Informers have by now become our first line of defense in our battles with the evildoers, the go-to guys in the never-ending domestic war on terror. They regularly do the dirty work — suggesting and encouraging the plots, laboring as bag men to move the money, fashioning the bombs, and eliciting the flamboyant dialogue, even while following the scripts of their handlers to the letter. They have attended to all the little details that make for the successful and now familiar arrests, criminal complaints, trials, and (for the most part) convictions in the ever-distracting war against… what? Al-Qaeda? Terror? Muslims? The inept? The poor?

Also see: Feds: Somali Teen Tried to Bomb Oregon Tree Lighting

(Nov. 27) — Police in Oregon have arrested a Somali teenager for allegedly trying to detonate a car bomb in a crowd of revelers at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Portland.

Agents swooped in to nab 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen, just after he dialed a mobile phone Friday evening that he believed would detonate a van packed with explosives. But the bomb was a fake, planted by undercover agents in a sophisticated sting operation that began back in June.

Riddle me this batman, why does it seem all these informants always end up doing the radicalization, recruitment, training, arming, planning? Has there been a plot without THE USE of informants? Uh, that would be a big fat, NO. Theater.

Finally, related? You tell me…

US Government Censors 70 Websites

A war is brewing. If you think body scanners, sexual assault patdowns, censorship laws, and the seizure of property without even a notice[*] are the end, you’re sadly mistaken.

It’s only the beginning.

You know, for your safety…

[*] The Author left out kill American citizens with out trial…

rather indicative poll released by Rasmussen earlier this week finds that a majority of Americans (44%) now believe that the government operates outside the confines of the Constitution, compared to just 39% who believe government does not take liberties with the precepts laid out by the founding fathers (and 17% were busy watching dancing with the stars to have an opinion either way).

Lockheed Martin Proposes Manned Mission to the Dark Side of the Moon
By Clay DillowPosted 11.23.2010 at 5:31 pm19 Comments

Lockheed Martin’s Proposed L2-Farside Mission Lockheed Martin
The Obama administration may have axed NASA’s ambitious manned moon exploration plans for even an even more ambitious deep space exploration agenda, but for those developing the technologies that will one day take us to deep space the moon is just too ripe a testing ground to ignore. Lockheed Martin is pitching NASA what’s being called an L2-Farside Mission that would launch a manned Orion spacecraft into a stationary halo orbit on the other side of the moon.

Meanwhile, those who pay for it starve…

United States troops were told not to investigate allegations of torture by Iraqi security forces, according to documents found in the war logs.

A comprehensive trawl of the secret military files show that US soldiers witnessed, or were told of, more than 1,300 cases of detainee abuse by Iraqi authorities. But following the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004, they were given explicit orders not to investigate unless coalition personnel were involved.

The logs reveal that more than 180,000 people were detained in Iraq between 2004 and 2009. This is equivalent to one in 50 of the male population. In comparison, the number of people detained in Afghanistan, which has a similar population, was 7,500.

Most of those detained in Iraq detentions were in state-run centres.

Graphic: Detentions in Iraq

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found 1,365 reports of alleged torture in Iraqi police stations, prisons and army bases which were logged between May 2005 and December 2009. The alleged brutality was reminiscent of the worst excesses of Saddam Hussein’s regime. They describe men and women blindfolded, beaten with cables, their genitals electrocuted, fingernails ripped out, sodomised with bottles and hoses.

And yet within the secret files are two orders which tell ground force troops not to investigate these allegations of abuse.

There once was a dude nicknamed hammer
A notorious political scammer
A lumbering ass
Found laundering cash
And (hopefully) thrown in the slammer

~googly

Not only will he not see a day in jail, let alone prison. I predict he’ll run for President.

Apparently the “Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour,” very senior commander in the Taliban movement, who has been engaged in talks to end the Afghanistan war, is no such person. Whoever he was, and whoever sent him, he also walked away with “a lot of money.”

via mefi

Also see, Fake Taliban, real embarrassment

“[Gen. Petraeus/ISAF] were partially right: something had changed. But it wasn’t the effectiveness of their tactics or strategy. Instead, this episode confirms what many Afghanistan watchers have long feared: the leadership of ISAF doesn’t seem to have any idea what it’s doing, who it’s talking to, and (probably) who it is really killing.“

Dear Sir, Request for Urgent Business Relationship
ALHAJI D. BAYERO
TEL/FAX: 234-90-406917
FAX: 234-90-409188
LAGOS, NIGERIA
Dear Sir/Madame,
Request for Urgent Business Relationship

I am the group managing director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and a member of the ad hoc committee set up by the federal government of Nigeria to review contracts awarded by the past military administration between 1985-1993. The members of the committee are interested in the importation of goods into the country with the funds presently floating in the Central Bank of Nigeria/Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) foreign payments account.

Our request is anchored on our strong desire to establish a lasting business relationship with you and your company. We hence solicit your partnership to enable us transfer into your account the said funds. You have been recommended to us in confidence and we were assured of your ability and reliability to prosecute business transaction that require maximum confidentiality.

Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler (USMC)

“The question ain’t who killed JFK, but where are they now?” Jello Biafra

The Kennedy Assassination: 47 Years Later, What Do We Really Know?

Thx DaveS

Johnson — “Chal” — was a penetrating, original, and influential scholar, plus a very gifted literary and conversational stylist. When I first went to Japan nearly 25 years ago, his MITI and the Japanese Miracle was already part of the canon for understanding Asian economic development. Before that, he had made his name as a China scholar; after that, he became more widely known with his books like Blowback, about the perverse effects and strategic unsustainability of America’s global military commitments. Throughout those years he was a mentor to generations of students at the UC campuses at Berkeley and San Diego.