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T-shirt made in el Salvador or China or somewhere else, maybe Vietnam, just not here.
“Cairo (the Seal Team 6 dog) for Prez,” another in the Dick Destiny T-shirt fashion line called “Great and funny T-shirts no one will have the nerve to wear.”
Previouslt in the line: “Corporate America Hates You” and “Rock Hard.”
Most seem to have noticed there’s been no dividend to the middle class. Bin Laden is offed and everything goes on as usual. The obvious wars continue. Secret operations escalate. The new secretary of defense and the head of the Pentagon go on television to complain that if the triggers on the terrible debt deal are ever allowed to activate, it will ruin them and threaten their ability to defend our freedoms from so many enemies.
All rubbish. They’re smart people and they know the only freedoms defended, not that everything is rotting out at home, are the freedoms to keep sending really big checks to the Lockheed Martins and Raytheons.
So where is the bin Laden dividend? Besides a week of celebration, the granting of access to the superdog on the trip — Cairo, and a story I declined to read in the New Yorker because it had been summarized so well everywhere else? Where did it go?
To Hollywood, of course. But you knew that something like this would happen:
The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker??? will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.
The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.
It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.
Just like W., Obama is going for that “Mission Accomplished??? glow (without the suggestive harness). At least in this president’s case, though, something has been accomplished.
Dowd can’t quite put her finger on what that “something” was.
It’ll be a great movie to watch, no doubt, after putting the price of the ticket, pop corn and soda on the credit card because your bank account is empty. We got the bad guy. They’ll be catchy and inspirational lines — lines no one actually said — at climactic moments. Some big deals in Hollywood will get to be even bigger deals in the winner-take-all great society. Yay.
For the “60th” anniversary of the first use of the atomic bomb in war, or something (“something” because Ted can’t count — and his copy editors or web type setters are equivalent dunces — seemingly implying this happened in 1951):
We need more smart bombs, more predator drones, more advanced intelligence equipment and assets, more special-operations teams and more improved tactics, more ammo, better night-vision equipment, more human-intelligence capabilities, more stealth and a never-ending commitment to kill the enemies of freedom and America under whatever rock they may try to hide. Kill ‘em all as quickly as possible. That’s the most effective deterrent there is …
America is a peaceful nation.
“Sixty-years ago … Hiroshima and Nagasaki were flattened with atomic bombs,” Nugent writes. Never has so little been furnished by one so small.
“Mostly agree, Mr Nugent …. However, make that fifty six years ago, not sixty,” writes one of Howard’s equally arithmetic-challenged pals in the comments section.
I continue to maintain the cyber-defense industry is for the haves.
Half the populace could be in plywood shacks and lining up for a chance to have what’s left of the laundry done at homeless centers and we’d still have to put up with warning about cyber-attacks on the financial system.
These assembled quotes, inspired by the recent outbreak of cyberwar fear pieces, added to by McAfee Associates, a company now acting as an intelligence agency, issuing reports that we’ve suffered through a five year cyberwar, the equivalent to a Pearl Harbor (boldface snark, mine):
What’s the point of these attacks? Alperovitch isn’t sure but he believes, “If even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a competitor at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team’s playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat not just to individual companies and industries but to entire countries that face the prospect of decreased economic growth
Decreased economic growth.
The first shots appear to have been fired in the first major cyber-war. The next question is: “Who’s behind them???? Alperovitch isn’t saying, but some observers suggest that China is behind what might be called a technology Pearl Harbor. — some PC mag on-line.
One of the scenarios I evoke frequently when speaking with clients about computer security is called “Frontier Friction.” At the beginning of the story, a coordinated terror attack takes out the servers of a large banking institution. They also take out their backup systems. A coordinated cyber-terror attack further disrupts the financial systems. In essence, all forms of non-physical finances become impossible to track and all transaction systems come to halt overnight. No recovery plan exits for such an attack. The developed world reverts into the third world within weeks. — FastCompany
The developed world reverts into the third world within weeks. Ignore the economic collapse here and in Europe today.
“The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyberattack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems,” Panetta said. He has said that cyber security will be a key focus of his Pentagon tenure. — one of about a thousand citations
Thanks, Leon.
Keep noticing the obsession with attacks on banking and the financial system. It’s a way of salesmanship. There’s no currency in selling cyberwar defense (or even much value added ice cream cone cybersecurity ‘ware) to the already broke middle class. It doesn’t care and doesn’t like buying it, anyway.
However, the plutocracy — or the collected coins in the US treasury — those are other matters, entirely, things to lust after.
Infrequently, something skeptical shows up in the mix. Invariably, it will not have been published by a big US computer security consultancy or sprung as a scoop by a news agency:
The targets for such criticism include Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), a consultancy with extensive ties to the US government which in 2010 won at least $400 million in cyber-security contracts. BAH’s executive vice-president isMike McConnell, former director of national intelligence (2007-09) and a leading cyber-hawk (“the United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing???, he has written in the Washington Post) …
[Peter Sommer’s] report outlines what it sees as real risks, while dismissing some “exaggerated scenarios???. For example, the study says that a cyber-attack is unlikely to cause great loss of life, or disable the banking system. “One hypothesis is that banks might get wiped out. That really is a bit of nonsense, because it’s trivially easy to back up computers???, Sommer says.
Sommer should know what he is talking about, for in the 1980s he wrote a genre-creating book ( The Hacker’s Handbook, under the pseudonym Hugo Cornwall) and has seen many alarms about cyber-malfeasance come and go. He says the current spasm risks wasting precious national resource …
Booz Allen and Smilin’ Mike McConnell. Yes, did that. You read it here, first.
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From the Asia Times, spied by way of Pine View Farm, on America’s biggest export.
Unsurprisingly, military excursions, flavor — special operations — at work in private war, well, everywhere:
This global presence – in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged – provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world …
With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people’s heads (like we really need to make the crazy people who read this even more crazy) or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM’s prime contracts awarded to small businesses – those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons – have jumped six-fold …
That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home …
Superhuman.
An observation: When the place is declining into the unique status of third world status except for biggest, baddest military it doesn’t take much to impress the locals. It’s not like we’re overloaded with obvious talent. And those old Nick Fury & his Howling Commandos and Sgt. Rock comics always had appeal.
What’s also unsurprising is that these types of stories aren’t from the mainstream media in this country. This, a syndication to the Asia Times from TomDispatch.
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Inexplicably, the old man speaks from the wires. It is true, crazy, or worthless? Heck if I know:
Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and perennial third-party presidential candidate, announced last month that he would work to find a Democrat to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.
Nader now says that a primary challenge is a near certainty …
Much confusion follows. It emerges that Nader will not run again. That the challenger may be an “ex-governor” or “an intellectual” or “environmental” leader.
The upshot seems to be that the debt ceiling catastrophe and subsequent market drop have contributed to the certainty of a challenge.
I’m scratching my head on who would actually be better than the president? Who, exactly, in 2011 America is an “intellectual” or “environmental” leader that doesn’t make 90 percent of the population go, “Huh?”
What ex-governor? Ed Rendell? Hah-hah.
The speculation invites a laugh riot in the same way the current GOP hopefuls do. Let’s see if we can come up with our own John Huntsmans and Thad McCotters.
“Mr. Bean” actor Rowan Atkinson, whose character is known for hapless driving in the television shows and films, left a hospital Friday after being treated for minor injuries following a sports car [worth 1 mil] crash in southern England. — AP
I liked the movie. Like Jerry Lewis with no talking or “Laaaaaa-deeeeee!”
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UPDATED
The slide show video.
Lickspittles Talent Agency represents pundits and journalists, the good boys and girls. They’re those sufficiently camera and photogenic, chosen to “analyze” the issues of the day.
They can be counted on to laugh and tut-tut their way through the terrible news on any given day, safe in the knowledge that their position means they’ll never suffer any of the drawbacks of life out in the ruins.
Everyone in the video is a liberal but you’d be hard-pressed to find even one capable of naked rage or a wrinkled brow.
Snark and laughter at the ignoramuses in Washington, or the Tea Party — they’re all very good at that, though.
Some of the good boys hold multiple positions. They star on TV, they write for the biggest two newspapers in the country, or the two big supermarket glossy news mags, they are fellows at think tanks and professors at university.
They’re a great demonstration of another type of rampant inequality in the US, that of the rigged system, the winner-take-all society, that place were everything accrues to those who simply appear on television or some prime print real estate.
In a country as large and complicated as ours you’re asked to believe all the alleged wisdom on everything worth comment is to be found in a group of somewhat less than fifty people, all of whom earn never less than six figures every year.
Since the video is less than two minutes long, I couldn’t get to them all.
In order of of appearance: Jonathan Alter, Nicholas Kristof, Joan Walsh, James Fallows, Fareed Zakaria, Gene Robinson, Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris-Perry, Chris Matthews.
Add your own to the list in comments if you want.
If you want to know why people often vote for the worst among us, Lickspittles Talent Agency is one answer. You see them on tv, laughing and smirking at the empire crumbling down, and you’ll vote for anyone who appears to be a polar opposite, no matter the cost.
Spite is like that.
Kevin Coyne, the Englishman who wrote “Good Boy,” knew it way back in 1973.
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DD will believe serious budgets to the Pentagon after they arrive.
But for the last two days we’ve had a number of stories in which cuts to defense are already being bemoaned by “think tanks” and “defense analysts” who have never been our friends.
The last bit, taken from a Daily Beast thing syndicated to Yahoo, is a bit of a laugh riot, Unintentionally, of course:
“Do you want to share the world with the Chinese or with nuclear-armed Iran???? [says Thomas Donnelly from the American Enterprise Institute]. “The only thing worse than Americans running the world is someone else running the world.???
For Pentagon officials and many defense analysts, that is a dark scenario and far worse than any budget crisis.
Realistically, with American multi-national help, the Chinese are already “running” all dry goods stores in the United States. And I’ve laughed at the idea of a shooting war with them, for these reasons, previously.
As for Iran, a picture says a bajillion words…
Beware the green pantywaists. These guys would get slaughtered by the US military of 1945.
Since arms manufacturing is the only protected industry in the US and it’s spread out everywhere, it’s just not a Republican thing. Journalists on the beat know that. And what you haven’t seen in these articles are all the Democrats that will line up to sabotage any theoretical cuts to the defense budget when the time comes using the well-worn argument that they’re protecting wages and jobs in their districts.
A dose of horseshit from plutocrat Richard Clarke today, one of the fathers of cyberwar and cyberterror furor going back to the Clinton administration.
Clarke opines on the pages of a Boston newspaper. Very little of it is worth reading for value in 2011 America. Arguments about cyberwar are of no interest to the American middle class. National “defense” again it is without value.
What Clarke knows — he’s a smart guy — is that the serious attacks on the country have all been internal. And they have nothing to do with the bullshit meme of cyberwar.
The problems that plague the United States — economic failure on a breath-taking scale — have nothing to do with the issues he’s pursued for the last decade. It’s an astonishing thing to have been shown to be so wrong in the last three years.
The enemy was not the explosion of the wired world. And, in comparison to what has been done to the average well-being of Americans, theoretical cyberwars and Stuxnet viruses are trivial things.
In the US, most journalists on the cybersecurity/cyberwar beat act like insane people. They call up and always want to talk about what a cyberwar would look like and what can be done to forestall or mitigate it.
My gut reaction is “Who cares?” Americans want protection from Wall Street and the economic system that has, for instance, caused a record explosion in the number of people who must rely on food stamps.
When I tell American reporters these things they act as if bitten by a poisonous snake coming out of the telephone line.
What? You question the authority of the Clarke’s and Mike McConnell’s of our great nation?
Nope, just asking for some grounding in the real world. Some perspective. Not the opinions from someone used to employing argument from totem pole authority over and over.
Anyway, some excerpts from Richard the Plutocrat and “The coming cyberwars:”
IMAGINE IF President Kennedy issued a nuclear war strategy in the 1960s that omitted the fact that we had nuclear weapons, B-52 bombers, and long-range missiles. What if his public strategy had just talked about fallout shelters and protecting the government? As absurd as that would have been, that is similar to what the Obama administration just did with regard to the nation’s cyber war strategy …
[Generals] have bemoaned the inability of the civilian departments and the private sector to defend critical US networks (like banking, electricity, and transportation) and have suggested the military may have to defend those networks.
During his confirmation hearings, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta voiced concern about the possibility of a “digital Pearl Harbor’’ that would cripple our electric power grid, banks, and transportation networks.
There it all is. The plutocrat obsession with attacks — always mentioning banking and electrical power — the former which gives away the concern that the paupers could come for their stuff. And so they need military grade protection.
You can ask people to mull over a simple thought experiment having to do with the US economy.
Yesterday, the news was very bad. The stock market tanked due to lack of faith in the stability and wisdom of the US government and economic health of the nation, so reliant upon it. The Chinese — who are often mentioned as those who could launch a cyberwar on the US — issued a dressing down on the matter.
As tightly intertwined as China is with the US, it absolutely must export to this country, of what possible value would be an attack from that country on our economy and financial system in cyberspace?
Assuming such a campaign could be mounted (and I doubt that it actually could), it would be a disaster for them. Yes, try to damage the purchasing power of your biggest customer even more.
That’s just rubbish thinking.
But that’s the Richard Clarke view. Clarke knows absolutely nothing of what matters to or affects average Americans.
In his last book of fiction, Breakpoint, which included various cyberattacks on the country, Clarke telegraphed to readers his great fondness for Kistler, sellers of 80 dollar bottles of white wine. (That’s the low ball figure, here’s the high. Only $114.00, cheap.)
Nice drink. I heard about it from the famous cyberwar plutocrat.
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