Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Blank Slate of Fear

I didn't bother to watch the Bill Maher show clip where he was heckled by 9/11 Truthers. I don't like Maher much and I really don't care about conspiracy nuts. Way too often the important aspects of an issue are obscured by trying to bring everyone from god to Santa Claus in on the crime. The right wing assholes love the 9/11 crowd because it's another way to make the Left look looney and out of touch. Honestly at this point I don't give a rat's ass who killed the Kennedys.
Having said that, it's time for me to don my tinfoil cheesehead.
I have lately become more and more convinced that the neocon extremists were aware of the plot that we now simply call 9/11. Maybe not to the extent that they for saw or necessarily wanted the massive destruction and loss of life on that day, nor certainly with any collusion with bin Laden other the support we had given him for years in Afghanistan, but certainly to the level that they knew an action was being planed and when it was going to happen. The look on Chimpy's face as he read My Pet Goat was not that of shock that an attack had happened but that the attack was so devastating. The dismissal of the aide that briefed him before the attack with "you've covered your ass, now get out of here" makes much more sense in this light. For years this crowd was looking for a "Pearl Harbor like event" on which to drape the fabric of the New American Century. Somehow I can see them salivating for another incident like the first Trade Center bombings. Lots of smoke, a few dead and the perfect reason to institute the draconian measures they love so much. It's revealed now that they were setting up the Telecoms for eavesdropping long before September 2001, why would we believe that they didn't have other ideas as well?
Unlike most conspiracy theories that require a cast of thousands, this could have happened with just the knowledge of a few intelligence personnel (notoriously tight lipped when involved with illegal ops) and some in the White House (even more notoriously tight lipped). Once the deed was done, I could imagine how they would view it as the biggest windfall of all time. A blank slate of fear on which they would write a new way of doing business in America.
Maybe I'm wrong. Way off base. Maybe they were just so bumbling that all the facts that were laid at their feet didn't click and they just missed this enormous crime. Maybe but I don't think so.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Interesting article hidden away in the NY Times today. Celia Dugger writes about the striking reduction in the amount of food aid in the Third World this year. The gist of the article is not that the US is cutting back on it's commitment in terms of dollars, but that those dollars buy 35% less food then they did in 2006. Her sources suggest that there will be a similar drop in buying power over the next two years.

This is yet another domino in the global food cost inctrease being driven by high oil prices and probably more quickly by the rapidly increasing cost of corn on the world market. The corn price increase is of course due to the drive in the US to use corn for fuel instead of food.

Couple this with the US insistance that American farm products be shipped over-seas and then sold to finance the buying of food relief supplies, and you have a recipe for increased world hunger rather than hunger relief. The entire article can be read here.