a sampler...

Bill is an icon, a great speaker, a smart and compassionate man.

Love the Big Dog!

I'm SOOOOOO glad he came to Wisconsin. Kudos Mr. 42nd President.

After he gave a few short remarks, Clinton, in pink jogging shorts, came down the rope line and grasped both my hand and my sons hand all at once in his big soft hands. We'll both never forget that moment.

I touched his wedding ring so almost like touching Hillary, too!

DU does feature one die-hard Obot, who is worth quoting...

Personally, I don't want to shake hands with an Obama hater, wish Obama would fail so Hillary can run in 2016 and Romney Bain Mittens supporter. No thanks!!

Nice bit of word salad there. Looks like Obama can always count on the schiz vote. Now let's see what's doing over on HuffPo...

Bill Clinton is the very best President the United States has ever had or will have.

Woah. Arianna allowed such words to appear on her site? Such praise of the despised Cleeeeen-tons was declared verboten back in 2008.

That said, most of the other comments demonstrate old-school Clinton-hate. You can count on Arianna: She doesn't turn. She may still be a worm, but she doesn't turn.

As for Walker: Although I'd love to be proven wrong, I predict that the recall won't work. Even though Tom Barrett scored well in the last debate, the right-wing propaganda machine will rule the day. These days, it's all about the propaganda. Permalink

Why I support John Edwards: Okay, I used the present tense just now simply to get your attention, and because I have a puckish sense of humor. The man's political career is over; I accept that fact. Still, this powerful piece by a former (albeit brief) Edwards campaign staffer reminds us of our choices during the previous campaign:

Back then, the other potential Democratic nominees, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, were widely and correctly perceived as timid centrists who had a knee-jerk tendency to run from conflict the second conservatives ruffled their feathers. Edwards, on the other hand, spoke convincingly of how change couldn’t come from  “negotiation and compromise,” arguing that the idea that corporate interests would voluntarily give away their power is “a fantasy.” Long before the economic crash and Occupy Wall Street forced major Democratic politicians to address the question of growing inequality, Edwards’s famous “two Americas” rhetoric helped force the issue onto the table. Occupy boiled it down to the 1 Percent vs. the 99 Percent, but back in 2007, Edwards was taking cracks at “the very rich vs. everyone else.”

In the rush of headlines about Edwards’s despicable sexual behavior, what’s forgotten is how much his campaign haunted the primary contest between Clinton and Obama long after he dropped out. An early push in the campaign season from Edwards on healthcare reform set the tone for the rest of the election season on this issue. Edwards put out a plan for healthcare reform before the other candidates, forcing the other candidates to release competing plans that were likelier farther to the left than they were comfortable promising.

I don't think that Edwards' populist rhetoric was just rhetoric. Yeah, he's rich. But as a lawyer, Edwards had always stuck up for the little guy.

If Edwards had not committed a sexual sin, he would now be someone the media would consider quotable. And if he were offering views on current politics, I feel confident that he would never have referred to Romney's record at Bain as "sterling." Bill Clinton did just that. What a wretched thing to say! My god, but the Clintons have been incredibly disappointing lately.

Bill Clinton has steered clear of the Occupy movement. Edwards would have been in the park with the protesters.

As I've said before: Most of the great mistakes I've made in life occurred when I let Downstairs Cannon overrule the judgment of Upstairs Cannon. In the case of Edwards, Little John royally screwed things up for Big John. But we should not forget that Big John was the only person in 2007-08 who said the right things -- and in doing so, he forced his competitors to speak the same language.

Why declassifying the JFK records matters: I don't care where you stand on the JFK controversy -- or where you stand on Russ Baker, whose book Family of Secrets is not universally admired in the assassination research community. Baker's new piece in Salon, on the Obama administration's efforts to undermine transparency, is must reading. The issue goes far beyond the great unpleasantness of 1963.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been holding forums on which government records should be declassified.

The #1 most popular idea? Get those Kennedy records out — before Nov. 22, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the Dallas tragedy.

That is, in fact, what we were promised. What we got was very different...

Here’s what actually happened at the NARA forums.

The first was held in 2010. The assistant archivist, Michael Kurtz, said that withheld JFK assassination records would be processed, along with other documents, for declassification — and that the process should be completed by the end of 2013.

But by 2011, Kurtz, who had been at NARA for decades, had retired. At the 2011 forum, Jim Lesar was told that JFK assassination records are not part of the declassification process. Hence, they will not be reviewed for release.

Huh? What Happened

For some perspective, meet Sheryl Shenberger. She’s the head of the Archives’ National Declassification Center. What would you guess Sheryl’s professional background would be? Library of Congress? Academic research? Nope. Before NDC, Sheryl worked for … the Central Intelligence Agency.

Why on earth would Barack Obama put a "former" CIA employee in charge of declassification of records? Traditionally, there has been an adversarial relationship between the CIA and the forces favoring transparency.

When things like this happen, I start to wonder if my previous speculation about Obama's spooked-up family might have validity.

Shenberger has an interesting resume...

Prior to working in the declassification field, Ms. Shenberger worked in the CIA Counter Terrorism Center (2001 – 2003), the CIA Crime and Narcotics Center (2000 – 2001), and the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency (previously known as NIMA and NPIC; 1988 – 2000).

Let me state this in very plain terms. We don't want anyone connected in any way with the CIA to make any decisions about which JFK documents get released because -- as John Newman (himself formerly of Army intelligence) has proven beyond the point of rational debate -- people in the CIA fucking did the crime.

To be specific: James Jesus Angleton planned the murder. And right now, this country is being overrun with nutty, extreme-right paranoids who are Angleton's spiritual heirs. (I was going to write "intellectual heirs," but many of the extreme-right paranoids we see today -- Bachmann, Beck -- resist any application of the term "intellectual.")

Contrary to latter-day myth, "Poppy" Bush had no real connection to the assassination. Got that, Russ Baker? Permalink