Thuggery to Keep the Press in Line

I cannot work up a great deal of sympathy for a press association that has transgressed against responsible journalism as often as the AP has in the last decade or so.  But count me in the chorus of outrage against the Obama administration's Nixonian netful of subpoenaed records from 20 phone lines of the Associated Press and its editors and reporters.

My outrage is less on behalf of the AP than it is in mortal fear for the First Amendment, for the very notion of free speech, a free press, a free people. Obama and his henchmen have been ruthless in their use of laws of questionable constitutionality to suppress dissent, intimidate news media, squelch responsible whistle-blowing and operate an ever more despotic presidency in utter secrecy.

The secret subpoenas in the AP case affected the work of more than 100 journalists.  No administration in history has attempted such a bald-faced mass intimidation of the press.  Moreover, Obama's hoodlum administration has brought leak-related criminal charges against six present or former government officials -- twice the number of all previous administrations combined,  including Bushes I and II.

You have to go all the way back to the Nixon administration to find precedent for the climate of hostility against good reporting and the public's right to know.  We at the New York Times Washington Bureau who made Tricky Dick's famous "enemies list" considered it to be a badge of honor when it finally became public. Yet as recently as ten years ago, some of us were still feeling repercussions of being named on that list. James Goodale, the great First Amendment lawyer who defended us in the Pentagon Papers case, considers the Obama team to be a far worse threat to press freedom than Nixon was.

At a time when the Obama thugs had already been caught red-handed abusing IRS powers to suppress dissent by the Tea Party and other conservative political groups, an understandably jumpy Attorney General Eric Holder sought to justify the the AP raid by scaring the hell out of  the common folk.  There was, he said, "a very, very, very serious" national security leak which "put the American people at risk."  Bovine excrement of the most hyperbolic sort.

Holder is the very same former Wall Street lawyer whose DOJ refused to even consider criminal cases against his former employers and their bonus-bloated banker pals who almost destroyed the entire American economy.  Probable cause?  R.J. Eskow, a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, suggests these for starters:

    •    Which bankers conspired to rig LIBOR pricing or fix other rates?  
    •    What discussions were held among MERS users about using the database and shell company to conceal the identity of mortgage lien holders or evade local taxes and fees?   
 
    •    What conversations were held between accounting firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and executives at AIG, Goldman Sachs, or other institutions about concealing their true financial status?
 
   •    How frequently was JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in touch with the "London Whale" and his office, and how aware was Dimon of the extent of losses when he told investors the six-billion-dollar blunder was a "tempest in a teapot"? 
   •    When and how did CEOs and other senior bank executives learn of widespread fraud in the foreclosure process at their banks, and to what extent were they accessories after the fact in these crimes?

Holder has no prosecutorial stomach for such cases as these.  But he'll make an example of journalists doing their traditional jobs as a warning shot across the bow of other potential venturers into the deep dark secrets of the Obama White House.

No wonder so many of the mainstream media have shrugged and quit trying to do real journalism.

One Deficit You Can Believe In

While virtually all U.S. politicians excel at hypocrisy, a clutch of right-wing Republicans lead the league.

They're at it again right now, manufacturing another phony "-gate"  over the  Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi, Libya.  Four people were killed, including  U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The point of the GOP slumgullion in Congress is to gain political points among the unsavvy in the electorate and divert attention from important issues where even some of the unsavvy realize that Republicans are on the wrong side.  Background checks for gun purchases, for example.

One irony is that most of the loudest noisemakers about Benghazi voted against increasing funds for embassy security as part of their support for another GOP bogeyman, the so-called "deficit crisis."

But the ultimate hypocrisy is that the bellyachers of today were absolute sphynxes when, during the Bush administration, 98 persons including four members of the diplomatic corps were killed in attacks on 13 American consulates or embassies. What's sauce for the goose today obviously wasn't sauce for the gander yesterday.

A posse of Diogeneses would find it difficult today to put the finger on a single member of Congress who is not a hypocrite, a liar, a cheat, a crook, a dissembler, a kakistocrat or a coward.  They'd find plenty who are all of the above.

Congress, a legislature, is supposed to legislate, to pass laws.  The 112th Congress passed only 90 bills into law, the fewest in more than 60 years.  The so-called "do-nothing" Congress of 1947-48 did better than that.  The current batch of geniuses, the 113th, has so far passed only nine bills into law. Seven of them originated in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. None of the seven will appreciably improve the lives of  the Common Man.

Of the two laws that originated in the Senate, one, the Violence Against Women Act, is a landmark victory to protect the rights and human dignity of more than half the population.  Even amid the consensus on this legislation, however, Congress was not absent the taint of hypocrisy.  Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), for example, giddily joined the photo op to applaud Preident Obama when he signed the thing into law.  But he voted against it in the Senate. This is the Janus tactic, long popular in Washington, whereby a pol shows the general public one face but votes quite another way to please the special interests that own him.  President Obama is the ranking master of the tactic.

The other new law that originated in the Senate has less redeeming virtue.  It modified the so-called STOCK Act, a work of the 112th Congress, loudly applauded by Congress and the President as an act to "end the deficit of trust" between Washington and the rest of the country. It was specifically intended to end insider trading by members of Congress based on information to which they were privy only because they were in Congress.  It also required thousands of high government officials to post their stock holdings online.  The new law, passed not in the glare of mass media approval but in stealth just before adjournment for a holiday back home, nullified the latter provision.  More hypocrisy.

"Deficit of trust" indeed.  It's the only believable "deficit" in all of the District of Columbia, and it's grown too enormous to calculate.

* * *

Postscript

The latest Janus tactic: House Republicans have passed and sent to the Senate the "Working Families Flexibility Act.” It gives business owners the flexibility of not paying hourly workers a higher wage for overtime work.

We Have Sold Out "The Vision Thing"

The United States is in a sorry state because it elects leaders who cannot see beyond the next election and whose policies are dictated solely by the profit motive.  They don't consider the consequences of their actions, what's beyond the next bend in the road or over the next hill.  They don't contemplate the lessons of history and so they usually repeat it.

Government by such as these -- what Bush the First contemptuously called "the vision thing" -- offers no hope for digging out of the terrible hole we're in.

In a recent discussion, an engineer friend agreed with my statement that we've got the technology right now to run our vehicles with cleaner engines that don't use fossil fuel.  He shrugged and said, "As soon as they figure out how to make money on them, they'll start making them."  I inferred that he was OK with that .  A preponderance of his fellow Americans share the same attitude.

If you're in Congress, or in the White House, or in a governor's mansion, you know that pandering to the industries stuck in the present, earth-polluting, climate-changing  but obscenely profitable operating systems, and taking their bribes and calling them "campaign contributions," is a sure path to re-election.

And the jobs you're re-elected to are the easiest jobs in the world.  If you're a legislator, you don't need to understand anything about science, education, war, history, finance or social responsibility. You just take the bills ALEC writes, sign your name as a sponsor, and send them to committee as your own. When they reach the floor you vote for them.  If you need extra cash despite all your graft, you telegraph hesitancy to support this or that bill and, presto!, a lobbyist for the special interest involved will appear with a handful of cash for you.

Whether you hold a legislative or elected executive job, you hire spokespeople who wite and talk the same doublespeak  advocated by the likes of Frank Luntz. In this cockamamie dialogue things are what you call them, not what they really are.   It's a world populated by "financial cliffs,"  say, or "sequestration," or "entitlements."  These are all scarecrows, designed to sow fear among the people in order to obscure the ever-growing power of oligarchs and big business over every aspect of their lives. In a smiliar vein, "collateral damage" or "enemy combatants" become the useful euphemisms for the horrors of murder, assasination, torture and endless incarceration that our government commits in our name.

If you're President Obama, your rhetorical flights to neverland mask the import of your policies to serve our real overlords.  You nominate Penny Pritzker, the bankster who funded your rise up the political ladders, to be Secretary of Commerce; Jack Lew, a gofer for the very too-big-to-fail banks that almost destroyed our economy, to be treasury secretary; Rep, Mel Watt of North Carolina, who is owned by Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other insurancce and lending industry corporations, to oversee the mortgage shenannigans of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You proclaim the need to assure that every man, woman and child in this country is guaranteed decent health care, and then sell out to the profit-rich drug makers, chain hospitals and insurance giants so they can further engorge themselves on profits written in our blood.

You shy away from commitments to the environment, the social safety net and government spending to enhance the lives of the people. You don't even think about the inevitable outcome: a war-mongering police state run by a handful of the richest among us while everyone else becomes the poorest among us, wallowing in hunger, poverty and fear.

That will be the legacy of our short-sighted so-called leaders, who can't see beyond the next bribe or rigged election.

Maybe the next attempt to build a democratic republic of the people, by the people and for the people -- wherever and whenever it takes place -- will learn from our mistakes. That's the best we can hope for.

Letter to the Pianist - and YOU

Hi Thomas,

My name is Susan Vento, and I am writing to you about a cause very close to my heart. My husband, Bruce, was a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives until October 10th, 2000 when he died of pleural mesothelioma––a rare disease caused by asbestos exposure. Recently, asbestos companies are using their political influence to push a new bill in Congress, led by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It is called the “Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act.” In short, this bill would delay and, in some cases, deny justice to people suffering from asbestos-related diseases. The FACT Act marks the beginning of a state-by-state strategy to dismantle the rights of victims. We must take action to protect these victims before it’s too late, like it was for my husband.

In the name of so-called “transparency,” the bill places burdensome reporting requirements on victims applying to the bankruptcy trusts. Yet, the companies who knowingly caused the asbestos exposure have no comparable requirements. The legislation is a one-sided and unfair effort designed to harm those who have already been injured. You can find more information on the bill here. This legislation is not an effort to make the legal system more responsive. Instead, it is merely the latest attempt by companies and individuals like the Koch brothers to avoid responsibility for their wrongdoings.

Because of your influence and experience in the political blogosphere, I am asking for your help. I am a spokesperson for the Asbestos Cancer Victims’ Rights Campaign. The ACVRC is a national campaign dedicated to protecting the rights and privacy of cancer victims and their families.  I hope that you will join our fight to defeat this unfair legislation and the potential precedent it sets. Here are a couple simple steps you can take to make a difference:

1.     Sign the petition to stop legislation that threatens cancer victims!

Go to www.CancerVictimsRights.org/take-action/sign-the-petition/ and follow the instructions to sign the petition at the bottom of the page.

2.     Spread the word!

Share your thoughts on the bill and our cause with your blog audience. Place a link to our petition on your blog to allow your readers to sign and showcase their public support––every signature matters!

Thank you in advance for your time. Individuals and families affected by cancer already have enough on their plate. With your help, the ACVRC is committed to fighting legislation that further burdens them.

Best,

Susan

To Be 5 and Have a Notch in Your Gun

Among the gunshot deaths in the United States Tuesday was this one, in Burkesville, Ky., near the Tennessee state line: Kristian Sparks, 5, slew his sister, Caroline, 2, with his very own .22 rifle, which he received as a gift.

Her death was an accident, said the coroner, Gary White. “Down in Kentucky where we’re from, you know, guns are passed down from generation to generation. You start at a young age with guns for hunting and everything.”

The local judge, John Phelps, said,“It’s a normal way of life, and it’s not just rural Kentucky, it’s rural America — hunting and shooting and sport fishing. It starts at an early age. There’s probably not a household in this county that doesn’t have a gun.”

Guns are a normal way of death in this sorry nation, as well -- but by five-year-olds?  Is there no limit to the derangement of the American gun culture and the spineless politicians who tolerate it while accepting the NRA's filthy lucre? How many more children must die before the sane portion of our citizenry rises up and demands sensible regulation of firearms?

Caroline Sparks's brief life was snuffed by something called a Crickett.  "It’s a little rifle for a kid. ... The little boy’s used to shooting the little gun,”  Coroner White said.

The company that makes the rifle,  Keystone Sporting Arms, is based in Milton, Pa. The  “Kids Corner” on its website displays pictures of young boys and girls at shooting ranges and out hunting. It says the company produced 60,000 Crickett and Chipmunk rifles for kids in 2008. The smaller rifles are sold with a mount to use at a shooting range. Keystone also makes guns for adults, but most of its products are geared toward children. “The goal of KSA is to instill gun safety in the minds of youth shooters and encourage them to gain the knowledge and respect that hunting and shooting activities require and deserve,” the website says.  Bill McNeal and his son Steve McNeal, according to the site, founded the company in the mid-1990s. In 1996, with just four employees, they produced 4,000 rifles for little children. Today it employs about 70 people. Now they all have blood on their hands.

The Washington Post quotes Sharon Rengers, a longtime child advocate at Kosair Children’s Hospital in Louisville: "Oh, my God, we’re having a big national debate whether we want to check somebody’s background, but we’re going to offer a 4-year-old a gun and expect something good from that?”

Only in America. Only in ignorant, gun-toting, misguided, crazed, deluded, too often angry America.

How must it feel to be five years old and know that you have killed your baby sister?

Only in America.

The Guantanamo Papers

J'accuse.

Can any rational mind doubt that our government -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al; Obama, Petraeus, Holder, et al -- has violated our own and international law, and the Geneva Conventions,  by torture, rendition, assassination and random killing of civilians?

It is unlikely that anyone will ever be charged or prosecuted for these crimes.

So let us at least, at the very least, convict the United States government in the court of world opinion of a crime against literature: the supression of Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Guantanamo memoir. It is destined -- when at last it becomes public in unredacted form -- to join Emile Zola's defense of Alfred Dreyfus as a classic for the ages.

Capt. Dreyfus, a French military officer, was jailed in the infamous Devil's Island penal colony in the late 19th Century on charges that later proved to be  egregious lies.  He was  ultimately  exonerated but the case made a lasting impact on the consciousness of the French nation.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi is his own Zola. He is in his 11th year as an uncharged, untried prisoner in the infamous prison colony on Guantanamo Bay.  He has written in his own hand a 466-page manuscript of horrors, yet somehow leavened with wit. Through his attorneys, Slate magazine obtained and is publishing excerpts from the unclassified version of his writings.

According to Slate, "The man first assigned to prosecute him, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, withdrew from the case when he discovered Slahi had been tortured. When Couch’s boss, former Guantánamo chief prosecutor Col. Morris Davis, met with the CIA, the FBI, and military intelligence in 2007 to review Slahi’s case, the agencies conceded they could not link him to any acts of terrorism."

In 2010, a U.S, District Judge granted Slahi's petition for habeas corpus and ordered his release. The government appealed.  He is still in detention while the appeal is heard.

The heinous, sadistic torture he underwent was part of a plan carefully devised at the Pentagon.  He was abused in every possible way -- physical beatings, sexual perversions, humiliation, deprivation of sleep and food -- all of which he describes in sickening detail.

Yet, recalling one beating by a masked torturer, he wrly noted that his abuser “had gloves, OJ Simpson gloves on his hands.” When, after delivering 100 pages of writing to them, his lawyers asked for more information, he sent them a letter in which he said, “You ask me to write you everything I told my interrogators. Are you out of your mind! How can I render uninterrupted interrogation that has been lasting the last 7 years? That’s like asking Charlie Sheen how many women he dated.”

I call the supression of his manuscript a literary crime because Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a gifted writer of powerful prose.

His book begins: July 2002, 22:00. The American team takes over. The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied.”  These short, punchy sentences, in the active voice, are the work of a natural.

But the story he writes is one of crimes against humanity.  The carefully planned torture and debasement inflicted upon him was "signed off" on by a multitude of high military authorities.

Highest of all is the signature of Donald Rumsfeld.

J'accuse.

Where We Gonna Put Dem Boots?

The Washington cliche of the day is "boots on the ground."  The question of the day is, "should we (the United Statese) put them (boots) on the ground in Syria because the embattled government there used chemical weapons against the insurgents?"

Wait.  Do we have it on any authority other than our own government and its intelligence services that Syria actually did this?  Are those chemical weapons any more substantive than Sadam Hussein's WMDs or Iran's nukes?  Just asking.

A batch of The Usual Suspects were rounded up on the Sunday telly talkabouts to kick around Pressing Matters, of which the pressingest seemed to be Syria and those boots.

Lindsey Graham, South Carolina's gift of enlightenment to the U.S. Senate, opined that if somebody doesn't do something, ”the whole region’s gonna fall into chaos.”  Gonna?  Gonna?  

There was Old Standby John McCain, untarnished by his brilliant selection of Sarah Palin for Veep, saying "no" to boots on the ground. "The American people are weary," he said, demonstrating that he's been awake a bit longer than his Carolina colleague.  "They don't want boots on the ground."

Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the Democratic party's contribution to this font of wisdom, sang her president's song, a firm, fearless, "maybe, maybe not."  Responding to Graham and McCain, she said, "I don't think you ever want to rule it (boots on the ground) out.  But obviously we don't want to do it unless it's absolutely necessary." Obviously.

The Georgia sage of the Senate, Saxby Chambliss, declared: "We don't need to put boots on the ground, but we need to enable their neighbors, the neighbors of Syria, to bring some sort of peaceful resolution to this."

Aha!  There it is! We need a peaceful resolution to this!

Alors!  Why didn't we think of this before!  A peaceful resolution.

And to think that these people hold office for six, long years! Well, we elected George W. Bush to two terms as President, didn't we? Now even Grandma Barbara thinks "we've had enough Bushes."

We've had enough of Obama, too -- but that's another essay.

Just What IS the "Lesson" of Boston?

I am duly impressed by the speed with which law enforcement found and either killed or apprehended the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon explosions that killed three and maimed many.

But I'm not chanting "USA" and waving flags.  I'm afraid. Very afraid.

What transpired in Boston made me much more aware of how far the United States has moved toward becoming a totalitarian police state.  To a degree that is frightening, what happened to those Chechen brothers could happen to you.

You've been stripped of your privacy without realizing it.  Most of your protective blanket under the Bill of Rights is in tatters.  Surveillance technology of various kinds has made it possible for law enforcement to pinpoint you in a trice.  Quiet changes in procedure have taken away Miranda rights.  Government drones can find you and kill you --"legally."  You can be grabbed off the street -- possibly even out of your home -- tomorrow and held incognito without charge and without trial -- forever. Nobody is "just a nobody" any more. You're on camera, in a data base, tracked by cookies; you're a number, a code, a profile; what you eat, what you buy, where you travel and how . . . these are your cyber signatures.

It's well and good when this efficient police state nails genuine wrongdoers.  Perhaps (although I doubt it) such efficiency as was displayed in Boston will serve as a deterrant to similar attacks by others.  But I fear for the day when someone in some position of authority, however great or however minimal, decides to use the awesome power of this apparatus to do away with political enemies, to silence critics of government or policy, to quell minorities, to shield powerful corporate interests from punishment or even trial for their crimes. 

Those who wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights knew well how quickly abuse of power can kill a democracy, and sought to build into those documents a foolproof system of checks and balances.  With PATRIOT Acts and Justice Department memos, with Presidential orders and TOP SECRET stamps, by Congressional cowardice and brainwashing of the public, most of those checks and balances have been disabled.  The common citizen is but a single step from enslavement by the ruling oligarchs.

I can understand the feelings of those in the Boston crowds who broke into applause, chants of "USA" and loud cheers when Suspect No. 2 was taken into custody last night.

But as someone who has already been on one powerful politician's enemies list, and who reported on things government didn't want made public, and whose job took him into other dark places in America, I felt a deep, deep chill when I realized how efficient the modern American surveillance state really is.

I think of Bradley Manning, whose conscience told him to enable his fellow citizens to know about things he knew about that, to him, weren't right.  He could well be put to death for an act of good conscience. His "trial" by his military captors no more resembles justice than American television resembles journalism. There is precious little left of the Bill of Rights to protect any American from his fate.

The very person who will probably prosecute the surviving suspect in Boston -- Carmen Ortiz -- is the same Department of Justice attorney who prosecuted the activist, Aaron Swartz, for writing about the corrupting influence of money in our government, political system and society, until he committed suicide.

The apparatus indeed is vast.

An Open Letter

• An Open Letter To:
• Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.),  John Boozman (R-Ark.),  Richard Burr (R-N.C.),  Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.),  Dan Coats (R-Ind.),  Tom Coburn (R-Okla.),  Thad Cochran (R-Miss.),  Bob Corker (R-Tenn.),  Jon Cornyn (R-Texas),  Mike Crapo (R-Idaho),  Ted Cruz (R-Texas),  Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.),  Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.),  Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa),  Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.),  John Hoeven (R-N.D.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.),  Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.),  Mike Johanns (R-Neb.),  Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah),  Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) , Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.),  Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.),  Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.),  Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), John Thune (R-S.D.), David Vitter (R-La.) and  Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). 

"Honorable" Senators:

On behalf of the people of the United States, and your constituents, I ask that you publicly justify your vote this week against the so-called gun control legislation.  Specifically, tell the families of the names that follow why the NRA and the arms manufacturing industry are worth so much more to you than the lives of  any or all of the people named.

Special request to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky:  Specifically addressing the families of those named below, please explain what was so utterly hilarious about the pictures of yourself and Sen Harry Reid, and their captions, as posted yesterday on your Facebook page.

Sincerely, in remembrance of:

Alex Sullivan, John Larimer, Jessica Ghawi, Micayla Medekm John Blunk, Alex Teves, Alexander "AJ" Boik, Gordon Cowden, Rebecca Wingo, Matt McQuinn, Veronica Moser-Sullivan and Jesse Childress. Slain by gunshot in a movie theater in Aurora, CO.

Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Daniel Rohrbough, Wlliam "Dave" Sanders, Rachel Scott, Isaiah Shoels, Lauren Townsend and Kyle Velasquez.  Slain by gunshot at Columbine high school.

          Brian Bluhm, Ryan Clark, Austin Cloyd, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Kevin Granata, Matthew G. Gwaltney, Caitlin Hammaren, Jeremy Herbstritt, Rachael Elizabeth Hill, Emily Hilscher, Jarrett Lane, Matthew J. LaPorte, Henry Lee, Liviu Librescu, G. V. Loganathan, Partahi Lumbantoruan, Lauren McCain, Daniel O'Neil, Juan Ramon Ortiz, Minal Panchal, Daniel Perez Cueva, Erin Peterson, Mike Pohle, Julia Pryde, Mary Read, Reema Samaha, Waleed Shaalan, Leslie Sherqman, Maxine Turner and Nicole White.  Slain by gunshot at Virginia Tech.

         Charlotte Bacon, 6; Daniel Barden, 7; Olivia Engel, 6; Josephine Gay, 7; Ana Marquez-Greene, 6; Dylan Hockley, 5; Madeline Hsu, 6; Catherine Hubbard, 6; Chase Kowalski, 7; Jesse Lewis, 6; James Mattioli, 6; Grace McDonnell, 7; Emilie Parker, 6; Jack Pinto, 6; Noah Pozner, 6; Caroline Previdi, 6; Jessica Rekos, 6; Avielle Richman, 6; Benjamin Wheeler, 6; Allison Wyatt, 6;  Rachel D'Avino,  Anne Marie Murphy, Lauren Rousseau, Mary Sherlach, Victoia Soto and Dawn Hocksprung.  Slain by gunshot at Sandy Hook elementary school.

            

And the more than 3,400 American men, women and children slain by gunshot since the Sandy Hook massacre.

           

Another Biscuit for the Dogs of War

There he goes again.

Recent meetings in Kazakhstan (see previous blog) kept hopes alive for a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear question. But once again, right on schedule, comes George Jahn of the Associated Press Vienna bureau with a tainted morsel designed to stoke the appetites of the war dogs.

His dispatch begins:

VIENNA (AP) — Technicians upgrading Iran's main uranium enrichment facility have tripled their installations of high-tech machines that could be used in a nuclear weapons program to more than 600 in the last three months, diplomats said Wednesday.

They say the machines are not yet producing enriched uranium and some may be only partially installed. Still the move is the latest sign that 10 years of diplomatic efforts have failed to persuade Tehran to curb its uranium enrichment. Instead, Iran continues to increase its capacities.

The installations also suggest that Iran possesses both the technology to mass-produce centrifuges that can enrich much faster than its present machines and the ability to evade international sanctions meant to keep it from getting materials it needs to do so.

As usual, Jahn does not name sources, writes in code and weasle-words and makes unsupportable statements as truth.

Just after helpful negotiatons between the G5+1 group and Iran in April of 2012, and with hopes high for more progress in Moscow the following June, Jahn breathlessly reported he had been given a sketch by "diplomats" that "proved" Iran was advancing rapidly with  nuclear weapons development. It purported to show "an explosives containment chamber of the type needed for nuclear arms-related tests that U.N. inspectors suspect Tehran has conducted." I found a similar drawing on the site of a firm that sells bomb-containment devices to law enforcement. Responsible scientists denounced Jahn's drawing as a hoax.

Last November, with the G5+1 talks slated to resume in six weeks, Jahn dropped another Israeli propaganda bomb. The Associated Press he wrote, had obtained a graph alleged to be part of an Iranian computer simulation of a nuclear explosion. Experts promptly  pointed out that the graph of the relationship between energy and power shown in the AP story contained absurdly large errors that not even a junior high school physics student would make, let alone a nuclear scientist. Former senior IAEA inspector Robert Kelley, said “It’s clear the graph has nothing to do with a nuclear bomb.”

One of the sources for today's article by Jahn was an Israeli diplomat.  Another was said to be from a neutral country.  Jahn's article refers to only one lame attempt at verification of anything he was told, a telephone call to an International Atomic Agency official that was not returned.

The machines he's so excited about in his lede paragraph, which "could be" used in work in pursuit of a weapon, also "could be" used in peaceful nuclear research, especially for medical purposes. It was The United States "Atoms for Peace" program that gave Iran nuclear technology decades ago, and the Islamic republic became a Middle East leader in medical treatment facilities.  Now that the western embargo has tightened, Iran has been developing its own resources for nuclear research.  Neutral observers following the Iran situation have known for months that Iran intended to install up to 1,000 of the "high tech machines" Jahn mentions.  Why should it be news, then, that the number is now up to 600?

Because it will get the pot boiling all over again about Netanyahu's "red line"  and when the U.S. will be "forced" to join Israel in military action against Iran. The American Endless War Machine must be fueled, and Israel is itching to use a few of its own 300 too 400 nuclear weapons.