Monthly Archives: December 2006

Happy New Year!

The Criminality of the State
by Albert J. Nock (from LewRockwell.com)
This essay first appeared in The American Mercury in March 1939.

As well as I can judge, the general attitude of Americans who are at all interested in foreign affairs is one of astonishment, coupled with distaste, displeasure, or horror, according to the individual observer’s capacity for emotional excitement. Perhaps I ought to shade this statement a little in order to keep on the safe side, and say that this is the most generally expressed attitude.

All our institutional voices

Just what I wanted!

Thanks AP!

Congress rebukes FBI’s Okla. City probe

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer Sun Dec 24, 5:20 PM ET

The FBI failed to fully investigate information suggesting other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, allowing questions to linger more than a decade after the deadly attack, a congressional inquiry concludes.

The House International Relations investigative subcommittee will release the findings of its two-year review as early as Wednesday, declaring there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack but far too many unanswered questions remain.

The subcommittee’s report will conclude there is no doubt McVeigh and Nichols were the main perpetrators, and it discloses for the first time that Nichols confirmed to House investigators he participated in the robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer that provided the proceeds for the attack.

There have long been questions about that robbery because the FBI concluded McVeigh was in another state at the time it occurred.

The report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have assisted their plot.

“We did our best with limited resources, and I think we moved the understanding of this issue forward a couple of notches even though important questions remain unanswered,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Rohrabacher’s subcommittee saved its sharpest words for the Justice Department, saying officials there exhibited a mindset of thwarting congressional oversight and did not assist the investigation fully.

The report rebukes the FBI for not fully pursuing leads suggesting other suspects may have provided support to McVeigh and Nichols before their truck bomb killed 168 people in the main federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

The report says the inadequacy of the bureau’s work was exposed two years ago when some bombing evidence overlooked for 10 years was discovered in a home linked to Nichols that had been searched repeatedly by agents.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Sunday, “Having not yet read the report, it would be inappropriate to comment on its contents.”

Nonetheless, Kolko said: “The Oklahoma City bombing case was the largest case the FBI worked on before 9/11. Agents at virtually every office, domestically and overseas, covered thousands of leads. Every bit of information was investigated and reviewed. The FBI worked tirelessly to cover all of the leads and conducted a thorough and complete investigation.”

Previously, the bureau has said it believes its investigation of the bombing was exhaustive and there is no credible evidence that other people were involved.

The subcommittee concludes the Justice Department should not have rushed to execute McVeigh in 2001 after he dropped his court appeals, and officials should have made more efforts to interview and question him about evidence suggesting he might have gotten help from other people who remain unpunished.

The former lead FBI agent in the case, Dan Defenbaugh, told AP a few years ago he was trying to get one last interview with McVeigh to go over unanswered questions in the case but could not get it arranged before McVeigh was executed.

Rohrabacher’s report cites several leads the subcommittee believes were not fully investigated, including:

_Information that McVeigh called a German citizen living at a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma two weeks before the bombing and that two witnesses saw the men together before the bombing.

_Witness accounts that another man was seen with McVeigh around the time of the bombing. The FBI originally looked for another suspect it named John Doe 2, even providing a sketch, but abruptly dropped that line of inquiry. The subcommittee concludes that decision was a mistake.

_Findings in AP articles in 2003 and 2004 that indicated the FBI had gathered some evidence suggesting a group of neo-Nazi bank robbers may have been tied to McVeigh. The subcommittee interviewed three of those robbers, and all denied a connection. A fourth member of the gang died and a fifth member could not be located by Congress.

_Phone record and witness testimony that persons associated with Middle Eastern terrorism in the Philippines may have had contact with Nichols, and that Nichols took a book about explosives to the Philippines. The FBI and Filipino police spent months investigating such a connection, but ruled it out.

_Information from a former TV reporter concerning an Iraqi national who was in Oklahoma around the time of the bombing.

Update: The Salt Lake Tribune’s piece

Could Bush Start Another War?

by Scott Horton Antiwar.com December 24, 2006

“If the king attacks Persia, he will destroy a great empire.” – Delphic Oracle

All the news is that despite growing antiwar sentiment among the public and the establishment, Bush has decided to reject the major recommendations of the Baker panel and continue to settle for nothing less than total “victory” in Iraq, that he has turned back to the dark heart of the War Party, the American Enterprise Institute, for a plan to win and that more troops and ships are headed to the region.

Everyone outside AEI seems to agree that the chances for his “victory” of a multiethnic, America-friendly, democratic Iraqi state have long since expired. The Baker panel avoided using the term at all. And as investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss explained to me last week, the U.S. is backing the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) death squad leaders because they are the only ones (besides some of the Kurds in the autonomous North) who want – need – the U.S. to stay. This is hardly the “road to victory” as it has been defined by the President.

But Bush can’t stop now. He figures his legacy as a disgrace to America and all mankind can be postponed or perhaps somehow even reversed if he could have just a little more time.

Time for what? Could it be that Bush truly intends to carry out the full neoconservative program in the Middle East, complete with more regime changes?

Could spreading his most spectacular failure to Iran and Syria make Iraq seem merely a “catastrophic success“? Are even Bush and Cheney stupid enough to think an air war against Iran will accomplish anything other than forcing their withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, pushing their rebellious populace back into the arms of the Mullahs, driving the price of oil over $200 a barrel and beginning a brand new war in Iraq against the Iran-friendly Shia whom the U.S. has spent hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars installing in power?

Could Bush, whose approval ratings remain in the 30s, initiate an aggressive war without authorization from Congress? Could he claim that the authorization for the war in Iraq was all the authority he needed?

Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh seem to think so. On December 14th Democracy Now! replayed the audio of their October 16, 2006 appearance at the Ethical Culture Society.

They emphasize the role of the communist cult Mujahideen-e-Khalq – once Saddam’s loyal terrorists, now “ours” – in the early stages of war against Iran and the then-recent – and now recent again – news of U.S. Navy ships, including minesweepers, being sent to the Persian Gulf region. Ritter also explained that the American people have already accepted Bush’s false premise that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that the U.S. must not allow it to be successful.

But as Hersh reported in the New Yorker‘s November issue, the CIA’s new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran says that they have no evidence at all of a secret weapons program. Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has had full access to Iran’s nuclear program, has reported all along that there is “no indication” that Iran has diverted nuclear technology to any other purpose beyond their declared and monitored electricity program, a program which they have an “inalienable right” to under the NPT.

According to Ritter and Hersh, the Israelis don’t have any more evidence than the U.S. does, and it does not matter. In the eyes of right-wing Likudnik crazies like Benjamin Netanyahu and his ex-communist, Israel-First, neocon buddies in the U.S., any nuclear technology in the hands of the Iranians is tantamount to a ready capacity to “wipe Israel off the map.” The fact that the ability to enrich uranium to the grade required to generate electricity (around 3.6% U-235) does not equal the ability to enrich it to weapons grade (well over 90% U-235) – especially in the presence of IAEA inspectors and video equipment – is irrelevant to them.

It has been reported, first by Philip Giraldi, then by Hersh, Larisa Alexandrovna and Col. Sam Gardiner (ret.), that Bush has considered using real nukes on Iran’s pretend ones. While it seems inconceivable, Iran’s Natanz facility is buried deep underground, and we know how concerned Bush is with getting things right the first time.

It seems the only way he can imagine to take one last shot at greatness is to compound his mistake by 1,000 times.

Perhaps the question is whether Israel will start a war in Syria as a back door to the expansion of America’s war to Iran, or will the U.S. simply fake another Gulf of Tonkin provocation in the Indian Ocean and hit Syria second?

Even if Iran did have nuclear weapons, it would still be none of America’s business. They do not have the rocket technology to deliver them here, nor would they be likely to share their prize with terrorists. Nuclear bombs all come with a “return address.” And let’s not forget that back in 2003, they offered to give the U.S. everything.

Israel has at least 400 nuclear bombs, a fully capable conventional military and can protect itself just fine. They don’t need the U.S. for their defense, but for aggression against threats that do not really exist.

Even Robert Gates, our new secretary of “defense” admitted to Congress that the only reason Iran would want a nuke is that they are surrounded by powers with nukes.

Robert Parry reports that Bush, Blair and Olmert are already planning for more war in the new year. The Iranians seem to have waited too long to get their act together. If they had withdrawn from the NPT and started harvesting plutonium the way North Korea did, instead of throwing their books wide open to the UN and trying to go along, they’d have a nuclear deterrent by now.

Hey, Merry Christmas you guys

It’s been a fun year of blogging around here and I much appreciate all you regulars, those who comment and those who don’t. Last time I checked, which was actually quite a few months ago, there were a couple hundred of you who come by pretty much every day. Thanks a lot for stopping in and taking part.

Give cool shit to people you care about. It will make them happy.

Vista so far

The new Microsoft Operating System (OS), Windows Vista, is currently in the Ready To Manufacture (RTM) stage. That means it is finished, but Microsoft has placed an embargo on selling it until January 30. My guess is that Microsoft is hoping someone breaks the embargo, which would mean a windfall of lawsuit profits.
As a MSDN member, I have access to Vista and all other MS software for free. Thus, a few days ago, I installed Vista here. Vista comes in 4 different versions, varying in features and price. I have the most full-featured, expensive version, called Ultimate. Most people will purchase a computer with Home Premium or Home Basic installed, or purchase upgrades to those versions.
My impressions so far are as follows. If you’re planning to upgrade your current system from XP to Vista (no other upgrade is possible) take very, very seriously the Vista hardware requirements, or you’ll be disappointed. Vista grabs and uses tremendous amounts of RAM and CPU resources, so have them to spare. I would recommend a 2+ghz CPU and a minimum of 1GB of RAM. 2 GB of RAM is much better. My Creative sound card isn’t fully supported yet, so I don’t get all its features (I’m using Beta drivers). Vista included drivers for most of the rest of my hardware. I didn’t have to install my Epson printer, or my Nvidia card, or my LAN card, or anything else.
Vista is a quantum leap from XP in the area of security. System files are protected from damage by a service called VSS, which takes snapshots of how the files are supposed to be built when they are functioning normally, and then rebuilds them if they become corrupt. Many key features are not available in Vista even to Administrators, but only to a special account called “The Administrator” –c’mon guys, you know you want to call it “root”, like in Unix… — anyway, The Administrator is disabled by default. Vista’s version of Internet Explorer 7 (yes, it’s slightly different from the one you can download and install on XP) includes a safety feature called Protected Mode, in which IE7 is isolated from the system in a way that, in theory, prevents malicious software from affecting any user or system files. How effective that feature will be is something only real-world experience will be able to answer. Vista’s version of System Restore uses the VSS feature to rebuild files, so it’s an improved version of XP’s System Restore. In a lab situation, my colleagues and I managed to recover a Vista install in which all files in the Windows and System32 folders had been deleted (by us), using System Restore.
The Aero Glass GUI is impressive and pretty, but a resource hog. Turn it off if your system is slow. Most of the applications I installed worked fine, even a high-end game. So for instance, Firefox 2, Messenger, MS Office 2007 etc. all work fine.
Advice for new users: log in as an Administrator to start with and create a password. Make the password 6-8 alphanumeric characters. Include upper and lowercase letters, symbols, such as !@#$%^&*, and numbers. This creates 92 possible combinations for each character, so the odds of cracking an 8-character password are 928 or 1 in 5132188731375616. Once you’ve done that, create a new Standard user account for yourself. Do not give your account Administrator privileges. You can still carry out Administrator tasks, because you know the Administrator account’s password. Vista will prompt you for it when you try to, for instance, install or uninstall a program. This is a security measure that works very well against things like Trojans, Viruses, Spyware, and Worms, ie. Malware. If you’re the Administrator, and you run a virus, then the virus has your user account’s rights.
In conclusion, I would recommend purchasing a PC that is already labeled “Vista-Ready” or one that actually has Vista in the new year. That creates the fewest possible question marks with respect to hardware. You don’t want to purchase a Vista upgrade and then find that your system isn’t really able to run it. As with any major purchase, careful research is rewarded with a pleasant experience afterwards. Expect most of your hardware and software to work fine. Lock out your Administrator account with a good password, and make your own account a Standard User.
Happy inoffensive secular holidays.