Say Anything Blog

I recently had to call Rob out on his race baiting in an effort to clear up the record a bit. Well, now that the Georgian-Russian conflict is underway, my criticism of Georgian propaganda has been met with comments such as this one from Rodney Graves:

How long have you been a shill for the FSB? Or does it go all the way back to the bad old days of the KGB?

Apparently Randy is out to solidify my case that he’s a propagandist. Again, it’ll be useful to consult the past…

I posted on the fact that Putin has no problem resorting to terrorism. That got minimal comments.

I also posted when we busted one of Putin’s means to facilitate terrorism and he started whining that we shouldn’t be able to extradite the guy. People asked, “What’s the point?”

When a pro-Russian, mafia run state expressed nuclear aspirations, I was critical of that. Nonetheless, Rodney Graves was there to bitch me out for not supporting Lukashenka’s ambitions.

I posted on the first ‘Victory Day’ parade in Russia in 15 years replete with exclamation point to emphasize the date. 2Hotel9 was so out of the loop (stuck in the early 90s apparently) that he insisted the parade occurs every year.

As recently as July, I suggested that Bush is being naive in his relations with the Russians. That one received no comments. Apparently, Bush has just flip-flopped on his initial 'intuitions'.

When I am critical of willingness of some commentators to gobble up propaganda and disseminate it, apparently that amounts to me being on Russia’s side. We hear this rhetorical tactic often from commentators like Rodney Graves and Rob. Unfortunately, the record betrays their willingness to lie for political expediency.

Here.

...the pipeline, though strategically and politically important, is not as big a factor in the conflict that the Georgian government is claiming. President Mikheil Saakashvili would like Western public opinion to believe that this is more than a territorial battle over a disputed region, and hopes that portraying it as a fight to protect valuable oil supplies will attract more sympathy.

In other news, a pipeline has been reopened by BP. And Russia and Georgia are whining to their PR agencies that they aren’t sounding cool enough.

The Brussels PR agency promoting Russia’s side in the dispute with Georgia has been criticised for being part of Russia’s ‘propaganda’ machine.

GPlus has been advising the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation since April 2006. Meanwhile, rival agency Aspect Consulting was hired by Georgia late last year to reach out to Western audiences.

Aspect Consulting founding partner James Hunt told PRWeek: ‘There are agencies that work for Russia but I don’t know how they can be comfortable about that. I feel I’m on the side of the angels.’

You heard it from Georgia’s PR guy! Russia are the propagandists and Georgia are the angels. I guess we’re on the side of angels. Thank goodness. (Barf.)

Turns out some company from the UAE just bought 51% of Poti Port within the last few months.

The Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority (Rakia) continues its foreign investment with both a 51 per cent stake in Georgian harbour Poti Port…

D’oh.

Oh my god! “Mother Russia” is attacking the region where all the oil pipelines are! They are attacking the pipelines.

Local police recorded 51 strikes. “I have no doubt they wanted to target the pipeline, there is nothing else here,” said Giorgi Abrahamisvili, a policeman who witnessed the attack.

Oh my god! Too bad the pipeline isn’t in the area all of you are claiming it is! Moreover, its too bad that the pipeline, apparently hasn’t been damaged by the 50+ strikes the Georgians maintain Russia has perpetrated on it.

BP operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports one per cent of the world’s oil needs, or one million barrels a day from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean. A spokesman played down the impact of the strike, pointing out that pumping was suspended last week because of a terrorist attack in Turkey.

“At the moment the pipeline is not running at any capacity, because there was a fire,” the spokesman said.

Hmmm. As MOFO observes

I’m sorry, but if the Russians had fired over fifty missiles at an oil pipeline, how were they unable to damage it? Are they using rubber missiles now?

BP runs the pipeline and they claim that there has been no attacks on it. Hmmm.

“We’ve seen reports attributed to a Georgian minister saying that the Russians have bombed the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

“We are not aware of that and I think we probably would be if it were true.”

This brings us to a salient question posed by WOOF.

[Do you t]hink the Georgians are above killing Americans to guarantee American support for the obvious lost campaign of illegal aggression they initiated?

Hat tip to MOFO and WOOF for this one.

We have been hearing all about the Democrats and the manner in which they are bringing false accusations of racism into politics.

Perhaps it would be a good point in time to clear up the record a bit, just so we know who isn’t afraid to make bullshit accusations of racism in order to advance their political agenda.

Back in early 2007, yours truly did a post on Doug Feith’s traitorous lying and evidence manufacturing during his tenure in the DoD. I was complaining about Feith’s labeling the manufacture and dissemination of false evidence ‘intelligence criticism’. Apparently the ‘American Conservative’ has come around to my side, along with countless others.

At that point, I was also speaking out against Feith and the activities of one of his underlings, Larry Franklin, who was busted delivering top secret documents to Israeli lobbyists. Those documents revealed US troops vulnerabilities in Iraq and US policy towards Iran as well as various other bits of secret US intel.

Rob was quick to label me an anti-Semite for being critical of these activities.

Don’t be anti-semitic…

Well, turns out that Feith is coming under more and more fire for his traitorous lying and intelligence manufacture. In addition, his underling who I was critical of was sentenced to 12 years in prison for spilling state secrets to the Israelis and probably to Iranian dissidents.

Rob was in top propaganda mode, however. He immediately invoked ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ and labeled me an anti-Semite despite the fact that my concerns were founded in reality.

You’re a hateful bigot, but what’s worse is that you’re a dishonest hateful bigot.

Now, a year and a half later, Rob is impugning the Obama campaign for playing the ‘race card’.

Apparently the Obama campaign thinks we’re all very, very dumb.

No Rob, apparently YOU think we’re all very, very dumb. You, sir, are the one who plays the race card to silence opponents. Even when they are exposing the sort of activities that y'all aren't afraid to go after the NYTimes for.

That’s a particularly rarefied form of hypocrisy if I’ve seen one.

Rob wants to go after others for activities he engages in. Its like Al Gore who wants you to be held to different standards than he holds himself to. Rob and Al have something in common after all.

Who'd a thunk it?

There is no substantial difference this time around. NONE.

Neither party has the balls to stand up to the Fed. Neither one. They both advocate a top heavy government. Are you interested in your ability to self determine? Get after it. On a state level, on a local level, on your block or road.

Look what the Fed does to the states, no matter who’s in charge. They take their money. They earn interest on it, waste it, give it to their buddies. Then they give back some to the state. Maybe a given state will get back more than they lent out, maybe not. And the money they give back is not the money they took. Its loan money… taken out in the name of the people who they claim to be returning it to. States who are fiscally irresponsible tend to get more back - look what we reward. Seriously. BOTH PARTIES DO THIS. Not just the other guys. YOUR PARTY DOES THIS.

I’m tired about the melodrama that centers on the two egotistical people running for president. Neither of them deserves to be president and neither of their individual personalities or traits makes a shit bit of difference in the long run. They both want your power, your money, and your future. Its the big parties. They have to be fractured, broken up. But no, dissent is evil. Alternative opinions are unpatriotic. We’ve heard it all and its all useless bullshit.

The Republicans like to claim this is not the case with them. It’s a blatant lie. The Dems tout it and pretend about other things…

I’m tired of it.

I like variety. I like fiscal responsibility. I like dissent. I like individual rights. I like debate. All these things used to be the cornerstones of this country.

Not any more. Alas.

They fool you into thinking you have one of two choices. And you let yourself be fooled. For shame.

Here.

If Sen. McCain feels that I can help his candidacy…I will do it.

And frankly, I’m going to go to a partisan convention and tell them — if I go — why it’s so important that we start to act like Americans and not as partisan mud-slingers.

“If the principle were to prevail of a common law [i.e., a single government] being in force in the United States . . . it would become the most corrupt government on earth.”

Thomas Jefferson

See here.

The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it. Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute.

The product contained essentially pure spores. The particle size was 1.5 to 3 microns in diameter. There are several methods used to produce anthrax that small. But most of them require milling the spores to a size small enough that it can be inhaled into the lower reaches of the lungs. In this case, however, the anthrax spores were not milled.

According to a FBI news release from November 2001, the particles were coated by a “product not seen previously to be used in this fashion before.” Apparently, the spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. That’s what was briefed (according to one of my former weapons inspectors at the United Nations Special Commission) by the FBI to the German Foreign Ministry at the time.

Another FBI leak indicated that each particle was given a weak electric charge, thereby causing the particles to repel each other at the molecular level. This made it easier for the spores to float in the air, and increased their retention in the lungs.

In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as “according to the Russian recipes”—apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.

The FBI has not officially released information on why it focused on Ivins, and whether he was about to be charged or arrested. And when the FBI does release this information, we should all remember that the case needs to be firmly based on solid information that would conclusively prove that a lone scientist could make such a sophisticated product.

From what we know so far, Bruce Ivins, although potentially a brilliant scientist, was not that man. The multiple disciplines and technologies required to make the anthrax in this case do not exist at Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Inhalation studies are conducted at the institute, but they are done using liquid preparations, not powdered products.

The FBI spent between 12 and 18 months trying “to reverse engineer” (make a replica of) the anthrax in the letters sent to Messrs. Daschle and Leahy without success, according to FBI news releases. So why should federal investigators or the news media or the American public believe that a lone scientist would be able to do so?

Here.

Former colleagues of Bruce Ivins, the man blamed for the 2001 anthrax attacks, accused federal agents Wednesday of hounding the government researcher and his family to the point where Ivins took his own life.

A source with knowledge of the case told CNN that federal agents searched Ivins’ home in Frederick, Maryland, and questioned his children. They offered Ivins’ 24-year-old son the $2.5 million reward for information about his father and showed his twin sister pictures of the anthrax victims, telling her, “Your father did this,” the source said.

Ivins’ former colleague, Jeffrey Adamovicz, said Ivins gave him a similar account of events.

“One of the statements that he relayed to me—that his children were, in fact, told by FBI agents that were doing the interview that their father was a murderer,” said Adamovicz. “And that I could tell greatly disturbed Bruce, as it would anybody.”

But federal agents, who presented evidence Wednesday they said implicates Ivins as the lone culprit, defended their tactics and denied harassing the family.

CNN’s source with knowledge of the investigation said Ivins was a recovering alcoholic whose concern over the investigation led him to resume drinking this year. And though FBI officials deny harassing Ivins or his family, another researcher who got caught up in the investigation—only to be exonerated—described having been subjected to similar tactics.

“My girlfriend’s home was also searched,” said Steven Hatfill in July 2002 after being declared a “person of interest” in the case.

“She was manhandled by the FBI upon their entry [and] not immediately shown the search warrant. Her apartment was wrecked while FBI agents screamed at her that I had killed five people and that her life would never be the same again. She was terrified by their conduct; put into isolation for interrogation for eight hours,” he said.

Federal officials did not respond to those claims, but they did settle with Hatfill two months ago for nearly $6 million.

In a written statement, Ivins’ attorneys dismissed Wednesday’s news conference in which a federal prosecutor declared Ivins the sole perpetrator.

“What the public demanded today was concrete evidence,” said lawyers Paul F. Kemp and Thomas M. DeGonia. “Instead, it was deluged with everything but ... The government’s press conference was an orchestrated dance of carefully worded statements, heaps of innuendo and a staggering lack of real evidence—all contorted to create the illusion of guilt by Dr. Ivins.”

They said hundreds of soldiers, scientists and family members showed up Wednesday to attend a memorial service for Ivins held at Fort Detrick.

“Dr. Ivins was characterized by his commanding officer for his ‘openness, sharing, humor and curiosity’ and was lauded for the central role he has played in the protection of the American soldier,” his lawyers said in their statement. “No one who attended that service could believe that Dr. Ivins committed any crime.”

Peter Hotez, chairman of microbiology at George Washington University, rejected the government’s contention that Ivins’ access to a sophisticated lab device called a lyophilizer—used to dry anthrax—was in any way damning.
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And Richard Spertzel, a former colleague of Ivins at Fort Detrick, said there was “no way” a lyophilizer could have created the fine anthrax spores used in the 2001 letters.

In addition, Spertzel said, no one working at a U.S. government lab could have produced such high quality anthrax in secret.

Wow. This stuff appalls me.

A recent conference on illegal gun trafficking has put Vermont, along with the mayor of the state’s largest city, back in the crosshairs of an ongoing debate in New England.

The debate centers on this basic premise: Do Vermont’s lax gun laws contribute to crimes in other cities by encouraging illegal gun trafficking? According to top law enforcement officials, the answer is no.

Despite that answer, a local mayor is showing a greater allegiance to out-of-state innuendo.

Boston has gone so far as to put up billboards along Interstate 93 laying the blame for illegal gun crimes squarely on Vermont’s doorstep.

For no reason other than emotional blackmail, with no data. If I was from Mass... nevermind. I can't even imagine what that counterfactual would be like. Now, the local Vermont Mayor, Kiss, offers:

“The fact that I signed onto the gun statement, at minimum, was a vote of solidarity with the mayors of much bigger cities, and to recognize that there is a problem,” said Kiss. “While things might not be terrible here, they are more serious in other places.”

Kiss said he is not sure that Burlington has a problem with illegal gun trafficking, but said several recent deaths in the city involving guns concern him, and he wants to be sure the city is going all it can to protect its citizens from gun violence.

For his part, Kiss believes that Vermont lawmakers should discuss whether to enact laws that would require waiting periods to purchase guns, require guns to be sold with child safety locks, as well as require guns to be locked away from children. He also thinks there may need to be a limit, per month, on the number of guns purchased by one person.

He also argues that Vermont lawmakers should discuss whether it should tighten up its laws around the sale of guns, and require background checks and waiting periods for all sales, not just those from licensed dealers, but also among private sales and gun shows. He doesn’t see that as an undo restriction to owning a gun, or deterring law-abiding citizens from buying guns, but it might deter people who buy them to sell for drugs, or to use for crimes.

“Why shouldn’t we enact these things? These are all based on responsible gun ownership and they have a real potential to improve public safety and we ought to at least seriously talk about them. I don’t have all the answers, but I think it’s good to have these discussions,” said Kiss.

However, the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen believes Kiss is buying into a false argument.

Oh my god, Vermonters have an opinion on this! Their own state laws!

“For all this hoopla, I have to ask what’s it all about? We don’t have a problem here, and there is no empirical data that I can locate that we’re creating a problem in Boston or New York. It’s more political posturing than anything else,” said Evan Hughes of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen. “If I had a crime problem and I didn’t want to deal with it myself I would try to blame someone else, too.”

The kicker is that Kiss is suckered into feeling guilty by these bogus accusations.

About half of Vermonters own a gun.

Hughes said Kiss should not rely on conjecture from other mayors, but facts.

“For him to continue doing this when the facts do not represent his position is irresponsible and inexcusable,” said Hughes. “He is smearing this great state.”

Clearly, now lets see what the fed has to say. (Shudder.)

Federal officials say the most common illegal gun purchase in Vermont is the “straw purchase.” This is when someone buys a gun, knowing they are going to immediately turn over the gun to another person. In most cases, those guns are traded for drugs. The guns are then taken back to the drug dealer’s city of origin and either sold for an additional profit, or used in a crime.

More innuendo. No data.

“A $200 to $300 weapon here is worth five times that in New York City or DC,” said Darren Gil of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

So what? (Cringe.)

In fact, a 2000 ATF report on gun trafficking in Boston shows that Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine are not the major sources of illegal guns. Instead, it is Alabama, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida that are the main sources. Nearly half of the illegal guns used in crimes in Boston in 2000 came from Massachusetts.

“We have not heard of Vermont being a source state for us,” said Virginia Lam, deputy press secretary for Bloomberg. Instead, said Lam, the majority of guns coming into New York are from the so-called Iron Pipeline, or the I-95 corridor in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Mayor Kiss? Care to comment?

This January, Bloomberg hopes to bring as many of the 122 mayors together in Washington, said Lam, to build momentum to call on Congress to make some changes to federal law. And, she stressed, any legislation the coalition is focusing on right now is aimed at allowing ATF and local officials to share more information about the illegal guns used in crimes.

I know this is old news, but if your mayor partakes in this sorts of activities, i.e. emotional innuendo and fallacy, and meets with and supports Bloomberg’s little group… you just might want to write him a letter. Luckily the area of Vermont I hail from isn’t quite as densely populated as Burlington. Kiss off, Mayor Kiss. If you wish to be a mayor elsewhere, GO DO IT.

Care of PBS.

GWEN IFILL: Senator Graham, are there elements in this report, which are classified that Americans should know about but can’t?

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: Yes, going back to your question about what was the greatest surprise. I agree with what Senator Shelby said the degree to which agencies were not communicating was certainly a surprise but also I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States.

I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar support and, even more important, if the infrastructure of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exists for the current generation of terrorists who are here planning the next plots.

To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified. I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement. That would motivate the government to take action.

GWEN IFILL: Are you suggesting that you are convinced that there was a state sponsor behind 9/11?

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing—although that was part of it—by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down, make the further case, or find the evidence that would indicate that that is not true and we can look for other reasons why the terrorists were able to function so effectively in the United States.

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that will ever become public, which countries you’re talking about?

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: It will become public at some point when it’s turned over to the archives, but that’s 20 or 30 years from now. And, we need to have this information now because it’s relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today.

A little lacuna I thought I’d throw out there. Would you like to know what sovereign state he refers to? I would.

The Rutland Herald has it:

Vermont’s senior U.S. senator has some blunt advice for a South Florida congressman: “He should pick on someone his own size.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., leveled his criticism Wednesday at Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., who has expressed serious reservations about a combined Vermont/New Hampshire youth baseball trip to Cuba next week.

Leahy said in a statement that Diaz-Balart should leave the kids alone.

“I don’t like the idea of the government telling ordinary Americans, let alone Little Leaguers, where and when they can travel,” Leahy said. “If the president can go to China at taxpayers’ expense, these kids ought to be able to go on a privately paid trip to Cuba to play some baseball.”

Diaz-Balart, a staunch anti-Castro Cuban-American, convened a meeting of the Cuba Democracy Caucus on July 10 to discuss the trip, according to a column in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

The all-star team of 11- and 12-year-olds from the Connecticut Valley South Little League is scheduled to travel to Cuba for 10 days starting Aug. 8 for a series of games with their Cuban counterparts.

Travel to Cuba by Americans without the express permission of the U.S. government is forbidden — a travel and trade embargo that’s been in effect for nearly 50 years since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 and installed a communist regime.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a travel license for the 14 players and their coaches in late March. The license allows the team to spend U.S. dollars in Cuba.

In his invitation to the Cuba Democracy Caucus, Diaz-Balart said the meeting would be attended by officials from the Treasury and State departments. The subject of the meeting was “… the very troubling granting of a Treasury/OFAC license to a Little League team to travel to Cuba in August,” reported Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, quoting the e-mail.

Diaz-Balart and other supporters of the travel ban argue that it denies hard currency to a repressive regime.

Treasury Department spokesman Andrew DeSouza on Wednesday would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the travel license, saying licenses are protected by the Trade Secrets Act.

Because the trip is not sanctioned by Little League International in Williamsport, Pa., the team is playing in Cuba as the Twin State Peregrines.

Leahy went on to say that there are far more important issues facing the country than taking issue with a group of youngsters playing baseball in Cuba. He also pointed out that the Bush Treasury Department didn’t think there was a problem.

“The fact that the Bush Administration, which tries to make travel to Cuba nearly impossible, decided it had no basis to deny the team’s request shows how far off-base these critics are,” Leahy said.

Dubie, a Republican who has gone on two trade missions to Cuba as lieutenant governor, supports the trip as a way to foster goodwill between the countries.

“I believe it will lead to a better and more secure world and I believe it’s through grass-roots connections of people-to-people and baseball teams playing one another that we expand our understanding and that’s consistent with the objectives of our initial trips to Cuba,” Dubie said in a June interview.

Messages left Wednesday for Diaz-Balart were not returned.

Preventing Little Leaguers from playing baseball in Cuba? Does that warrant all this political posturing? I think its a waste of time and its pathetic. Clearly these kids have gone through the proper channels and will be representing our country well in Cuba. Hopefully they can kick butt in Cuba, have a good time, and bring home a trophy!

EDIT: Sports Illustrated covered it here.

It's a trip few youth teams have taken since the U.S. trade embargo began in 1961. "There's this mysteriousness because [Cuba is] Communist," says Ted Levin, a Peregrines coach. "Yet we have baseball in common. I think our kids can connect with their kids, regardless of what our governments are thinking."

"I've always wanted to play people in a different country," says second baseman Andrew Cawley, 12, of East Corinth, Vt. "I just know they love baseball there."

See here.
He was an Army guy. No evidence has been presented at all, to congress or to anyone. Merely innuendo. And now he has gone and Vince Fostered himself. Sure. I wouldn’t buy it with a wooden nickel. He worked at Fort Detrick. Apparently, that’s a popular place to work for people who purportedly commit suicide.