92.7 and 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas. Or stream it live here.

Miss Shauna Kaye will be there too.

Our leader, George W. Bush, in an October 30th interview conducted by the heroic Sean Hannity, has again defined Evil for us in the simplest terms, so that we will understand why our government is the exact opposite – Good – in our “generational struggle” with the Terrorists:

“Evil people kill innocent life to achieve political objectives.”

Got that?

Video here – the beginning of part 3.

Thomas R. Pochari, editor of World Affairs Monthly interviews Antiwar.com founder and managing director Eric Garris about the web, the universe and everything.

Real Audio file here.

It was 13 years ago today that the New York Times revealed how easy it would have been for the Feds to have stopped that bombing before it started:

Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast
Thursday October 28, 1993

By Ralph Blumenthal
Page A1

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be use, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manattan Federal Court in that attack.

Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian army officer, was used by the Government to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists now charged in two bombing cases: the World Trade Center attack and a foiled plot to destroy the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for months before the trade center blast, he was feuding with the F.B.I.

Supervisor ‘Messed It Up’

After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period, Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent about an unnamed F.B.I.. supervisor who, he said, “came and messed it up.”

“He requested to meet me in the hotel,” Mr. Salem says of the supervisor. “He requested to make me testify and if he didn’t push for that, we’ll be going building the bomb with a phony powder and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But since you, we didn’t do that.”

The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. headquarters in Washington about the bureau’s failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev.

“He said, I don’t think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York office to go to Washington, D.C.” Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him.

Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem’s account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the New York people: “Well, of course not, because they don’t want to get their butts chewed.”

Mary Jo White, who as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is prosecuting defendants in two related bombing cases, declined yesterday to comment on the Salem allegations or any other aspect of the cases. An investigator close to the case who refused to be identified furher said, “We wish he would have saved the world,” but called Mr. Salem’s claims “figments of his imagination.”

The transcripts, which are stamped “draft” and compiled from 70 tapes recorded secretly during the last two years by Mr. Salem, were turned over to defense lawyers in the second bombing case by the Government on Tuesday under a judge’s order barring lawyers from disseminating them. A large portion of the material was made available to The New York Times.

In a letter to Federal Judge Michael B. Mukasey, Andrew C. McCarthy, an assistant United States attorney, said that he had learned of the tapes while debriefing Mr. Salem and that the informer had then voluntarily turned them over. Other Salem tapes and transcripts were being withheld pending Government review, of “security and other issues,” Mr. McCarthy said.

William M. Kunstler, a defense lawyer in the case, accused the Government this week of improper delay in handing over all the material. The transcripts he had seen, he said, “were filled with all sorts of Government misconduct.” But citing the judge’s order, he said he could not provide any details.

The transcripts do not make clear the extent to which Federal authorities knew that there was a pan to bomb the World Trade Center, merely that they knew that a bombing of some sort was being discussed. But Mr. Salem’s evident anguish at not being able to thwart the trade center blast is a recurrent theme in the transcripts. In one of the first numbered tapes, Mr. Salem is quoted as telling agent Floyd: “Since the bomb went off I feel terrible. I feel bad. I feel here is people who don’t listen.”

Ms. Floyd seems to commiserate, saying, “hey, I mean it wasn’t like you didn’t tray and I didn’t try.”

In an apparent reference to Mr. Salem’s complaints about the supervisor, Agent Floyd adds, “You can’t force people to do the right thing.”

The investigator involved in the case who would not be quoted by name said that Mr. Salem may have been led to believe by the agents that they were blameless for any mistakes. It was a classic agent’s tactic, he said, to “blame the boss for all that’s bad and take credit for all the good things.”

In another point in the transcripts, Mr. Salem recounts a conversation he said he had with Mr. Anticev, saying, “I said, ‘Guys, now you saw this bomb went off and you both know that we could avoid that.’” At another point, Mr. Salem says, “You get paid, guys, to prevent problems like this from happening.”

Mr. Salem talks of the plan to substitute harmless powder for explosives during another conversation with agent Floyd. In that conversation, he recalls a previous discussion with Mr. Anticev. “Do you deny,” Mr. Salem says he told the other agent, “your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center?” Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev did not deny it. “We was handling the case perfectly well until the supervisor came and messed it up, upside down.”

The transcripts reflect an effort to keep Mr. Salem as an intelligence asset who would not have to go public or testify. A police detective working with the F.B.I., Louis Napoli, assures Mr. Salem in one conversation “We can give you total immunity towards prosecution, towards, ah, ah, testifying.” But he adds: “I still have to tell you that if you’re the only game in town in regards to the information,” then, he says, “you’ll have to testify.”

Studied for Signs of Illegality

The transcripts are being closely studied by lawyers looking for signs that Mr. Salem and the law enforcement officials, in their zeal to gather evidence, may have crossed the legal line into entrapment, a charge that defense counsel have already raised.

But the transcripts show that the officials were concerned that by associating with bombing defendants awaiting trial in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Mr. Salem might have been accused of spying on the defense.

In an undated conversation, Mr. Anticev tries to explain the perils.

“We’re not allowed to have any information regarding that,” he tells Mr. Salem. “That could jeopardize, you know, if you go to see a lawyer, ah, you know, the the defendant’s friend or whatever like that, and you’re talking about things we’re not suppose to, ah, condone that. We’re not supposed to make people do that for us. That’s like sacred ground. You can’t be priveleged, ah, you can’t know what’s being talked about at all.”

Mr. Salem seems to bridle. “I, I, I don’t think that’s right,” he says.

The agent insists: “Yeah, but that’s just a guideline. If that ever happened, ah, you can back and reported on the meeting between, ah, you know, Kunstler and Mohammed A. Elgabrown. Forget about it. I mean a lot of people ah the case can get thrown out. You understand?” The references were to the defense lawyer, Mr. Kunstler, and his client in the second bomb case, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny.

Mr. Salem seems to reluctantly agree.

“They want you to have a hand in it,” Mr. Anticev goes on, “But they’re afraid that when you get that kind of, ah, too deep, like me, it’s almost like, especially with all this legal stuff going on right now.”

If it were just intelligence gathering, the agent says, “You can do anything you want. You could go crazy over there and have a good time. Do you know what I mean?”

The agent goes on: “But now that everything is going to court and there is legal stuff and it’s just, it’s just too hard. It’s just too tricky, if, this, you know. And then there’s the fact if you come by with the big information, he did this, ah, let me talk about this with the other people again.”

“O.K,” Mr. Salem says. “All right. O.K.”

———————————–

For the full story, see 1,000 Years for Revenge by Peter Lance.

Update: See also James Bovard.

Update: Salem’s audio of his conversation with John Anticev.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.0MB)

That

Video here.

Poor old George Bush Jr. He’s got nothing left but straw men and circular logic to keep American soldiers in Iraq.

First he implies that his critics believe the “sophisticated propaganda” of the enemy terrorists that “our” presence is the cause of all Iraq’s problems – a case I’ve never heard made by anyone, American or otherwise.

Then he breaks out the trusty old sunk-cost routine:

“I’ve met too many wives and husbands who’ve lost their partner in life, too many children who’ll never see their mom or dad again. I owe it to them and to the families who still have loved ones in harm’s way, to ensure that their sacrifices are not in vain.”

Highfalutin emotional rhetoric aside, you don’t have to be David Henderson to see the mistake in the Great Decider’s reasoning. From the Skeptics Dictionary:

“When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can

Lukery explains.

95.9 and 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas.

Stream it live here.

mp3 here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.3KB)

Today (24/10/06) Firefox 2.0 will be released. One recent study shows that Firefox has taken considerable market share away from the dominant product in the field, Microsoft Internet Explorer, which was recently updated to version 7.0. Let’s take a brief look back at the history of Firefox.

In the mid-1990s, the dominant web browser was Netscape. Microsoft released its Internet Explorer (MSIE) with Windows 95, and quickly destroyed Netscape’s market share, for two reasons; one, MSIE came packaged as part of the WIndows operating system, and was the default browser for Windows users.; two, MSIE was far superior in terms of compatibility with the advanced web code of that era.

In 1998, Netscape released its source code under an open source license — its final gesture before being disbanded by AOL, which had acquired it: . The Mozilla Foundation was formed to develop a new Internet suite based on the code. The organization had named itself after Netscape’s internal mascot, “Mosaic killa”. Although Netscape indeed killed its predecessor, Mosaic, MSIE killed Netscape.

The massive Mozilla browser/email app has been around almost ever since. I first used it about 5 years ago. One of the most interesting and useful aspects of open source software is when a group gets together and develops a new program from an existing program’s code. The process is known as a “fork”. The most famous software fork in history began a few years ago, when Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross decided to develop a small, fast version of Mozilla. They split the email client from the browser. The browser became known as Phoenix (a Phoenix is a fabulous bird, rising from the ashes of its predecessor). Phoenix was renamed because of copyright issues to Firebird, a synonym. The email client was renamed Thunderbird. There was, however, a program already named Firebird, so the Mozilla Project renamed the browser again, this time to Firefox (I suppose there were no copyright issues this time).

On November 9, 2004, after years of devlopment, Firefox 1.0 was released. What goes around, comes around. As superior as MSIE was to Netscape, Firefox was that much better than MSIE. It’s astonishing to me that this browser, which does not come shipped as an integral part of Windows (MSIE cannot be removed from Windows), has managed to grab as much as 20% of the market share, after years of total dominance by MSIE. Firefox has spread like a virus. Ironically, Firefox has become the basis of numerous forks, such as Flock, Songbird, Swiftfox, Iceweasel et al.

For those of you who choose to use MSIE, I beg you to at least upgrade to 7.0. For those who don’t know what they’re using, and couldn’t care less, to Hell with you (just kidding, follow Windows Update’s instructions).

Blogged with Flock

Allow me this shameful self-promotion but the Liberated Space is returning the first week of December. Email me if you want to be on the mailing list.

For those not familiar with my work, the archive is on my site. For the new season, however, I will be ripping off Scott’s old guest lists so the focus will be more on foreign policy than my old show. Since Stress Blog readers are among the smartest readers, please bring your guest suggestions to the new Yahoo group.

I’ve added a new bbPress forums installation, which should integrate well with WordPress at large. Your username/password should work for both sites, and the sites should use the same cookies. In other words, you’re logged into both sites at once. Go ahead and post links, opinions, whatever. I’ll fork the popular topics off into their own sub-forums over time. I’ll also be posting a permalink in the sidebar somewhere. Until then, here it is:
Stress Forums

Intrepid Washington reporter Robert Dreyfuss interviews Salah Mukhtar, who is “close” to the Iraq opposition. It’s clearly as bad or worse than you think.

Our choices seem to be:

1. Stay the course, installing the dictatorship of the Iran parties,
2. Switch sides back to Saddam’s Ba’athists,
3. Break the former country into three, “hardening” the soft regional borders (and leaving many stuck on the “wrong” side of them), or
4. Get out now and leave no more guilty than at present.

It has been three and a half years of this Tom Palmer-style, “we can’t leave until we make everything better” strategy, and everything has only gotten worse. It is for the people of that land to determine their future.

As for the pro-American quislings there, it is only fair that the government provide them all entry to the most pro-war American states. Or better, the houses of the War Party‘s highest members.

No more bullshit. This war, which America had no right to wage in the first place, is lost – has been lost.

All U.S. forces out of Iraq now!

Reading David Henderson is a pretty good idea.

Lukery has transcribed this interview of American Hero Daniel Ellsberg. From WotIsItGoodFor.com:

“Daniel Ellsberg said that Dennis Hastert received suitcases of cash at his home from Turkish heroin money and that Hastert should be in jail, along with his friends.

He also says that people in the State Department, and in nuclear labs, are paid in ‘cold cash’ for secrets that are sold on the nuclear black market.

He also says that a Dem Congress “could be pressed into holding genuine investigations of the torture, of the corruption, getting rid of Hastert, and starting impeachment proceedings.”

All errors are mine, some snippage, usual disclaimers, etc.

———————————

Kris Welch: I know you just met with Sibel Edmonds – what’s the key thing about Sibel Edmonds’ case?

Daniel Ellsberg: For several years, Sibel has been really hoping to get her case into a court, or into a hearing room in Congress. That’s pretty well impossible with Republicans in charge of hearings – they won’t hold any. She has told her story on a classified basis to several congressional venues, plus the 911 Commission – none of whom have done anything with it so far – it’s too hot for them, essentially. You get a pretty good clue as to why the congressional people haven’t pressed it in the article about her in the current Vanity Fair issue. Sibel is not yet in a position to tell all, but has been telling more and more.

Let me suggest two interviews with her that have come out since the VF article that go a good deal further than VF chose to print. VF did print ten pages and they got a lot but there was a lot that the reporter had, David Rose, that didn’t get into the article, and a lot of that is in these two other interviews – both at antiwar.com, Chris Deliso and Scott Horton. In those interviews she finally reveals more of what she wished that VF had put out. Namely, if I can summarize it quickly, Al Qaeda, she’s been saying to congress, according to these interviews, is financed 95% by drug money – drug traffic to which the US government shows a blind eye, has been ignoring, because it very heavily involves allies and assets of ours – such as Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan – all the ‘Stans – in a drug traffic where the opium originates in Afghanistan, is processed in Turkey, and delivered to Europe where it furnishes 96% of Europe’s heroin, by Albanians, either in Albania or Kosovo – Albanian Muslims in Kosovo – basically the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army which we backed heavily in that episode at the end of the century.

It was known at the time that the KLA consisted largely of drug-dealers, and they still do. They’re dominating the politics, pretty much, of Kosovo right now. Now, all of these people are, for various reasons, allies, or clients, of the US – and the fact that they get a large amount of their income from the heroin trade is something the US just regards as the price of doing business with them. That means that not only is the heroin coming into our markets where it furnishes, according to Sibel based on her FBI experience, some 14% of our heroin – up from 4% before the invasion of Afghanistan.

The major effect of that is that terrorist gangs are taking a cut of this, including Al Qaeda, which essentially taxes this traffic as it goes through the various lands where each ‘band’ pays a percentage as they hand it off. In other words, the US is in effect, endorsing – well, ‘endorsing’ is too strong a word – ‘permitting’, definitely permitting, or ‘not acting against,’ a heroin trade – which not only corrupts our cities and our city politics, AND our congress, as Sibel makes very specific – but is financing the terrorist organization that constitutes a genuine threat to us. And this seems to be a fact that is accepted by our top leaders, according to Sibel, for various geopolitical reasons, and for corrupt reasons as well. Sometimes things are simpler than they might appear – and they involve envelopes of cash. Sibel says that suitcases of cash have been delivered to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, at his home, near Chicago, from Turkish sources, knowing that a lot of that is drug money.

Now these are pretty inflammatory allegations, let’s say, and it’s note-worthy that they haven’t even been picked up by the mainstream press. The Vanity Fair article made that plain, though not in as much detail as the antiwar.com interviews – but not one major newspaper I don’t think has picked up her allegations against Hastert which are very specific, and one would think very important.

Kris Welch: Dennis Hastert’s name is mentioned in the Vanity Fair article issue…

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes – but in another connection – namely that he sold a legislative move of removing from a vote a resolution that he had earlier backed, raising the price, of course, of removing it – condemning Turkish genocide of Armenians.

And for the first time, a legislative leader (Hastert) had backed such a resolution which meant that it went through the committee for the first time, and was headed for a vote – in order to help a Republican in Glendale, near Los Angeles, James Rogan, who had a large Armenian constituency. So all things were moving ahead, at last, after many years of them trying to do this, and at the last moment, Hastert removed it from the vote, removed it from the calendar – and according to the information claimed by Sibel, Turkish sources were claiming to have achieved this for a price of half a million dollars – paid to Hastert. Again, this would seem a story that… certainly the Armenians are picking it up, as they should.

Kris Welch: Well, and the Turks in Turkey are now attacking Sibel Edmonds

Daniel Ellsberg: Sibel is an ‘enemy of Turkey’ – she was a Turkish citizen, now an American, but she has some family in Turkey who are now threatened by this exposure. Her picture was on the front-page of every Turkish newspaper – denouncing her as a ‘whore,’ as a ‘traitor’ and a turncoat of various kinds and she’s had many threatening letters, including death threats. So it’s a very serious situation for her, and the contrast between the news in Turkey, and the silence in America about allegations about Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, is quite a contrast.

Kris Welch: And, of course, she complains in the antiwar.com interviews that the VF article chose to focus on this Armenian story – which is not the story – and that’s her problem. She says when the media does do anything about her story, they focus on ‘oh – here’s this poor whistleblower’ instead of focusing on what the facts of her whistleblowing might be.

Daniel Ellsberg: Well, I think it’s true that – as my friend and mentor Peter Dale Scott has said to me over the last 20 years or more – the American media maintain an almost unbroken silence on the connection between US policy and the drug trade, specifically the CIA and the drug trade. The silence is broken, typically, only to dismiss it, only to say ‘No – there’s nothing to this.’ The 911 Commission, for instance, as Peter pointed out to me, went out of it’s way simply to say that there was no connection between 911 and drug connections at all. Now, according to Sibel, that’s absolutely wrong – that the connections through Turkey, in various ways, are very important.

Kris Welch: OK – and Sibel got this information because she applied for this after 911, wanting to do something real for her American patriotism – this is what she says she was motivated by…

Daniel Ellsberg: She is very patriotic…

Kris Welch: And these wiretaps that she translated went back to 1997… so she heard all these conversations, people bragging that they’d given this money

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes – these were people from the American Turkish Council – which is a quote ‘lobbying group’ – or as she has described it up till now, as a ‘semi-legitimate organization’

Kris Welch: And Brent Scowcroft is on the board of directors?

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes. Brent Scowcroft is the head of board of directors – every member of the military industrial complex – Lockheed, Raytheon – everybody who does business with Turkey is a member of this group. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they know… well, there’s a great deal of arms trading…

Kris Welch: and that’s where a lot of this money comes from too..

Daniel Ellsberg: and a lot of that is as legitimate as arms trading ever is – as merchants of death – but it’s a legal trade, perhaps unfortunately – but aside from that, there’s a great deal of dealing of information in illicit arms trades including, she says, nuclear information, from our nuclear weapons labs – for which cold cash is paid – to people in the labs, and to people, she says, to people in the State Department – who have essentially given ‘OKs’ for various trades, or have turned a blind eye – deliberately – to it. So there are messages in these wiretaps about people getting thousands of dollars – this is small potatoes – but in the State Department they come cheap apparently!

Kris Welch: As Sibel says, the State Department is the most corrupt element of our government

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes – and that’s an amazing statement (laughs) when you consider the competition. I myself was amazed to hear that, and I told her that, because my sense of foreign service officers, and the State Department in general, was that they had many flaws, and many limitations, but I would have said that corruption was not part of that…

Kris Welch: And relatively speaking, they’re “the good guys” with the recent foreign policy

Daniel Ellsberg: Well, it depends who’s in charge. Under Powell, to a degree, they were sidelined, they had essentially no influence. But when they’re ‘good’…

Kris Welch: …They’re impotent

Daniel Ellsberg: Good children are meant to be seen not heard!

But Sibel said, very flatly, and she’s extremely credible to me, she said ‘That’s just flatly wrong. People in the State Department take cash.’ Now, since she’s a person who has been checked out a good deal by some of the senators she’s talked to – Senator Leahy, Senator Grassley, Republican, they have always said, repeatedly, that she’s extremely credible. The FBI agents we’ve talked to have, in every respect that was raised, have confirmed her story – that she’s a very credible witness. Representative Waxman, to whose staff she’s spoken has said the same. So she is very credible. That’s a fact. So when she says things like this, they do deserve to get picked up and followed up, and they are not being.

Kris Welch: Well, and her credibility might have something to do with the fact that she has been completely silenced, she says the most gagged person in history, by this very little used States Secrets privilege

[SNIP – for 20 minutes Ellsberg discusses martial law & the shredding of the constitution, ‘the next 911, the Reichstag fire’)

Daniel Ellsberg: It’s very important to get the Republicans out before the next 911 – there’s one process for doing that. I think the stuff that Sibel Edmonds is talking about – it’s absolutely appropriate to get rid of Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House and put him in jail, actually, and to lose him his job, and some other people.

If people will press their congress representatives – and I suppose Armenian people are already doing this, because they were directly stabbed by Hastert on this point – but the whole country, of course, needs to be concerned about Dennis Hastert. I will believe Sibel on this – that he is guilty – well, let me put it this way, he’s innocent till proven guilty. I believe he has earned the right to a fair trial – probably several fair trials! And I hope he really gets them – along with Rove – he’s another person who seems to have earned the right to a fair trial, as have Scooter Libby and others.

That will hamstring the administration, but not get us out of Iraq. I would hope that the scandal the Republicans have earned in this, if it can be pursued, would get us what otherwise seemed impossible, a Democratic congress, a Democratic House which can impeach. The only way to impeach Bush is to get a Democratic House in 2006 – and just putting Democrats alone in, of course, doesn’t get us out of Iraq. Putting John Kerry in, I don’t think, would have got us out of Iraq. We definitely need a new bunch of Democrats in there – and new leaders. I’m very pleased to see Feingold, the one senator who had the guts to vote against the PATRIOT Act – just as Barbara Lee was the one person in congress to vote against the original delegation of power to the president after 911. One person in each case, like Cindy Sheehan, one person can start something – Feingold is my candidate right now to lead on this. But that’s looking forward to 2008.

In 2006, we really do need to get Democrats because venal, and cowardly, and lazy, as they may be, they are people who could be pressed into holding genuine investigations of the torture, of the corruption, getting rid of Hastert, and starting impeachment proceedings. I think they’re partisan enough to follow the voters and do what the voters want – and voters would say either ‘Fire these guys, like Hastert, and the President, or we fire you’ – and that, as they say on Capitol Hill, they may not see the light, but they’ll feel the heat.
———————————

update: if you are interested in Sibel Edmonds’ case, there’s a new movie about her. and don’t miss my interview with the director.

Well, since America’s interests and those of Israel cannot possibly be distinguished from each other, I suppose that’s perfectly okay.

Seriously though, read all about it in Time here.