Vision Circle

A Telephone Call

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'lo?

Mike. Michael Irvin?

Yeah?

This is Whitney.

'sup?
CRACK IS WHACK!

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A Thought About "Saving Christmas"

Well, there are some people out there who seem to be on a crusade to save Christmas in the public square of business. Some want businesses to continue wishing "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays".

Well, if you ask me, those who really care about Christmas should want to disassociate Christmas from the "holidays".

Read this post I did earlier and you should get my point.

Political Quickies

From http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20051124-111815-8121r.htm:

The current Republican mayor, Rick Baker who was re-elected two weeks ago with 90 percent of the black vote, gave immediate attention to development and worked closely with black businessmen, Mr. Rouson said.

So, who keeps saying Blacks won't vote for Republicans?

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/25/AR2005112501301_2.html:

The two have disagreed on a recent decision by the Maryland Higher Education Commission to allow Towson University to offer a graduate business program. Morgan State's president has argued that Towson would duplicate what his Baltimore school offers. The historically black university relies on the MBA program and similar offerings to draw white students to the campus.

Ehrlich has said he "respects" the decision and is not opposed to having two MBA programs but wants to study ways to enhance Morgan State's offerings.

Steele credits the governor with recognizing Morgan State's needs, but the lieutenant governor said he was "very disappointed" about the decision to bring an MBA program to Towson.

The Real Meaning Of Christmas

The "real meaning of Christmas" appears to be a man jumping line at Wal Mart and getting the beat down by off duty cops.

The "real meaning of Christmas" appears to be people racing into a store at 6 AM on "Black Friday", falling down, and having other people run over them. ( Did you see the video of the Black woman who feel down, then instead of getting up, grabbed her wig that fell off in front of her, and put it back on her head, and straightened it, before attempting to get up? )

The "real meaning of Christmas" appears to be people fighting for items, getting in line at 4 AM, and getting caught up in consumerism.

What is it about a culture that does that?

Two songs come to mind: "The Real Meaning of Christmas" by the Winans, and "Remember Why" by Alexander ONeil.

Secrecy gag prompted by fear of new Blair-Bush revelations

Al Jazeera said that, if true, the story would raise serious doubts about the U.S. administration's version of previous incidents involving the station's journalists and offices. In 2001, the station's Kabul office was hit by U.S. bombs and in 2003 Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a U.S. strike on its Baghdad office.

The United States has denied deliberately targeting the station.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response."

Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael White
Thursday November 24, 2005
The Guardian

Fears that fresh revelations about disputes between Tony Blair and George Bush on the Iraq conflict could damage Downing Street's intimate relationship with the White House prompted this week's unprecedented threat by the attorney general to use the Official Secrets Act against national newspapers.

Senior MPs, Whitehall officials and lawyers were agreed yesterday that Lord Goldsmith had "read the riot act" to the media because of political embarrassment caused by a sensitive leak of face-to-face exchanges between the prime minister and the US president in the White House in April 2004. He acted after the Daily Mirror said a memo recorded a threat by Mr Bush to take "military action" against the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera. Mr Blair replied that that would cause a big problem, reported the Mirror. David Keogh, a former Cabinet Office official, has been charged under the secrets act with sending the memo on the Blair-Bush conversation to Leo O 'Connor, researcher to the former Labour MP Tony Clarke. Mr Keogh and Mr O'Connor will appear before Bow Street magistrates next week.

The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair took place at a time when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers, and British military commanders were expressing outrage at the scale of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, in which up to 1,000 civilians are feared to have died. Pictures of the attack shown on al-Jazeera had infuriated US generals. The government was also arguing with Washington about the number of extra British troops to be sent to Iraq at a time when it was feared they would be endangered by what a separately leaked Foreign Office memo called "heavy-handed" US military tactics.

There were UK anxieties that US bombing in civilian areas in Falluja would unite Sunnis and Shias against British forces. The criticism came not only from anti-war MPs, but from Mr Blair's most senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers. When Mr Blair met Mr Bush in Washington, military advisers were urging the prime minister to send extra forces only on British terms. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, said while British troops had to fight with the Americans, "that does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans".

Andrew Nicol QC, a media law expert, said he was unaware of any case going to trial where a newspaper or journalist had been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. He said Lord Goldsmith appeared to be trying to "put down a marker" to prevent further leaks or publication of further disclosures from the document already allegedly leaked.

Last night the former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle tabled a Commons motion saying Mr Blair should publish the record of his discussion with Mr Bush.

Downing Street stressed that the decision to take action was "entirely up to the attorney general" and was intended to "draw a line in the sand" on further leaks.

Professional Perception Management

or how you hoodwink and bamboozle the stupid, bellicose, and bored to support unprincipled and unsupportable political agendas like the phenomenally wasteful and unsuccessful occupation of Iraq. After you've tricked the rubes, you can depend upon the inertia of their hubris to prevent these victims of the grand hornswaggle from recanting their earlier blunders...., matter of fact, they'll prolifically concoct post hoc rationalizations to account for their earlier hysterical suggestibility.

It is a belief John Rendon encapsulated in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996. "I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician," he declared. "I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager." To explain his philosophy, Rendon paraphrased a journalist he knew from his days as a staffer on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter: "This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote, 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"

The Man Who Sold the War - Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.
On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

"They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor of the industry trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "It's all cloak-and-dagger stuff."

Although Rendon denies any direct involvement with al-Haideri, the defector was the latest salvo in a secret media war set in motion by Rendon. In an operation directed by Ahmad Chalabi -- the man Rendon helped install as leader of the INC -- the defector had been brought to Thailand, where he huddled in a hotel room for days with the group's spokesman, Zaab Sethna. The INC routinely coached defectors on their stories, prepping them for polygraph exams, and Sethna was certainly up to the task -- he got his training in the art of propaganda on the payroll of the Rendon Group. According to Francis Brooke, the INC's man in Washington and himself a former Rendon employee, the goal of the al-Haideri operation was simple: pressure the United States to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

As the CIA official flew back to Washington with failed lie-detector charts in his briefcase, Chalabi and Sethna didn't hesitate. They picked up the phone, called two journalists who had a long history of helping the INC promote its cause and offered them an exclusive on Saddam's terrifying cache of WMDs.

For the worldwide broadcast rights, Sethna contacted Paul Moran, an Australian freelancer who frequently worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "I think I've got something that you would be interested in," he told Moran, who was living in Bahrain. Sethna knew he could count on the trim, thirty-eight-year-old journalist: A former INC employee in the Middle East, Moran had also been on Rendon's payroll for years in "information operations," working with Sethna at the company's London office on Catherine Place, near Buckingham Palace.

"We were trying to help the Kurds and the Iraqis opposed to Saddam set up a television station," Sethna recalled in a rare interview broadcast on Australian television. "The Rendon Group came to us and said, 'We have a contract to kind of do anti-Saddam propaganda on behalf of the Iraqi opposition.' What we didn't know -- what the Rendon Group didn't tell us -- was in fact it was the CIA that had hired them to do this work."

The INC's choice for the worldwide print exclusive was equally easy: Chalabi contacted Judith Miller of The New York Times. Miller, who was close to I. Lewis Libby and other neoconservatives in the Bush administration, had been a trusted outlet for the INC's anti-Saddam propaganda for years. Not long after the CIA polygraph expert slipped the straps and electrodes off al-Haideri and declared him a liar, Miller flew to Bangkok to interview him under the watchful supervision of his INC handlers. Miller later made perfunctory calls to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, but despite her vaunted intelligence sources, she claimed not to know about the results of al-Haideri's lie-detector test. Instead, she reported that unnamed "government experts" called his information "reliable and significant" -- thus adding a veneer of truth to the lies.

Her front-page story, which hit the stands on December 20th, 2001, was exactly the kind of exposure Rendon had been hired to provide. AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES, declared the headline. "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer," Miller wrote, "said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." If verified, she noted, "his allegations would provide ammunition to officials within the Bush administration who have been arguing that Mr. Hussein should be driven from power partly because of his unwillingness to stop making weapons of mass destruction, despite his pledges to do so."

For months, hawks inside and outside the administration had been pressing for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Now, thanks to Miller's story, they could point to "proof" of Saddam's "nuclear threat." The story, reinforced by Moran's on-camera interview with al-Haideri on the giant Australian Broadcasting Corp., was soon being trumpeted by the White House and repeated by newspapers and television networks around the world. It was the first in a long line of hyped and fraudulent stories that would eventually propel the U.S. into a war with Iraq -- the first war based almost entirely on a covert propaganda campaign targeting the media.

By law, the Bush administration is expressly prohibited from disseminating government propaganda at home. But in an age of global communications, there is nothing to stop it from planting a phony pro-war story overseas -- knowing with certainty that it will reach American citizens almost instantly. A recent congressional report suggests that the Pentagon may be relying on "covert psychological operations affecting audiences within friendly nations." In a "secret amendment" to Pentagon policy, the report warns, "psyops funds might be used to publish stories favorable to American policies, or hire outside contractors without obvious ties to the Pentagon to organize rallies in support of administration policies." The report also concludes that military planners are shifting away from the Cold War view that power comes from superior weapons systems. Instead, the Pentagon now believes that "combat power can be enhanced by communications networks and technologies that control access to, and directly manipulate, information. As a result, information itself is now both a tool and a target of warfare."

It is a belief John Rendon encapsulated in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996. "I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician," he declared. "I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager." To explain his philosophy, Rendon paraphrased a journalist he knew from his days as a staffer on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter: "This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote, 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"

John Walter Rendon Jr. rises at 3 a.m. each morning after six hours of sleep, turns on his Apple computer and begins ingesting information -- overnight news reports, e-mail messages, foreign and domestic newspapers, and an assortment of government documents, many of them available only to those with the highest security clearance. According to Pentagon documents obtained by Rolling Stone, the Rendon Group is authorized "to research and analyze information classified up to Top Secret/SCI/SI/TK/G/HCS" -- an extraordinarily high level of clearance granted to only a handful of defense contractors. "SCI" stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information, data classified higher than Top Secret. "SI" is Special Intelligence, very secret communications intercepted by the National Security Agency. "TK" refers to Talent/Keyhole, code names for imagery from reconnaissance aircraft and spy satellites. "G" stands for Gamma (communications intercepts from extremely sensitive sources) and "HCS" means Humint Control System (information from a very sensitive human source). Taken together, the acronyms indicate that Rendon enjoys access to the most secret information from all three forms of intelligence collection: eavesdropping, imaging satellites and human spies.

Rendon lives in a multimillion-dollar home in Washington's exclusive Kalorama neighborhood. A few doors down from Rendon is the home of former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara; just around the corner lives current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. At fifty-six, Rendon wears owlish glasses and combs his thick mane of silver-gray hair to the side, Kennedy-style. He heads to work each morning clad in a custom-made shirt with his monogram on the right cuff and a sharply tailored blue blazer that hangs loose around his bulky frame. By the time he pulls up to the Rendon Group's headquarters near Dupont Circle, he has already racked up a handsome fee for the morning's work: According to federal records, Rendon charges the CIA and the Pentagon $311.26 an hour for his services.

Rendon is one of the most influential of the private contractors in Washington who are increasingly taking over jobs long reserved for highly trained CIA employees. In recent years, spies-for-hire have begun to replace regional desk officers, who control clandestine operations around the world; watch officers at the agency's twenty-four-hour crisis center; analysts, who sift through reams of intelligence data; and even counterintelligence officers in the field, who oversee meetings between agents and their recruited spies. According to one senior administration official involved in intelligence-budget decisions, half of the CIA's work is now performed by private contractors -- people completely unaccountable to Congress. Another senior budget official acknowledges privately that lawmakers have no idea how many rent-a-spies the CIA currently employs -- or how much unchecked power they enjoy.

Unlike many newcomers to the field, however, Rendon is a battle-tested veteran who has been secretly involved in nearly every American shooting conflict in the past two decades. In the first interview he has granted in decades, Rendon offered a peek through the keyhole of this seldom-seen world of corporate spooks -- a rarefied but growing profession. Over a dinner of lamb chops and a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape at a private Washington club, Rendon was guarded about the details of his clandestine work -- but he boasted openly of the sweep and importance of his firm's efforts as a for-profit spy. "We've worked in ninety-one countries," he said. "Going all the way back to Panama, we've been involved in every war, with the exception of Somalia."

It is an unusual career twist for someone who entered politics as an opponent of the Vietnam War. The son of a stockbroker, Rendon grew up in New Jersey and stumped for McGovern before graduating from Northeastern University. "I was the youngest state coordinator," he recalls. "I had Maine. They told me that I understood politics -- which was a stretch, being so young." Rendon, who went on to serve as executive director of the Democratic National Committee, quickly mastered the combination of political skulduggery and media manipulation that would become his hallmark. In 1980, as the manager of Jimmy Carter's troops at the national convention in New York, he was sitting alone in the bleachers at Madison Square Garden when a reporter for ABC News approached him. "They actually did a little piece about the man behind the curtain," Rendon says. "A Wizard of Oz thing." It was a role he would end up playing for the rest of his life.

After Carter lost the election and the hard-right Reagan revolutionaries came to power in 1981, Rendon went into business with his younger brother Rick. "Everybody started consulting," he recalls. "We started consulting." They helped elect John Kerry to the Senate in 1984 and worked for the AFL-CIO to mobilize the union vote for Walter Mondale's presidential campaign. Among the items Rendon produced was a training manual for union organizers to operate as political activists on behalf of Mondale. To keep the operation quiet, Rendon stamped CONFIDENTIAL on the cover of each of the blue plastic notebooks. It was a penchant for secrecy that would soon pervade all of his consulting deals.

To a large degree, the Rendon Group is a family affair. Rendon's wife, Sandra Libby, handles the books as chief financial officer and "senior communications strategist." Rendon's brother Rick serves as senior partner and runs the company's Boston office, producing public-service announcements for the Whale Conservation Institute and coordinating Empower Peace, a campaign that brings young people in the Middle East in contact with American kids through video-conferencing technology. But the bulk of the company's business is decidedly less liberal and peace oriented. Rendon's first experience in the intelligence world, in fact, came courtesy of the Republicans. "Panama," he says, "brought us into the national-security environment."

In 1989, shortly after his election, President George H.W. Bush signed a highly secret "finding" authorizing the CIA to funnel $10 million to opposition forces in Panama to overthrow Gen. Manuel Noriega. Reluctant to involve agency personnel directly, the CIA turned to the Rendon Group. Rendon's job was to work behind the scenes, using a variety of campaign and psychological techniques to put the CIA's choice, Guillermo Endara, into the presidential palace. Cash from the agency, laundered through various bank accounts and front organizations, would end up in Endara's hands, who would then pay Rendon.

A heavyset, fifty-three-year-old corporate attorney with little political experience, Endara was running against Noriega's handpicked choice, Carlos Duque. With Rendon's help, Endara beat Duque decisively at the polls -- but Noriega simply named himself "Maximum Leader" and declared the election null and void. The Bush administration then decided to remove Noriega by force -- and Rendon's job shifted from generating local support for a national election to building international support for regime change. Within days he had found the ultimate propaganda tool.

At the end of a rally in support of Endara, a band of Noriega's Dignity Battalion -- nicknamed "Dig Bats" and called "Doberman thugs" by Bush -- attacked the crowd with wooden planks, metal pipes and guns. Gang members grabbed the bodyguard of Guillermo Ford, one of Endara's vice-presidential candidates, pushed him against a car, shoved a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. With cameras snapping, the Dig Bats turned on Ford, batting his head with a spike-tipped metal rod and pounding him with heavy clubs, turning his white guayabera bright red with blood -- his own, and that of his dead bodyguard.

Within hours, Rendon made sure the photos reached every newsroom in the world. The next week an image of the violence made the cover of Time magazine with the caption POLITICS PANAMA STYLE: NORIEGA BLUDGEONS HIS OPPOSITION, AND THE U.S. TURNS UP THE HEAT. To further boost international support for Endara, Rendon escorted Ford on a tour of Europe to meet British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Italian prime minister and even the pope. In December 1989, when Bush decided to invade Panama, Rendon and several of his employees were on one of the first military jets headed to Panama City.

"I arrived fifteen minutes before it started," Rendon recalls. "My first impression is having the pilot in the plane turn around and say, 'Excuse me, sir, but if you look off to the left you'll see the attack aircraft circling before they land.' Then I remember this major saying, 'Excuse me, sir, but do you know what the air-defense capability of Panama is at the moment?' I leaned into the cockpit and said, 'Look, major, I hope by now that's no longer an issue.'"

Moments later, Rendon's plane landed at Howard Air Force Base in Panama. "I needed to get to Fort Clayton, which was where the president was," he says. "I was choppered over -- and we took some rounds on the way." There, on a U.S. military base surrounded by 24,000 U.S. troops, heavy tanks and Combat Talon AC-130 gunships, Rendon's client, Endara, was at last sworn in as president of Panama.

Rendon's involvement in the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein began seven months later, in July 1990. Rendon had taken time out for a vacation -- a long train ride across Scotland -- when he received an urgent call. "Soldiers are massing at the border outside of Kuwait," he was told. At the airport, he watched the beginning of the Iraqi invasion on television. Winging toward Washington in the first-class cabin of a Pan Am 747, Rendon spent the entire flight scratching an outline of his ideas in longhand on a yellow legal pad.

"I wrote a memo about what the Kuwaitis were going to face, and I based it on our experience in Panama and the experience of the Free French operation in World War II," Rendon says. "This was something that they needed to see and hear, and that was my whole intent. Go over, tell the Kuwaitis, 'Here's what you've got -- here's some observations, here's some recommendations, live long and prosper.'"

Back in Washington, Rendon immediately called Hamilton Jordan, the former chief of staff to President Carter and an old friend from his Democratic Party days. "He put me in touch with the Saudis, the Saudis put me in touch with the Kuwaitis and then I went over and had a meeting with the Kuwaitis," Rendon recalls. "And by the time I landed back in the United States, I got a phone call saying, 'Can you come back? We want you to do what's in the memo.'"

What the Kuwaitis wanted was help in selling a war of liberation to the American government -- and the American public. Rendon proposed a massive "perception management" campaign designed to convince the world of the need to join forces to rescue Kuwait. Working through an organization called Citizens for a Free Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government in exile agreed to pay Rendon $100,000 a month for his assistance.

To coordinate the operation, Rendon opened an office in London. Once the Gulf War began, he remained extremely busy trying to prevent the American press from reporting on the dark side of the Kuwaiti government, an autocratic oil-tocracy ruled by a family of wealthy sheiks. When newspapers began reporting that many Kuwaitis were actually living it up in nightclubs in Cairo as Americans were dying in the Kuwaiti sand, the Rendon Group quickly counterattacked. Almost instantly, a wave of articles began appearing telling the story of grateful Kuwaitis mailing 20,000 personally signed valentines to American troops on the front lines, all arranged by Rendon.

Rendon also set up an elaborate television and radio network, and developed programming that was beamed into Kuwait from Taif, Saudi Arabia. "It was important that the Kuwaitis in occupied Kuwait understood that the rest of the world was doing something," he says. Each night, Rendon's troops in London produced a script and sent it via microwave to Taif, ensuring that the "news" beamed into Kuwait reflected a sufficiently pro-American line.

When it comes to staging a war, few things are left to chance. After Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, it was Rendon's responsibility to make the victory march look like the flag-waving liberation of France after World War II. "Did you ever stop to wonder," he later remarked, "how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American -- and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?" After a pause, he added, "Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then."

Although his work is highly secret, Rendon insists he deals only in "timely, truthful and accurate information." His job, he says, is to counter false perceptions that the news media perpetuate because they consider it "more important to be first than to be right." In modern warfare, he believes, the outcome depends largely on the public's perception of the war -- whether it is winnable, whether it is worth the cost. "We are being haunted and stalked by the difference between perception and reality," he says. "Because the lines are divergent, this difference between perception and reality is one of the greatest strategic communications challenges of war."

By the time the Gulf War came to a close in 1991, the Rendon Group was firmly established as Washington's leading salesman for regime change. But Rendon's new assignment went beyond simply manipulating the media. After the war ended, the Top Secret order signed by President Bush to oust Hussein included a rare "lethal finding" -- meaning deadly action could be taken if necessary. Under contract to the CIA, Rendon was charged with helping to create a dissident force with the avowed purpose of violently overthrowing the entire Iraqi government. It is an undertaking that Rendon still considers too classified to discuss. "That's where we're wandering into places I'm not going to talk about," he says. "If you take an oath, it should mean something."

Thomas Twetten, the CIA's former deputy of operations, credits Rendon with virtually creating the INC. "The INC was clueless," he once observed. "They needed a lot of help and didn't know where to start. That is why Rendon was brought in." Acting as the group's senior adviser and aided by truckloads of CIA dollars, Rendon pulled together a wide spectrum of Iraqi dissidents and sponsored a conference in Vienna to organize them into an umbrella organization, which he dubbed the Iraqi National Congress. Then, as in Panama, his assignment was to help oust a brutal dictator and replace him with someone chosen by the CIA. "The reason they got the contract was because of what they had done in Panama -- so they were known," recalls Whitley Bruner, former chief of the CIA's station in Baghdad. This time the target was Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the agency's successor of choice was Ahmad Chalabi, a crafty, avuncular Iraqi exile beloved by Washington's neoconservatives.

Chalabi was a curious choice to lead a rebellion. In 1992, he was convicted in Jordan of making false statements and embezzling $230 million from his own bank, for which he was sentenced in absentia to twenty-two years of hard labor. But the only credential that mattered was his politics. "From day one," Rendon says, "Chalabi was very clear that his biggest interest was to rid Iraq of Saddam." Bruner, who dealt with Chalabi and Rendon in London in 1991, puts it even more bluntly. "Chalabi's primary focus," he said later, "was to drag us into a war."

The key element of Rendon's INC operation was a worldwide media blitz designed to turn Hussein, a once dangerous but now contained regional leader, into the greatest threat to world peace. Each month, $326,000 was passed from the CIA to the Rendon Group and the INC via various front organizations. Rendon profited handsomely, receiving a "management fee" of ten percent above what it spent on the project. According to some reports, the company made nearly $100 million on the contract during the five years following the Gulf War.

Rendon made considerable headway with the INC, but following the group's failed coup attempt against Saddam in 1996, the CIA lost confidence in Chalabi and cut off his monthly paycheck. But Chalabi and Rendon simply switched sides, moving over to the Pentagon, and the money continued to flow. "The Rendon Group is not in great odor in Langley these days," notes Bruner. "Their contracts are much more with the Defense Department."

Rendon's influence rose considerably in Washington after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. In a single stroke, Osama bin Laden altered the world's perception of reality -- and in an age of nonstop information, whoever controls perception wins. What Bush needed to fight the War on Terror was a skilled information warrior -- and Rendon was widely acknowledged as the best. "The events of 11 September 2001 changed everything, not least of which was the administration's outlook concerning strategic influence," notes one Army report. "Faced with direct evidence that many people around the world actively hated the United States, Bush began taking action to more effectively explain U.S. policy overseas. Initially the White House and DoD turned to the Rendon Group."

Three weeks after the September 11th attacks, according to documents obtained from defense sources, the Pentagon awarded a large contract to the Rendon Group. Around the same time, Pentagon officials also set up a highly secret organization called the Office of Strategic Influence. Part of the OSI's mission was to conduct covert disinformation and deception operations -- planting false news items in the media and hiding their origins. "It's sometimes valuable from a military standpoint to be able to engage in deception with respect to future anticipated plans," Vice President Dick Cheney said in explaining the operation. Even the military's top brass found the clandestine unit unnerving. "When I get their briefings, it's scary," a senior official said at the time.

In February 2002, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had hired Rendon "to help the new office," a charge Rendon denies. "We had nothing to do with that," he says. "We were not in their reporting chain. We were reporting directly to the J-3" -- the head of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Following the leak, Rumsfeld was forced to shut down the organization. But much of the office's operations were apparently shifted to another unit, deeper in the Pentagon's bureaucracy, called the Information Operations Task Force, and Rendon was closely connected to this group. "Greg Newbold was the J-3 at the time, and we reported to him through the IOTF," Rendon says.

According to the Pentagon documents, the Rendon Group played a major role in the IOTF. The company was charged with creating an "Information War Room" to monitor worldwide news reports at lightning speed and respond almost instantly with counterpropaganda. A key weapon, according to the documents, was Rendon's "proprietary state-of-the-art news-wire collection system called 'Livewire,' which takes real-time news-wire reports, as they are filed, before they are on the Internet, before CNN can read them on the air and twenty-four hours before they appear in the morning newspapers, and sorts them by keyword. The system provides the most current real-time access to news and information available to private or public organizations."

The top target that the pentagon assigned to Rendon was the Al-Jazeera television network. The contract called for the Rendon Group to undertake a massive "media mapping" campaign against the news organization, which the Pentagon considered "critical to U.S. objectives in the War on Terrorism." According to the contract, Rendon would provide a "detailed content analysis of the station's daily broadcast . . . [and] identify the biases of specific journalists and potentially obtain an understanding of their allegiances, including the possibility of specific relationships and sponsorships."

The secret targeting of foreign journalists may have had a sinister purpose. Among the missions proposed for the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence was one to "coerce" foreign journalists and plant false information overseas. Secret briefing papers also said the office should find ways to "punish" those who convey the "wrong message." One senior officer told CNN that the plan would "formalize government deception, dishonesty and misinformation."

According to the Pentagon documents, Rendon would use his media analysis to conduct a worldwide propaganda campaign, deploying teams of information warriors to allied nations to assist them "in developing and delivering specific messages to the local population, combatants, front-line states, the media and the international community." Among the places Rendon's info-war teams would be sent were Jakarta, Indonesia; Islamabad, Pakistan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Cairo; Ankara, Turkey; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The teams would produce and script television news segments "built around themes and story lines supportive of U.S. policy objectives."

Rendon was also charged with engaging in "military deception" online -- an activity once assigned to the OSI. The company was contracted to monitor Internet chat rooms in both English and Arabic -- and "participate in these chat rooms when/if tasked." Rendon would also create a Web site "with regular news summaries and feature articles. Targeted at the global public, in English and at least four (4) additional languages, this activity also will include an extensive e-mail push operation." These techniques are commonly used to plant a variety of propaganda, including false information.

Still another newly formed propaganda operation in which Rendon played a major part was the Office of Global Communications, which operated out of the White House and was charged with spreading the administration's message on the War in Iraq. Every morning at 9:30, Rendon took part in the White House OGC conference call, where officials would discuss the theme of the day and who would deliver it. The office also worked closely with the White House Iraq Group, whose high-level members, including recently indicted Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby, were responsible for selling the war to the American public.

Never before in history had such an extensive secret network been established to shape the entire world's perception of a war. "It was not just bad intelligence -- it was an orchestrated effort," says Sam Gardner, a retired Air Force colonel who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College. "It began before the war, was a major effort during the war and continues as post-conflict distortions."

In the first weeks following the September 11th attacks, Rendon operated at a frantic pitch. "In the early stages it was fielding every ground ball that was coming, because nobody was sure if we were ever going to be attacked again," he says. "It was 'What do you know about this, what do you know about that, what else can you get, can you talk to somebody over here?' We functioned twenty-four hours a day. We maintained situational awareness, in military terms, on all things related to terrorism. We were doing 195 newspapers and 43 countries in fourteen or fifteen languages. If you do this correctly, I can tell you what's on the evening news tonight in a country before it happens. I can give you, as a policymaker, a six-hour break on how you can affect what's going to be on the news. They'll take that in a heartbeat."

The Bush administration took everything Rendon had to offer. Between 2000 and 2004, Pentagon documents show, the Rendon Group received at least thirty-five contracts with the Defense Department, worth a total of $50 million to $100 million.

The mourners genuflected, made the sign of the cross and took their seats along the hard, shiny pews of Our Lady of Victories Catholic Church. It was April 2nd, 2003 -- the start of fall in the small Australian town of Glenelg, an aging beach resort of white Victorian homes and soft, blond sand on Holdback Bay. Rendon had flown halfway around the world to join nearly 600 friends and family who were gathered to say farewell to a local son and amateur football champ, Paul Moran. Three days into the invasion of Iraq, the freelance journalist and Rendon employee had become the first member of the media to be killed in the war -- a war he had covertly helped to start.

Moran had lived a double life, filing reports for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and other news organizations, while at other times operating as a clandestine agent for Rendon, enjoying what his family calls his "James Bond lifestyle." Moran had trained Iraqi opposition forces in photographic espionage, showing them how to covertly document Iraqi military activities, and had produced pro-war announcements for the Pentagon. "He worked for the Rendon Group in London," says his mother, Kathleen. "They just send people all over the world -- where there are wars."

Moran was covering the Iraq invasion for ABC, filming at a Kurdish-controlled checkpoint in the city of Sulaymaniyah, when a car driven by a suicide bomber blew up next to him. "I saw the car in a kind of slow-motion disintegrate," recalls Eric Campbell, a correspondent who was filming with Moran. "A soldier handed me a passport, which was charred. That's when I knew Paul was dead."

As the Mass ended and Moran's Australian-flag-draped coffin passed by the mourners, Rendon lifted his right arm and saluted. He refused to discuss Moran's role in the company, saying only that "Paul worked for us on a number of projects." But on the long flight back to Washington, across more than a dozen time zones, Rendon outlined his feelings in an e-mail: "The day did begin with dark and ominous clouds much befitting the emotions we all felt -- sadness and anger at the senseless violence that claimed our comrade Paul Moran ten short days ago and many decades of emotion ago."

The Rendon Group also organized a memorial service in London, where Moran first went to work for the company in 1990. Held at Home House, a private club in Portman Square where Moran often stayed while visiting the city, the event was set among photographs of Moran in various locations around the Middle East. Zaab Sethna, who organized the al-Haideri media exclusive in Thailand for Moran and Judith Miller, gave a touching tribute to his former colleague. "I think that on both a personal and professional level Paul was deeply admired and loved by the people at the Rendon Group," Sethna later said.

Although Moran was gone, the falsified story about weapons of mass destruction that he and Sethna had broadcast around the world lived on. Seven months earlier, as President Bush was about to argue his case for war before the U.N., the White House had given prominent billing to al-Haideri's fabricated charges. In a report ironically titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception," the administration referred to al-Haideri by name and detailed his allegations -- even though the CIA had already determined them to be lies. The report was placed on the White House Web site on September 12th, 2002, and remains there today. One version of the report even credits Miller's article for the information.

Miller also continued to promote al-Haideri's tale of Saddam's villainy. In January 2003, more than a year after her first article appeared, Miller again reported that Pentagon "intelligence officials" were telling her that "some of the most valuable information has come from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri." His interviews with the Defense Intelligence Agency, Miller added, "ultimately resulted in dozens of highly credible reports on Iraqi weapons-related activity and purchases, officials said."

Finally, in early 2004, more than two years after he made the dramatic allegations to Miller and Moran about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, al-Haideri was taken back to Iraq by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group. On a wide-ranging trip through Baghdad and other key locations, al-Haideri was given the opportunity to point out exactly where Saddam's stockpiles were hidden, confirming the charges that had helped to start a war.

In the end, he could not identify a single site where illegal weapons were buried.

As the war in Iraq has spiraled out of control, the Bush administration's covert propaganda campaign has intensified. According to a secret Pentagon report personally approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003 and obtained by Rolling Stone, the Strategic Command is authorized to engage in "military deception" -- defined as "presenting false information, images or statements." The seventy-four-page document, titled "Information Operations Roadmap," also calls for psychological operations to be launched over radio, television, cell phones and "emerging technologies" such as the Internet. In addition to being classified secret, the road map is also stamped noforn, meaning it cannot be shared even with our allies.

As the acknowledged general of such propaganda warfare, Rendon insists that the work he does is for the good of all Americans. "For us, it's a question of patriotism," he says. "It's not a question of politics, and that's an important distinction. I feel very strongly about that personally. If brave men and women are going to be put in harm's way, they deserve support." But in Iraq, American troops and Iraqi civilians were put in harm's way, in large part, by the false information spread by Rendon and the men he trained in information warfare. And given the rapid growth of what is known as the "security-intelligence complex" in Washington, covert perception managers are likely to play an increasingly influential role in the wars of the future.

Indeed, Rendon is already thinking ahead. Last year, he attended a conference on information operations in London, where he offered an assessment on the Pentagon's efforts to manipulate the media. According to those present, Rendon applauded the practice of embedding journalists with American forces. "He said the embedded idea was great," says an Air Force colonel who attended the talk. "It worked as they had found in the test. It was the war version of reality television, and for the most part they did not lose control of the story." But Rendon also cautioned that individual news organizations were often able to "take control of the story," shaping the news before the Pentagon asserted its spin on the day's events.

"We lost control of the context," Rendon warned. "That has to be fixed for the next war."

James Bamford is the best-selling author of "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies" (2004) and "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" (2001). This is his first article for Rolling Stone.

Pimp Juice

Miller Lite is the real "Pimp Juice".
When you got Flava Flav in a beer commerical, hawking your swill, you are DA PIMP!

"Forget the Party Labels"

This one has been swirling around in my mind for a bit. It's not formulated completely, but I just want to put it out there.

Michael Steele is getting support from the national Republican party because he is a Black Republican. He's getting help from Karl Rove, the president, and national conservative talk shows.

Michael Steele is the man.

Michael Steele is running his U.S. Senate for Maryland race, not as a Republican, but as an individual. His campaign is saying, forget the party labels and look at the man and the issues.

Now, he could be said that he is doing that so that Blacks "forget" he is a Republican and vote for him. But that is not the case.

Indeed, his campaign is looking at the Maryland demographics, 2:1 registered Democrats to Republicans, and see that in a state wide race, there is no other way to run.

His campaign, which has started, has already putting out that he should be considered independent of his party and the president.

Friendship is Essential to the Soul

Happy belated Founder's Day to the brothers of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. I don't have many blogging entries left in me anymore, but if I can't make time for the organization that is more responsible for my "success" then what the hell can I make time for?

"Acting White", One More Time

P6 is throwing down on the false hype of "acting white".

He quotes someone else:

Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.

The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.

Ya'll go visit now. Ya here?

Black Intra-Racial Politics: Name Calling

I've written about the alleged name calling against Michael Steele.

I've written about my distaste for the name calling, but questioned the article because of what was directly quoted vs. what was paraphrased.

This is now national news and I'm wondering why:

• When Black Democrat politicians and commentators in Baltimore called Mfume a sellout because Mfume backed Martin O'Malley and refused to get involved in the case of the Baltimore City Public Schools hiding the fact of lead in the drinking water, it wasn't national news.
  
• When Black Democrat politicians and commentators called the Black members of the Baltimore City Council sellouts and Uncle Toms because they were a rubber stamp for Martin O'Malley, it wasn't national news.
  
• When Black Democrat politicians and commentators called Black people on the Baltimore City Public School board sellouts and Uncle Toms because they are useless, it wasn't national news.
  

Actually, I do know why and I have to ask why Michael Steele, someone who, from what I know, I think I like, politically, needs to be protected from normal Black politics?

What I Have Witnessed

I know you don't care, but this is what I have personally witnessed:

• A womb after child birth.
• A cesarean.
• Three "fresh" dead bodies.
• A woman scream, "I got 'em!" when she walked out of the church after just getting married.
• Stonehenge.
• The Eiffel Tower.
• The Mona Lisa.
• Westminster Abbey.
• Pure love.
• Prince.
• James Brown.
• Earth, Wind, and Fire.
• Rick James.
• Eddie Murphy.
• Oprah before she was national.
• Pure hate.
• Jerry Lewis.
• Being "walked" by an Olympic champion.
• Sam Donaldson prove that he is a pompous ass.
• Live fish in the waters of Caribbean islands.
• The wonder of a child after seeing something new.
• Life.

Music

I made some music purchases recently that I want to share with you.

I brought George Clinton's, How Late Do U Have 2 B B4 U R Absent?. Please, people do not waste your money. It stinks and I don't mean funky! It does absolutely NOTHING for the funk juices. I rate it a 1 out of 10. The 1 is just because it's George Clinton.

On the other hand, Kirk Franklin's Hero, is not only good for your soul, but some of it will get the funk juices MOVIN! Right now, "Looking for You" is getting some play on secular radio, and with good reason. The groove is based on a secular song of years gone by, "Haven't You Heard" by Patrice Rushen. And there is a song on the CD with Stevie Wonder that is nice. In fact, it should have also been on Stevie's CD. I give it a 8 out of 10. Speaking of Stevie...

Steve Wonder's new CD, A Time to Love was a long time in the making. And, frankly, for it to have taken so long, it should have been much better. It is a good sound with solid music. It just doesn't move me too much. I give it a 6 out of 10.

Finally, there's the new CD by Earth, Wind, & Fire. The CD is named Illumination. This is a good CD.

It's a CD with multiple producers and writers: Will. I. Am., Raphael Saadiq, Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam, Floetry, and Brian McKnight.

I must say that Jam and Lewis do the best job of keeping the classic EW&F sound but keeping it fresh as well. Their production, "Pure Gold" will not disappoint old school EW&F fans. It's a winner. It's too bad it's only getting play on "old school" stations.

Next in line is the final "new" cut that is written and produced by Brian McKnight, "To You." McKnight keeps the EW&F feel and produces a winner for the group.

Raphael Saadiq gets a hand at doing some writing and production work for EW&F. I must say that he holds his own and gains some respect from me. "Show Me the Way" is a good EW&F song, but the only draw back is Saadiq gets some vocal work on the cut. I'm not a fan of the man's voice, so I just want to hear Phillip and Maurice work their chops. But, the song is good. Saadiq did 2 other songs as well. Overall, he does a good job.

Last, but not least, the BEST cut on the CD, one that had me dancing in my seat at work, and had my CD player on single loop, is "The One". Folks, that song is GOOD!

The CD is a solid 8.5 out of 10. If it weren't for Floetry and Big Boi being on the CD, I'd rate it higher.

OH, don't let me forget Public Enemy. I just brought New Whirl Odor today. I got it on "g.p.". I was disappointed by the lyrics, but the beats are STILL BANGING. The beats alone make me give it a 7 out of 10.

Disloyal Opposition

Now it appears that Bush is "fighting back" against the people who say the Bush administration lied about the reason the U.S. went to war against Iraq.

President Bush on Friday shot back at critics claiming his administration misconstrued or lied about pre-war intelligence showing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, saying "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."

Frankly, I think it is the Bush administration that is deeply irresponsible.

The Bush administration said the reason for the action against Iraq was because of WMDs. They then said it was because of violations of U.N. sanctions. They then said it was because of Saadam's treatment of Iraq citizens. Then it was said the seed of Democracy in the country would be good for the Middle East.

At one point, the president was saying that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11/2001 attacks, but the vice-president was saying that Iraq was involved.

Did the Bush administration communicate a clear and consistent story for the action against Iraq?

No.

In fact, the most consistent and supportive reasons for action against Iraq came not from the Bush administration, but from commentators and pundits who backed the administration.

Men and women of our country were sent to fight in a foreign country, yet the President of the United States, seemingly, can't give a straight answer on why we are there.

In short, the Bush administration can't communicate worth jack!

So, when the opposition takes advantage of this lack of communication, the supporters of the president say the opposition is working against the interests of the U.S.

I have a question about working against the interests of the U.S.

Was it working against the interest of the U.S. when the opposition called the sitting president "white trash"?

Was it working against the interest of the U.S. when the opposition said the president was guilty of having fathered the son of a Black prostitute?

Was it working against the interest of the U.S. when the opposition said the president was the cause of low morale in the service?

Was it working against the interest of the U.S. when the opposition pushed story after story of enlisted military people who wanted to leave the service?

Was it working against the interest of the U.S. when the opposition started writing articles of impeachment after the president was re-elected, but before any revelations of sexual misconduct and perjury?

Was it working against the interest of the U.S. when the opposition stated a military action was done to cover up a situation concerning sexual misconduct?

Was it working against the interest of the U.S. when the opposition stated agencies tasked with defending the U.S. are not supported by the administration in power?

In the end, it comes down to partisanship and power. People want their party to be in power so they will have some power to do what they want to do; health and security of the U.S. be damned.

The men and women in the military deserve better. The people of the U.S. deserve better.

Get French or Die Trying

The rioting in Paris and other French cities has led to a lot of interpretations and comments, most of them irrelevant. Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society. But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence. Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond.

P6 tipped me off to Times Select perpetration with the Brooks piece, interestingly, Olivier Roy had a stronger version of the same in the proletarian section, as well.

To understand why this is so, consider two solid facts we do have on the riots. First, this is a youth (and male) uprising. The rioters are generally 12 to 25 years old, and roughly half of those arrested are under 18. The adults keep away from the demonstrations: in fact, they are the first victims (it is their cars, after all, that are burning) and they want security and social services to be restored.

Yet older residents also resent what they see as the unnecessary brutality of the police toward the rioters, the merry-go-round of officials making promises that they know will be quickly forgotten, and the demonization of their communities by the news media. Second, the riots are geographically and socially very circumscribed: all are occurring in about 100 suburbs, or more precisely destitute neighborhoods known here as "cités," "quartiers" or "banlieues." There has long been a strong sense of territorial identity among the young people in these neighborhoods, who have tended to coalesce in loose gangs. The different gangs, often involved in petty delinquency, have typically been reluctant to stroll outside their territories and have vigilantly kept strangers away, be they rival gangs, police officers, firefighters or journalists.

Now, these gangs are for the most part burning their own neighborhoods and seem little interested in extending the rampage to more fashionable areas. They express simmering anger fueled by unemployment and racism. The lesson, then, is that while these riots originate in areas largely populated by immigrants of Islamic heritage, they have little to do with the wrath of a Muslim community.

France has a huge Muslim population living outside these neighborhoods - many of them, people who left them as soon as they could afford it - and they don't identify with the rioters at all. Even within the violent areas, one's local identity (sense of belonging to a particular neighborhood) prevails over larger ethnic and religious affiliation. Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues).

Nobody should be surprised that efforts by the government to find "community leaders" have had little success. There are no leaders in these areas for a very simple reason: there is no community in the neighborhoods. Traditional parental control has disappeared and many Muslim families are headed by a single parent. Elders, imams and social workers have lost control. Paradoxically, the youths themselves are often the providers of local social rules, based on aggressive manhood, control of the streets, defense of a territory. Americans (and critics of America in Europe) may see in these riots echoes of the black separatism that fueled the violence in Harlem and Watts in the 1960's. But the French youths are not fighting to be recognized as a minority group, either ethnic or religious; they want to be accepted as full citizens. They have believed in the French model (individual integration through citizenship) but feel cheated because of their social and economic exclusion. Hence they destroy what they see as the tools of failed social promotion: schools, social welfare offices, gymnasiums. Disappointment leads to nihilism. For many, fighting the police is some sort of a game, and a rite of passage.

Contrary to the calls of many liberals, increased emphasis on multiculturalism and respect for other cultures in France is not the answer: this angry young population is highly deculturalized and individualized. There is no reference to Palestine or Iraq in these riots. Although these suburbs have been a recruiting field for jihadists, the fundamentalists are conspicuously absent from the violence. Muslim extremists don't share the youth agenda (from drug dealing to nightclub partying), and the youngsters reject any kind of leadership.

So what is to be done? The politicians have offered the predictable: curfews, platitudes about respect, vague promises of economic aid. But with France having entered its presidential election cycle, any hope for long-term rethinking is misplaced. In the end, we are dealing here with problems found by any culture in which inequities and cultural differences come in conflict with high ideals. Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony - the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world.

Olivier Roy, a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, is the author of "Globalized Islam."

New Rankings

Transparency International Rankings for Kleptocracies have left off some key figures - like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld...it seems as though Dick Cheney is movin' on up.

Boondocks: The Series

The show had 1 maybe 2 funny spots. I expected more "ha ha".

The satire/political commentary was in your face and showed no
ingenuity. To me, the best satire is subtle or so over the top it's
just shows how stupid the situation is; think George Carlin.

That's how I read the Boondocks comic strip. It hits you in 3 or 4 panels.

*BAM*

Right in the gonads.

I think the restraint and limited space does well to make McGruder hit it.

With the cartoon, he has less restraint and about 21 minutes to get
his points over. That may be too much. He gets 2 more looks for me, if it doesn't get better, that's it.

As Net Energy Continues to Fall....,

you are going to hear more and more debate about "free markets" vs. "government intervention". Obviously, this is a political question: so-called free market "special interests" (one dollar, one vote) vs. "common interests" (one person, one vote).

The Hansonian admonition for today requires that you exercise enough free will to remind yourself that economics like war is politics by other means, and yes, the end-game has nothing to do with truth, rather, it's about fitness. Those free marketers, who actually bother to rationalize their arguments, base them on three false assumptions and deliberate lies:

#1. "Wants" are the identical to "needs". So-called conservatives (it's boilerplate economic theory) deliberately lie about this because they want you to believe that Donald Trump "needs" another million dollar painting on the wall of one of his mansions just as badly as a welfare mother needs health care for her children. This amounts to a license for the rich to hog limited resources (on a spherical planet, all resources are "limited").

#2. People are "rational utility maximizers". Although even economists admit this is a lie, it still boilerplate economic theory. Economists MUST lie about this because if people are being manipulated by marketing, then the so-called "free market" is inherently immoral.

#3. The market is "efficient". This is central to economic theory, but it's also a deliberate lie (an "idiosyncratic redefinition"). Economists know that people who do not have economic training are going to assume that "efficient" is used in the same way that engineers use the word: acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort.

But for economists, "efficient" means "efficient distribution" of resources: i.e., the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The reason economists use idiosyncratic redefinitions instead of coining new terms (like every other discipline) is to make them better liars.

Idiosyncratic redefinition allows economists to stand in front of your
local Rotary Club and appear to HONESTLY use words that mean one thing to them, while Club members think they mean something completely different. This is how economists avoid our innate ability to spot liars.

Far from being "efficient", the so-called "free market" is the MOST
INEFFICIENT aspect of our society. A back-of-the-envelope calculation by Tom Wayburn suggests that the so-called "free market" WASTES 90% of our natural resources. In other words, we could be self-sufficient in oil (and bring our troops home) by ending "the market" and reorganizing into a new type of "common interest" government instead of the "special interest" government we have had since inception (see the founding of America).

On a spherical planet, governed by the laws of thermodynamics, "the market" WILL end -- sooner or later, one way or another.

Is there anyone who doesn't understand these points above?

Cheney's Halliburton stock options rose 3,281% last year, senator finds

An analysis released by a Democratic senator found that Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock options have risen 3,281 percent in the last year...

libertypost.org carries the water on yet another sterling example of neoclassical modernist humanism...,

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney's options -- worth $241,498 a year ago -- are now valued at more than $8 million. The former CEO of the oil and gas services juggernaut, Cheney has pledged to give proceeds to charity.

“Halliburton has already raked in more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and they were awarded some of the first Katrina contracts," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it. The Vice President should sever his financial ties to Halliburton once and for all.”

Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options. The company has been criticized by auditors for its handling of a no-bid contact in Iraq. Auditors found the firm marked up meal prices for troops and inflated gas prices in a deal with a Kuwaiti supplier. The company built the American prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The Vice President has sought to stem criticism by signing an agreement to donate the after-tax profits from these stock options to charities of his choice, and his lawyer has said he will not take any tax deduction for the donations.

However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded in Sept. 2003 that holding stock options while in elective office does constitute a “financial interest” regardless of whether the holder of the options will donate proceeds to charities. CRS also found that receiving deferred compensation is a financial interest.

Cheney told "Meet the Press" in 2003 that he didn't have any financial ties to the firm.

“Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest," the Vice President said. "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years.”

Cheney continues to received a deferred salary from the company. According to financial disclosure forms, he was paid $205,298 in 2001; $162,392 in 2002; $178,437 in 2003; and $194,852 in 2004. (1 image)

Rumsfeld's growing stake in Tamiflu

The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it's proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that's now the most-sought after drug in the world.

Rumsfeld served as Gilead (Research)'s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.

oops there it is, oops there it is, 1ll-33t modernist humanism at its nekkid best...,

The forms don't reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the ensuing scramble for Tamiflu have sent Gilead's stock from $35 to $47. That's made the Pentagon chief, already one of the wealthiest members of the Bush cabinet, at least $1 million richer.

Rumsfeld isn't the only political heavyweight benefiting from demand for Tamiflu, which is manufactured and marketed by Swiss pharma giant Roche. (Gilead receives a royalty from Roche equaling about 10% of sales.) Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on Gilead's board, has sold more than $7 million worth of Gilead since the beginning of 2005.

Another board member is the wife of former California Gov. Pete Wilson.

"I don't know of any biotech company that's so politically well-connected," says analyst Andrew McDonald of Think Equity Partners in San Francisco.

What's more, the federal government is emerging as one of the world's biggest customers for Tamiflu. In July, the Pentagon ordered $58 million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops around the world, and Congress is considering a multi-billion dollar purchase. Roche expects 2005 sales for Tamiflu to be about $1 billion, compared with $258 million in 2004.

Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead when he left Gilead and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001. And late last month, notes a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld went even further and had the Pentagon's general counsel issue additional instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.

As the flu issue heated up early this year, according to the Pentagon official, Rumsfeld considered unloading his entire Gilead stake and sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the SEC and the federal Office of Government Ethics.

Those agencies didn't offer an opinion so Rumsfeld consulted a private securities lawyer, who advised him that it was safer to hold on to the stock and be quite public about his recusal rather than sell and run the risk of being accused of trading on insider information, something Rumsfeld doesn't believe he possesses. So he's keeping his shares for the time being.

Iran oil bourse:a threat to the petrodollar?

Iran's decision to set up an oil and associated derivatives market next year has generated a great deal of interest. This is primarily because of Iran’s reported intention to invoice energy contracts in euros rather than dollars.

Remember Dr. Sonja Ebron's prescient and profoundly insightful 2.5 year old article On Why African Americans Should Oppose the War in the Black Commentator. This article is suitable for framing and gifting to republicans formerly known as black.

Disregard any specious Iranian WMD hype, cause just like with Wargate now unfolding in Phase II in the Senate, with blinders removed, the deja vous all over again is confounding.., don't these neocons have any other plays in their playbook?

The contention that this could unseat the dollar’s dominance as the de facto currency for oil transactions may be overstated but this has not stopped many commentators from linking America’s current political disquiet with Iran to the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB).

The proposal to set up the IOB was first put forward in Iran’s Third Development Plan (2000-2005). Mohammad Javad Assemipour, who heads the project, has said that the exchange will strive to make Iran the main hub for oil deals in the region and that it should be operational by March 2006.

Geographically Iran is ideally located as it is in close proximity to major oil importers such as China, Europe and India.

It is unlikely, in the short term at least, that large numbers of energy traders will decamp and set up shop in Iran; a country which happens to be categorized as a member of the ‘axis of evil’ by the president of the world’s largest oil importing country; the United States.

But over time Iran could take some business away from the two incumbent energy exchanges, the International Petroleum Exchange and the New York Mercantile Exchange whom both invoice sales solely in dollars.

Economic Motives
If successful the IOB will provide Iran with concrete economic benefits especially if it invoices at least some of its energy contracts in euros.

Iran has around 126bn barrels of proven oil reserves about 10 percent of the world's total, and has the world’s second largest proven natural gas reserves.

From an economic perspective, invoicing oil in euros would be logical for Iran as trade with the euro zone countries accounts for 45 percent of its total trade. More than a third of Iran’s oil exports are destined for Europe, while oil exports to the United States are non existent.

The IOB could create a new euro denominated crude oil marker, which in turn would enable GCC nations to sell some of their oil for euros. The bourse should lead to greater levels of Foreign Direct Investment in Iran’s hydrocarbon sector and if it facilitates futures trading it will give regional investors an alternative to investing in their somewhat overvalued stock markets.

Euro zone countries alone account for almost a third of Iran’s imports and currently Iran must exchange dollars earned from hydrocarbon exports into euros which involves exchange rate risk and transaction costs.

The decline in the dollar against the euro since 2002 – some 26 percent to date – has substantially reduced Iran’s purchasing power against its main importing partner.

If the decline continues more states will increase the percentage of euros vis-à-vis the dollar they hold in reserve and in turn this will increase calls both in Iran and the GCC to invoice at least some of their oil exports in euros. A move away from the dollar and a strengthening of the euro would further benefit Iran as according to a member of Iran’s Parliament Development Commission, Mohammad Abasspour, more than half of the country's assets in the Forex Reserve Fund are now euros.

It is primarily the US which stands to lose out from any move away from the petrodollar status quo, it is the world’s largest importer of oil and a move away from invoicing oil in dollars to euros will undoubtedly have a negative effect on its economy.

Fewer nations would be willing to hold the dollar in reserve which would cause a significant devaluation and result in the loss seigniorage revenues. In addition US energy related companies stand to lose out as they will be unable to participate in the bourse due to the longstanding American trade embargo on Iran.

Political Considerations
In the 1970s, not long after the collapse of the gold standard, the US agreed with Saudi Arabia that OPEC oil should be traded in dollars in effect replacing the gold standard with the oil standard.

Since then consecutive US governments have been able to print dollar bills and Treasury Bonds in order to paper over huge current account and budgetary deficits, last year’s US current account deficit was $646bn.

Needless to say the current petrodollar system greatly benefits the US; it enables it to effectively control the world oil-market as the dollar has become the fiat currency for international trade.

In terms of its own oil imports, the US. can print dollar bills without exporting commodities or manufactured goods as these can be paid for by issuing yet more dollars and T-bills.

George Perkovich, of the Washington based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has argued that Iran’s decision to consider invoicing oil sales in euros is "part of a very intelligent strategy to go on the offense in every way possible and mobilize other actors against the US." This viewpoint however, ignores Iran’s economic motives, just because the decision, if eventually taken, displeases the US does not mean that the rationale is purely political.

In light of such sentiments and the US’s current insistence that Iran be referred to the UN Security Council Iran must consider and weigh carefully the economic benefits against the potential political costs.

Although a matter of conjecture, some observers consider Iran’s threat to the petrodollar system so great that it could provoke a US military attack on Iran, most likely under the cover of a preemptive attack on its nuclear facilities, much like the cover of WMD America used against Iraq.

In November 2000, Iraq began selling its oil in euros, its ‘Oil For Food’ account at the UN was also transferred into euros and later it converted its US$10bn UN held reserve fund into euros.

At the time of the switch many analysts were surprised and saw it as nothing more than a political statement, which in essence it may have been, but the euro has gained roughly 17 percent over the dollar between then and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since the US led occupation of Iraq its oil sales are once again being invoiced in dollars.

The best policy choice for Iran would be to proceed with the IOB as planned as the economic advantages of such a bourse are clear, but in order to mitigate against the potentially greater political ‘threat’ should provide customers with flexibility.

It would make it much harder for America to object to the new bourse, overtly or covertly, if Iran allows customers to decide for themselves which currency to use when purchasing oil, such an approach would facilitate for euro purchases with out explicitly ruling out the dollar.

[Emilie Rutledge is a British economist who is currently based at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai].

The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.

Aljazeera
By Emilie Rutledge

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C1C0C9B3-DDA9-42E2-AE9C-B7CDBA08A6E9.htm

Black Politics, Continued

Yesterday, I wrote about the dust up of an article that appeared in The Washington Times.

First, again, I want to make this clear: I don't like that sort of name calling. It serves no purpose, to me, instead of highlighting that the people doing it have nothing else to go after. Or, they may, but they are too damned lazy to try.

On the media:

When a reporter writes:

State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a black Baltimore Democrat, said she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele, in the race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.
"Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy."

I wonder why, in this case, the reporter directly quotes the person being interviewed, but uses his own words about what she said in another. When Lisa Gladden called into a hostile talk show and said that the direct quote was accurate but the first attribution was not accurate, why should she NOT be taken at her word?

The direct quote isn't exactly making her look good, is it?

For the self proclaimed conservatives, if a "liberal" newspaper had quoted a Republican in such a way, and that Republican said the attribution was inaccurate, wouldn't you be rushing to defend and "attack" or "question" the source?

This morning, on WOLB, a Black talk radio station in Baltimore opened up the telephone lines to this topic. Most of the callers self-identified themselves as Black and Democrats, rushed to support Michael Steele. Additionally, some local Black politicians and citizens then ran down the list of accomplishments, from a Black point of view, of the Erlich and Steele administration.

In July, I highlighted a few of the accomplishments.

I read the online edition of The Washington Times. I've read their coverage and how they cover things and feel correct in saying they are conservative and Republican backers.

[Updated]

6:22 PM EST, Verna Jones is now on WEAA, The Danny Glover Show, discussing the original article. She is now saying the reporter took her out of context and added words to what she said:

State Sen. Verna Jones, Baltimore Democrat and vice chairman of the General Assembly's black caucus, said black Republicans deserve criticism because the GOP has not promoted the interests of the black community.

Verna Jones is saying that she never said Black Republicans. She was saying Republicans in general.

So, let me go to the liberal Baltimore Sun.

The article concludes that the lawmakers believe that some recent attacks against Steele are justified, such as a doctored picture on a liberal blog that showed Steele in minstrel makeup. But the politicians said that their quotes were taken out of context and that they do not support racially tinged criticism. The reporter who wrote the article and the managing editor of the Times did not return telephone calls.

Foul

Check out this article.

I'll take a bit from the article. I'll take it as is. Please note what was written, and when things are quoted.

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

"Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."

There is a problem with this. I just heard her on a talk show and she said she didn't say what is in the first paragraph. She did say what is in the second paragraph, thus the direct quote is accurate.

She gave her opinion, and that opinion can be questioned.

The talk show host was livid about this article, and based on what he was saying, I got mad as well, until I went to the article itself. Then I realized he was taking things out of context and getting things flat out wrong.

For example, he said that Mfume supported the idea of going after Steele for being a Republican. Well, Mfume is never directly quoted. Only Mfume's spokesman is quoted.

In fact, this is what Mfume's spokesman said:

"There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

...

"The facts are the facts. Ehrlich went to that country club, and Steele said it didn't bother him," Mr. Trippi said. "I think that says something ... and should be part of this debate."

This article is a race baiting hachet job.

And I'll say it again: When Black Dems attack Black Dems as sellouts, is it news like this?

Update

From the article:

State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a black Baltimore Democrat, said she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele, in the race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.
"Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy."

Lisa Gladden called into a radio program. She said the quote of the 2nd paragraph is accurate. She said she did not say the what was in the first paragraph. Note there are no direct quotes in that paragraph.

Update 2 Mfume called in and denounced it.