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By Steve Hynd, on November 13th, 2012 A stalemate over planning for local elections and the deployment of a special Iraqi unit have raised fears of escalation in Kirkuk, reports Karim Abed Zayer: Maliki Deploys ‘Tigris Force’ to Kirkuk.
the Kurdish parties organized a demonstration in Kirkuk against what they described as the militarization of civil society and the deployment of the Tigris forces, formed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in Kirkuk.
Meanwhile, political sources inside Kirkuk told Azzaman that Kirkuk’s population is living in terror, fearing the outbreak of armed clashes between the Tigris forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Asaish forces.
The sources said that dozens of foreign companies, especially Turkish ones, have suspended their activities and closed their doors because of the security situation. They said that the city’s trade activities are experiencing a downfall.
The sources explained that the North Oil Company (NOC), which is composed of Kurdish elements, has upped the level of surveillance on oil wells and NOC department buildings in Kirkuk for fear of attack on the part of the Tigris forces, but the sources said that oil production is still normal.
The sources pointed that the Tigris forces are still receiving weaponry reinforcements, as arms continue to flow to the Kurdish Peshmerga and Asaish forces.
They added that the Tigris forces, whose camps are only 15 km away from the center of Kirkuk, are moving southwest and northwest. The Peshmerga and the Asaish, however, are moving northeast of Kirkuk as the security forces beef up their presence in the city center.
Kirkuk’s Arabs support handing over the security issue to the Tigris forces. For their part, the city’s Kurds are against such step, and the Turkmen express reservations.
The sources said that the conflicting parties are trying to strengthen their military and security control ahead of the local elections, a date that, according to the people, will witness the start of a war.
It’s been four years since we were told that the Iraq “surge” was a success, even though many at the time said it had failed to touch the underlying fracture lines in Iraqi society, the emnities between Kurds and Arabs, and between Sunni and Shiite, instead simply wallpapering over those problems long enough to call it a win and get out. Iraq has remained a violent nation on a scale that might frighten an inhabitant of 70′s Beirut, partly fuelled by grudges caused by at least 162,000 deaths since 2003. Yet there has not been a breakout into a new phase of open civil war.
That may change. Added to the old resentments in areas like Kirkuk, the Syrian sectarian Sunni/Shia civil war across the border (where Kurds too see themselves as victims but also with opportunities to seize) and a new period of Turkish aggressiveness could yet cause the Iraqi pot to boil over. If so, we’d see an extension of an arc of insatbility that encompasses Afghanistan too, inviting the regional power players – Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia – as well as boththe West and Russia to be tempted to intervene. Interesting times. We should all hope Iraqis succeed in kicking the can down the road once more, and staving off a new civil war while they try to find negotiated solutions and let time do a little healing.
By William Boardman, on November 13th, 2012
In Washington, DC, the day before the 2012 election, an Occupy action by dozens of protesters blocked the entrance to the law firm McKenna Long and Aldridge, a major law firm with the oldest government contract practice in the United States. The firm also represents the Canadian corporation TransCanada, which is seeking U.S. government permission to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast.
Organizers called this demonstration a “Tar Sands Solidarity Action,” in support of the Tar Sands Blockade of the Keystone XL pipeline now under construction in East Texas. Police arrested four people for refusing to move from in front of TransCanada’s lobbyist’s front door. Increased non-violent direct action seems to be a harbinger of mounting pressure by environmentalists across the country to persuade President Obama to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline altogether for the sake of the health of the planet.
The President is also under pressure from Canadian officials and the oil industry to give the $7 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline project a green light, for the sake of the health of the global economy. Industry supporters continue to claim the project “will create 20,000 shovel-ready jobs,” even though TransCanada chief executive Russ Girling admitted a year ago that the number is false, about three times too high.
That same day before the election, the environmental side of the argument got scientific reinforcement when a Canadian newspaper reported that government scientists had confirmed 2010 research showing that tar sands contamination was increasing in the region’s precipitation and snowpack. The article went on to describe how Environment Canada, the Canadian environmental protection agency, had worked to suppress the information and prevent scientists from discussing it with reporters or even at scientific gatherings.
Continue reading Will President Obama get tar sands right?
By Steve Hynd, on November 13th, 2012 Glenn Greenwald writes today that there is “sweet justice” in seeing the stars of America’s national security establishment are being devoured by out-of-control surveillance.
it appears that the FBI not only devoted substantial resources, but also engaged in highly invasive surveillance, for no reason other than to do a personal favor for a friend of one of its agents, to find out who was very mildly harassing her by email…not only did the FBI – again, all without any real evidence of a crime – trace the locations and identity of Broadwell and Petreaus, and read through Broadwell’s emails (and possibly Petraeus’), but they also got their hands on and read through 20,000-30,000 pages of emails between Gen. Allen and Kelley.
This is a surveillance state run amok. It also highlights how any remnants of internet anonymity have been all but obliterated by the union between the state and technology companies.
But, as unwarranted and invasive as this all is, there is some sweet justice in having the stars of America’s national security state destroyed by the very surveillance system which they implemented and over which they preside. As Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation put it this morning: “Who knew the key to stopping the Surveillance State was to just wait until it got so big that it ate itself?”
Now, the serious bit.
…The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State that – in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment – monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part “Top Secret America” series, reported: “Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.”
… the Obama administration has spent the last four years aggressively seeking to expand that Surveillance State, including by agitating for Congressional action to amend the Patriot Act to include Internet and browsing data among the records obtainable by the FBI without court approval and demanding legislation requiring that all Internet communications contain a government “backdoor” of surveillance.
Based on what is known, what is most disturbing about the whole Petraeus scandal is not the sexual activities that it revealed, but the wildly out-of-control government surveillance powers which enabled these revelations. What requires investigation here is not Petraeus and Allen and their various sexual partners but the FBI and the whole sprawling, unaccountable surveillance system that has been built.
I wonder if the powerful of DC will think “there but for the grace of God go I” and finally act to curb the surveillance state built up under cover of the Great War On Terror. I won’t be holding my breath – sociopaths and narcissists never think they’ll be the ones to get caught.
By Steve Hynd, on November 13th, 2012 Just when you thought the sex and email scandal started by Petraeus’ resignation was dying down, here’s the AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The sex scandal that led to CIA Director David Petraeus’ downfall widened Tuesday with word the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is under investigation for thousands of alleged “inappropriate communications” with another woman involved in the case.
Even as the FBI prepared a timeline for Congress about the investigation that brought to light Petraeus’ extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed that the Pentagon had begun an internal investigation into emails from Gen. John Allen to a Florida woman involved in the case.
Allen succeeded Petraeus as the top American commander in Afghanistan in July 2011, and his nomination to become the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has now been put on hold, as the scandal seemed certain to ensnare another acclaimed military figure.
In a White House statement early Tuesday, National Security spokesman Tommy Vietor said President Barack Obama has held Allen’s nomination at Panetta’s request. Obama, the statement said, “remains focused on fully supporting our extraordinary troops and coalition partners in Afghanistan, who Gen. Allen continues to lead as he has so ably done for over a year.”
The Florida woman is of course Jill Kelley, the 37-year-old Tampa socialite who claims she received threatening emails from Petraeus’ mistress (and biographer) Paula Broadwell. Broadwell had thought Kelley was a threat to her relationship with Petraeus and I had wondered if Kelley might indeed be another other-woman, but this throws an entirely new cat among the pigeons. The twist in this tale is new – but the underlying story of powerful men with mid or late-life crises is all too familiar.
 Holly Petraeus (left) with Scott (center) and Jill Kelley (right) at a party. Source: stephent.smugmug.com Meanwhile, over at Danger Room, they’re quoting Allen’s aides, mostly anonymously, as saying the general was not having an affair with Kelley.
Bonus Read: Petraeus and the Rise of Narcissistic Leaders (Jeffrey Pfeffer/Harvard Business Review):
There is a simple power story often told about such behavior: research shows that people with more power tend to pay less attention to others. They are more action-oriented, pursue their own goals, and exhibit disinhibited behavior in part because they believe that rules don’t apply to them; they are special and invulnerable.
All of this is true, but nonetheless leaves at least a couple of questions unanswered. First, as my friend Bob Sutton noted in a conversation, these behaviors seem to be confined mostly to men. We seldom hear of powerful women who can’t control their urges. Second, it at least feels as if this sort of behavior and the career consequences that result seem to be occurring more frequently now. Maybe that is because of more public scrutiny and the operation of social media. But maybe something else is going on — namely we are choosing more narcissist leaders and the misbehavior is not just the consequence of power but also of excessive narcissism.
Word.
Wait, What??! The federal agent who launched the investigation that ultimately led to the resignation of Central Intelligence Agency chief David Petraeus “sent shirtless photos to Ms. Kelley well before the email investigation began”. WTF?
By actor212, on November 13th, 2012
“If Republicans do not do better in the Hispanic community,” he said, “in a few short years Republicans will no longer be the majority party in our state.” He ticked off some statistics: in 2004, George W. Bush won forty-four per cent of the Hispanic vote nationally; in 2008, John McCain won just thirty-one per cent. On Tuesday, Romney fared even worse.
“In not too many years, Texas could switch from being all Republican to all Democrat,” he said. “If that happens, no Republican will ever again win the White House. New York and California are for the foreseeable future unalterably Democrat. If Texas turns bright blue, the Electoral College math is simple. We won’t be talking about Ohio, we won’t be talking about Florida or Virginia, because it won’t matter. If Texas is bright blue, you can’t get to two-seventy electoral votes. The Republican Party would cease to exist. We would become like the Whig Party. Our kids and grandkids would study how this used to be a national political party. ‘They had Conventions, they nominated Presidential candidates. They don’t exist anymore.’ ”
Long-time and careful readers of my prose will recognize this statement. I’ve long held that the US is due to swing the political pendulum back to liberal thinking and policies.
Normally, pendulums lose momentum and gravitate towards the center, and that will eventually happen, but in this instance, Karl Rove and the Republicans, in an effort to create what Rove termed a “permanent Republican majority” have pulled the pendulum really far to the right.
And you know what happens when you pull a pendulum really hard: it swings back, fast and hard.
Cruz is one of a handful of Republicans — Marco Rubio and Suzanna Martinez are among the others — who could prevent this from happening, but it seems really unlikely to occur. It’s pretty clear that Florida (Rubio) and New Mexico (Martinez) have cemented the Democratic party as the party of the minority vote. But that’s not the issue, identity politics. It’s something much more basic and subtle.
I want you to think back to the election campaign, particularly the general election: can you name one Republican proposal for the next four years that didn’t involve lowering taxes for the wealthy?
Meanwhile, Obama still has a raft of policies from his 2008 campaign that he can call upon at any time and propose. This is what we might term “leadership.”
People respond to this. People in trouble especially respond to proposals that will lift us all out of trouble. It’s fine to propose a tax cut– claiming it’s for all but in truth, it benefits the wealthy the most — but when people aren’t so worried about their next paycheck as their next car or their house or their retirement or their children, short-term proposals lose an awful lot of their luster.
If Hurricane Sandy benefitted President Obama at all — apart from looking Presidential, I mean — it is on this very subtle point. Sandy showed that everything we build up for ourselves to ensure a future can be wiped off the face of the earth in an instant, and then where do you begin again?
Tax cuts help, to be sure, but they don’t address the underlying problem: jobs don’t pay as much as they used to and second jobs are really embarrassing.
Wage growth will help Americans. To play with tax cuts at this point in time is preposterous. It’s like giving someone a five percent discount off a TV, when what they need is a job that pays enough so they can pay for that TV out of their own pocket, not borrowing the money.
This, above all other reasons, is why I believe America is heading for a progressive agenda over the coming decades. People are tired of crumbs and want the bread, and minorities are only the canary in the coalmine on this point.
By Bruce A Jacobs, on November 13th, 2012 Are we humans more credulous than we used to be, or is the Internet just giving us way more snack info that we want to believe? Fantasy news and lifelike satire are nothing new, but there’s no question that they have now become digital art forms. The latest widely- believed and -forwarded item among progressives (it rivals the photoshopped Sarah Palin bikini rifle pic) is the Rahm Emanuel/Sean Hannity “shut the fuck up” story, which was plucked from The Daily Currant satire site and went viral. Gotta admit: it’s killer good, and I sure wish it were true.
Emanuel on Fox News: ‘Shut the Fuck Up. You Lost’
By matttbastard, on November 12th, 2012 Heed Nate Silver’s note of caution re: yr new nerd crush, Cher — “One does not simply party with Chris Hayes and walk away unscathed” (NSFW):
h/t Addicting Info
By matttbastard, on November 12th, 2012 Christopher de Bellaigue on why sanctions on Iran have thus far been, and will likely continue to be, a failure:
The assumption is that the more Iranians suffer, the more their leaders will feel the pressure and either change course or be overthrown in a popular uprising. And yet, there is no evidence to suggest that this is probable, and the Iraqi case suggests the opposite. During the U.N. blockade, Saddam was able to blame foreigners for the nation’s suffering, and ordinary Iraqis—those who might have been expected to show discontent at his misrule—grew more and more dependent on the rations he distributed. Furthermore, America’s insistence that an end to sanctions was conditional on Saddam’s departure removed any incentive he might have had to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. In 1997, he stopped doing so, with the results we all know.
This time, the U.S. is at pains to show that the Islamic Republic will gain a life-saving reprieve if it falls in with U.N. resolutions calling on it to stop enriching uranium. If that happens, Hillary Clinton said in October, sanctions might be “remedied in short order.” But Iran’s supreme leader dismissed her words as a “lie.”
Khamenei and those around him believe that sanctions policy is part of a bigger American project of Iraq-style regime change. There is some logic to this; recent western tactics against Iran include sabotage, assassination and diplomatic isolation—hardly indicative of a desire for detente. The most recent round of nuclear negotiations foundered, in part, on Iran’s growing conviction that the U.S. will make no significant concession on sanctions unless Iran drastically scales down its program of uranium enrichment. That seems unlikely to happen–not simply for reasons of image and prestige, but because, as American hostility sharpens, Iran may judge its nuclear program to be the best defense it has against the fate that befell Saddam.
h/t Trita Parsi
By Steve Hynd, on November 12th, 2012 Bob Morris, over at his own Politics In The Zeros blog, reprints a piece from the North Star looking at the prospects for leftie third party hopes in 2016 and beyond.
With nearly 12,000 votes (a whopping 27% of the vote), the campaign of Socialist Alternative’s Kshama Sawant in Washington’s 43rd legislative district is a bright beacon of hope on the otherwise bleak horizon of the 2012 election for the American left…The Green Party’s support doubled compared to 2008 with Nader’s absence from the race, the activist resurgence sparked by Occupy, and Hurricane Sandy’s reminder that climate change is a serious problem, but doubling from 0.12% of the vote to 0.3% is a far cry from the 5.0% necessary to really begin to make a dent in the national political machine.
…A left presidential candidate to reaching the vaunted 5% popular vote threshold in 2016 or 2020 remains almost a pipe dream, given the current constellation of left forces that are badly divided, struggle hard just to survive, and survive to compete with rather than collaborate with one other.
There is no excuse for the Green Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Justice Party, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers’ Party, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation to fight over “their” sliver of 1% of the electorate. Their presidential campaigns are money, man-hours, and credibility wasted, and when the left has so little of all three, squandering any of it is criminal. The Green Party is the only rooted national force among these efforts, and the smart thing for non-Green forces to do would be to find ways to collaborate and work with the Green Party, strengthen their efforts, and weld an indivisible united electoral front against the two-party state. At a bare minimum, they should list the Green presidential candidate on their ballot lines in 2016 (barring any 2004-style Cobb-ery); 5% or bust is the name of the game if we’re serious about breaking the Democratic Party over the course of the coming decades.
…So what are the strategic implications of all this? District and city races are where the action is at, or should be at, while presidential races are (almost) hopeless fights and should be de-prioritized for the time being, given the left’s meager resources and national unpopularity. The best way to get ready to fight for and win 5% of the vote national vote for a left candidate in 2016 and 2020 is to win some local or state races. Concentrating our attack where the enemy is strongest and where we are weakest is stupidity, a recipe for more decades marked b y failure, frustration, and powerlessness. Local races require a lot less money to win, and the danger of billionaires emptying their bank accounts into super PACs to defeat us is far lower than it is when governorships, Senate seats, and the presidency are up for grabs.
Something I’ve been saying for some time now, although I try to say it without all the discredited pseudo-dialectic nonsense that otherwise clutters what could’ve been a stronger piece. Also, I really don’t believe that the various streams of that pseudo-dialectic left that are encompassed by the likes of the Unsociable Layabouts Party and the rest of the rump Old Socialist Left are any real part of a large-scale lefty solution . This sums their silly internicine games up perfectly.
Still, worth a read.
By Steve Hynd, on November 12th, 2012 Members of OccupySandy feed FEMA workers – oh, the irony!
Via @OccupyWallStNYC
By Steve Hynd, on November 12th, 2012 The New York Times passes on the news that Obama will go beyond the Beltway to seel his Grand Bargain legacy to the American people, and will “keep his grass-roots organization in place to ‘have the president’s back,’ as its members like to say, on the budget negotiations and other issues in the second term.”
Gaius at AmericaBlog has some insight into what “having the president’s back” may entail:
Here’s the ultimate Beltway insider, Bob Woodward, on Meet The Press with David Gregory. It seems that someone leaked Obama’s 2011 Grand Bargain memo to House Speaker John Boehner. First, Woodward’s on-air comment (my emphasis):
“This is a confidential document, last offer the president — the White House made last year to Speaker Boehner to try to reach this $4 trillion grand bargain. And it’s long and it’s tedious and it’s got budget jargon in it. But what it shows is a willingness to cut all kinds of things, like TRICARE, which is the sacred health insurance program for the military, for military retirees; to cut Social Security; to cut Medicare. And there are some lines in there about, “We want to get tax rates down, not only for individuals but for businesses.” So Obama and the White House were willing to go quite far.”
Yes, “quite far” indeed.
Gaius also has some details from that leaked memo: $10 billion cut from higher education and $2 billion from nutritional assistance programs, $16 billion from TRICARE, $33 billion from civilian government employee retirement, Medicare spending reduced by $250 billion over 10 years by altering the eligibility age and increasing premiums, changing Social Security rises to using something called the Superlative CPI instead of the straight Consumer Price Index – it “takes into account the tendency for consumers to substitute products whose prices have increased more slowly for products for which prices have increased more rapidly” – and using that same new measure for all mandatory programs and all tax code calculations.
One thing that’s been notable this last week – Obama keeps talking about raised revenue, not raised tax rates. The NYT adds:
The president must use his leverage soon, some Democrats added, because it could quickly wane as Republicans look to the 2014 midterm elections, when the opposition typically takes seats from the president’s party in Congress.
In particular, Mr. Obama has to convince Republicans that he would veto an extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for incomes of $250,000 and higher, said John Podesta, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who oversaw Mr. Obama’s 2008 presidential transition. The top tax rate of 35 percent would increase after Dec. 31 to 39.6 percent, the rate in place during the Clinton administration, raising about $1 trillion over 10 years.
“The Republicans think he caves,” Mr. Podesta said, “and he has to disabuse them of that.”
What is unclear is whether Mr. Obama might agree to extend the top income-tax rates if Republicans agree to raise revenue from wealthy taxpayers by limiting their deductions instead, as Mr. Boehner suggested last week. The president did not mention rates on Friday in his first postelection remarks on the budget talks, and people in both parties interpreted that as a sign of his bargaining flexibility.
Are you ready to “get the president’s back” on his Grand Bargain, Democratic partisans?
Update: Digby quotes Social Security expert Eric Kingston on that Superlative, also known as ‘chained”, CPI:
Today the chained CPI, if it’s implemented, will further reduce benefits. A woman who retires at age 65 living ’til age 75 will get a benefit of about $600 less in real dollars 10 years later at age 85, about $950 or so less at age 95 – if she lives so long – it would be roughly $1,400 less than it would have been if the chained CPI is put into effect.
She adds: “I can certainly see why, with the election over, Republicans like Bill Kristol are saying to take the deal. It’s a great deal for them. I always figured they’d pull that trigger eventually. They aren’t that stupid.”
By polizeros, on November 12th, 2012 
The abject failure of ORCA, the online Romney campaign tool for tracking votes on election day, highlights how the campaign had no freaking idea what it was doing and was probably arrogantly overconfident as well. Romney wanted to run the country when his campaign couldn’t even manage to put a working piece of software online? Gimme a break…
ORCA could not have been tested. It was dumped on thousands of poll watchers and volunteers on election day with little explanation, no contingency plans or backup systems, and it mostly failed. This is beyond a rookie mistake. It shows the Romney campaign were ignoramuses about online systems and the need for testing and that no one with any actual competence was in charge of the project. Further, it appears that a primary reason for its failure was vicious internal fights between the various consultants and staffers. Romney championed himself as a seasoned and experienced businessman yet his campaign , which certainly should be run like a business, failed spectacularly in any number of areas.
I develop accounting packages for businesses, specializing in converting legacy Clipper and FoxPro to Windows. A client is about to go live with a replacement accounting package I wrote that will do all their accounting and invoicing. We’ve been testing and refining it for weeks in a work environment. It’s ready to go.
My client and I have done extensive testing. The Romney campaign clearly did none for ORCA. It blew up in their faces and showed them to be, despite all their bluster about knowing how to run businesses, not much more than an incompetent clown show.
By Steve Hynd, on November 12th, 2012 This is awesome: “Allow me to introduce myself to you, the existing (or aspiring!) strategist for the Republican Party. My name is Eric Arnold Garland and I am a White Man.”
There’s no way to do an excerpt that would convey the whole thing, so just read it all.
By actor212, on November 12th, 2012
First, a hint to public officials everywhere: if she’d (or he’d) be out of your league if you were a civvy and both of you were in a bar, then leave it alone. Go home, jerk off and forget her. You’re sixty and not particularly good looking, how long did you think it would last? And you’re forty and a starry-eyed biographer. How long did YOU think it would last?
Next, Andy Borowitz had the best take on the “conspiracy” angle, by pointing out that Petraeus began the affair over a year ago, so clearly he intended to use it to distract from the Benghazi story. Petraeus can still be called as a witness in the House hearings and worse for the Obama administration, can’t hide behind executive privilege or national security any longer.
Third, it’s pretty sad that a man of such accomplishment and a woman of such accomplishment have created such a roadblock for themselves. I’m not going to point fingers: the second the tango began, both of them were to blame and who’s to say when the music started?
My real sympathy goes out to the spouses of the couple in question, of course, but I save my deepest symapthies for Jill Kelly, the woman who triggered this whole mess — not incorrectly — by complaining about threatening anonymous e-mails. She gets implicated in so many ways here and I expect this will have repercussions for an apparently (there’s one implication right there) uninvolved person. Think about it: she is suspected by folks of being the “other” other woman, her actions disgraced Petraeus (*ahem* No, but people will think that), her name gets dragged out through trials and investigations and she’ll now have to lawyer up for what? For being the recipient of some really nasty e-mails.
Finally, I wish we’d all grow up a little and learn that power begets sex. This is an unspoken deal that politicians and their families make going in, and if you think they do not, then they’re being naive and not paying attention. While the smart ones manage to stay away from it all, to ask anyone to betray their sex drive is like asking them to stop eating.
By graham, on November 12th, 2012
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