Friday, August 29, 2008

Answers & Semi-Hiatus

I know it seems like I haven't been posting much lately -- because I haven't -- but it's going to get even worse (or better, depending on your perspective) for the next few weeks. I'm driving down to Los Angeles in a few hours and will spend Labor Day weekend and all next week there. Then I'll be back home for five brief days, after which Mrs. Generik (who, unfortunately, will not be accompanying me to SoCal) and I head up into the wilds of the Eastern Sierra for a long week of camping. So this blog is pretty much going dark for a while, unless I find some time and inspiration to post something that just can't wait in this upcoming week, while I still have internet access. Because I won't once I'm up in the woods.

In the meantime, here are the answers to this week's super-easy double Motown dip. And just to reassure anyone out there who might be wondering about a possible diminishing of his powers, let me confirm that the mighty Eric B -- with whom I'll be spending some serious quality time on Saturday and Sunday -- got every one of these lines right.

And those lines would be...

1. I don't like you but I love you, seems that I'm always thinking of you. You Really Got A Hold On Me; Smokey Robinson & The Miracles

2. Oh, you may not love me now, but I'm stayin' around 'cause you want my company. If You Can Want; Smokey Robinson

3. I've been cryin' (boo hoo) 'cause I'm lonely (for you), smiles have all turned to tears... Come See About Me; The Supremes

4. I need love, love, to ease my mind, I need to find, find someone to call mine... You Can't Hurry Love; The Supremes

5. You're sweet as a honeybee, but like a honeybee stings, you've gone and left my heart in pain. It's The Same Old Song; Four Tops

6. Now if you feel that you can't go on, because all of your hope is gone... Reach Out (I'll Be There); Four Tops

7. Sunshine, blue sky, please go away. My girl has found another and gone away. I Wish It Would Rain; Temptations

8. 1, 2... 1, 2, 3, 4, ow! People movin' out, people movin' in. Why, because of the color of their skin. Ball Of Confusion; Temptations

9. Like a fool I went and stayed too long, now I'm wondering if you're love's still strong. Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours; Stevie Wonder

10. I was born in Little Rock, had a childhood sweetheart, we were always hand in hand. I Was Made To Love Her; Stevie Wonder

**Bonus** Ah, say yeah yeah yeah, say yeah yeah yeah; ah, say yeah yeah yeah, say yeah yeah yeah. I try to put my arms around you all because I want to hold you tight. Stubborn Kind Of Fellow; Marvin Gaye

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Photoblogging For Fun And No Profit

I've been engaging in a lot of shutterbuggery lately (...what?), and just thought I'd share a few of the most recent images with you. As always, click on the picture for a humongous, giant-sized load-bearing version. Or you can always take a look at my oeuvre on Flickr, where I'm known as Generik11.










Whose Opening Line Is It, Anyway: Agent Double-O Soul

All right, if this week's quiz isn't the easiest-peasiest one yet, then you've been listening to the wrong music all your life. I expect everyone to get at least one or two, if not four or five or six, and if Eric B doesn't know all of these he should hide his face in shame.

Okay, no pressure now...

1. I don't like you but I love you, seems that I'm always thinking of you.
2. Oh, you may not love me now, but I'm stayin' around 'cause you want my company.
3. I've been cryin' (boo hoo) 'cause I'm lonely (for you), smiles have all turned to tears...
4. I need love, love, to ease my mind, I need to find, find someone to call mine...
5. You're sweet as a honeybee, but like a honeybee stings, you've gone and left my heart in pain.
6. Now if you feel that you can't go on, because all of your hope is gone...
7. Sunshine, blue sky, please go away. My girl has found another and gone away.
8. 1, 2... 1, 2, 3, 4, ow! People movin' out, people movin' in. Why, because of the color of their skin.
9. Like a fool I went and stayed too long, now I'm wondering if you're love's still strong.
10. I was born in Little Rock, had a childhood sweetheart, we were always hand in hand.

**Bonus** Ah, say yeah yeah yeah, say yeah yeah yeah; ah, say yeah yeah yeah, say yeah yeah yeah. I try to put my arms around you all because I want to hold you tight.

Answers (like anyone will need them) early Friday before I jet off to SoCal for Labor Day weekend and the following week.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Answers From The C+ Student

Well, I guess you all get a passing grade this week, though Eric B did skew the curve upward a bit at the last minute. (Okay, not really at the last minute -- he sent me his answers on Tuesday morning; I just waited until yesterday afternoon to post them in the comments.)

And if it weren't for including that dumb Hot Rod Lincoln song, I might have had not only all bands that begin with the letter C, but all songs that begin with the letter C as well. Oh well.

Anyway, here are the answers. See?

1. You need to straighten your posture and suck in your gut. Comanche; Cake

2. My pappy said, "Son, you're gonna drive me to drinkin'..." Hot Rod Lincoln; Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen

3. Have you seen the little pieces of the people we have been? Come Around; Counting Crows

4. Traffic in the city turns my head around. No, no, no, no, no. Commotion; Creedence Clearwater Revival

5. One morning I woke up and I knew you were really gone. Carry On; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

6. The lights go out and I can't be saved, tides that I tried to swim against... Clocks; Coldplay

7. Goin' to a party, meet me out after school, well, we go to a place where the jive is really cool. California Man; Cheap Trick

8. I wasn't expecting this, now everything is destroyed. Underneath us are the nothings, underneath them is the void. Chaos; The Church

9. They offered me the office, offered me the shop. They said I'd better take anything they got. Career Opportunities; The Clash

10. If I pour your cup, that is friendship. If I add your milk, that is manners. Cold Tea Blues; Cowboy Junkies

**Bonus** Here, kitty, kitty, you better move along, 'cuz the big cats walk at the break of dawn. Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?; The Cramps

Next week we fly again!

Thursday, August 21, 2008

More On The Angry Man

Really, you just have to read this excellent rant on the Tortured Man Who Would Be President over at firedoglake. Unless you've seen it already, in which case you should already be sending the link to it out far and wide.

This is probably not a surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly (or even occasionally), but I do NOT want John McCain to occupy the White House next year, four years from now, or ever. I honestly believe that he will be worse than Bush -- if that's even possible.

My Never-Ending 15 Minutes

Hey, my name's in the paper again today. Local folks can check out today's Leah Garchik column in the SF Chronicle, or you can find it online here (scroll down to the second item).

Woohoo.

Send John McCain Home... Wherever That May Be

Senator McSame (R-Too Old, Too Angry, Too Flippy-Floppy) apparently doesn't even know how many houses he and the beer heiress own together. But like the preznit he wants to replace -- and whose policies he wants to continue -- he's really just a regular guy, and one that all real Americans would want to hang out and have a beer with. Right?

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Zell Miller Redux

News that is not a surprise: Holy Joementum is slated to speak at the Republican convention in St. Paul that starts at the end of this month. If there was any doubt left in anyone's mind that this guy is NOT a Democrat -- though he claims to play one in Congressional committees -- this should erase it for good. The only real question now is whether Grampy McSame will take it one step further and name Loserman as his selection for VP. Personally, I think I'd like to see that happen, as it promises to further alienate the ultra-conservative base who are already plenty suspicious and mistrusting of the POW Who Would Be President. Hey, vote for Bob Barr, you wingnuts!

The moment the 2008 election results are final, I would hope that the Democrats kick Joementum's ass off every committee on which he now sits, and tell him to take his sorry act across the aisle to caucus with the whining minority Republicans. And good goddamn riddance.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Whose Opening Line Is It, Anyway: Just Your Average Repeat

Dang, you guys, I am so busy right now, I just don't have time for this stuff this week. I mean really, I- well, okay, here. Here's a quick one while I'm away.

1. You need to straighten your posture and suck in your gut.
2. My pappy said, "Son, you're gonna drive me to drinkin'..."
3. Have you seen the little pieces of the people we have been?
4. Traffic in the city turns my head around. No, no, no, no, no.
5. One morning I woke up and I knew you were really gone.
6. The lights go out and I can't be saved, tides that I tried to swim against...
7. Goin' to a party, meet me out after school, well, we go to a place where the jive is really cool.
8. I wasn't expecting this, now everything is destroyed. Underneath us are the nothings, underneath them is the void.
9. They offered me the office, offered me the shop. They said I'd better take anything they got.
10. If I pour your cup, that is friendship. If I add your milk, that is manners.

**Bonus** Here, kitty, kitty, you better move along, 'cuz the big cats walk at the break of dawn.

Answers Friday, if I don't drop from exhaustion between now and then. See ya!

Monday, August 18, 2008

Saturday Afternoon Of The Living Dead

One of the things I like most about living in San Francisco (though I suspect it's somewhat the same in most any big city -- which is partly why I'm so comfortable in big cities) is that you just never know who or what you're going to run into at any given time or place.

For instance, this past Saturday I had gone to the AT&T store on 3rd and Market, looking for a new battery for my cursed tool of the devil cell phone ("Oh, we haven't carried that model for months," the salesman told me. "Go online and find one."), and just as I came out, there appeared to be swarm of bloody, brain-seeking zombies lumbering up 3rd on their way to Union Square. I hurriedly got my camera out of my backpack and was able to snap a few pictures as they went by. Later, I discovered that this was an organized event that was put on by these people, and similar events have been staged in other cities worldwide. I'm sure more are in the offing.

I have to say the whole thing took me by surprise just a bit. Because, seriously, I know this is sometimes a strange place to live, but you really don't usually see this many zombies strolling around downtown on a Saturday afternoon.









Friday, August 15, 2008

The Ghost Of Electricity Howls In The Bones Of These Answers

You know, I could have made this a lot more difficult than it was. As prolific as Bob Dylan is, I could have picked eleven really obscure tracks -- hell, I could have just taken all the tracks from one of his lesser-known albums -- and said, here, deal.

But I didn't. And I'm happy to see that most of these songs were recognized. To my way of thinking, Mr. Zimmerman is the premier lyricist of the 20th century (and he's still no slouch here in the first decade of the 21st). You may not like his voice, but goddamn, can that man write songs. And that's what this weekly test is all about: lyrics.

See, this whole quiz thing started as a result of something Tom Hilton said in one of his Friday Random 10 posts. It was a tongue-in-cheek comment, something along the lines of "lyrics don't matter," which I naturally took offense to, and so I've been posting these opening lines every week to show that yes, they do. Or at least they do to me. Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, here are the answers, along with the albums you'll find these songs on. Next week we'll try to mix it up a little more.

1. What’s the matter with me? I don’t have much to say. Watching the River Flow; Greatest Hits Vol. 2

2. My love, she speaks like silence, without ideals or violence. Love Minus Zero / No Limit; Bringing It All Back Home

3. Cloud so swift, the rain fallin’ in, gonna see a movie called Gunga Din. You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere; Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (Another version with slightly different lyrics, one that is covered by The Byrds and the The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, can be found on The Basement Tapes.)

4. There’s a long-distance train, rollin’ through the rain, tears on the letter I write. Where Are You Tonight (Journey Through Dark Heat); Street Legal

5. Well, the comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus. The poor little chauffeur, though, she was back in bed. Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread; The Basement Tapes

6. Crimson flames tied through my ears, rollin’ high and mighty traps. My Back Pages; Another Side Of Bob Dylan

7. Just like old Saxophone Joe when he’s got the hogshead up on his toe, oh me, oh my… Country Pie; Nashville Skyline

8. Man came to the door, I say, “For whom were you lookin’?” Says, “your wife,” I say, “She’s busy in the kitchen cookin’.” Po’ Boy; Love And Theft

9. Far between sundown’s finish and midnight’s broken toll, we ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing. Chimes Of Freedom; Another Side Of Bob Dylan

10. They say everything can be replaced, they say every distance is not near. I Shall Be Released; Greatest Hits Vol. 2

**Bonus** Oh, the benches were stained with tears and perspiration, the birdies were flying from tree to tree. Day Of The Locusts; New Morning

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Got Votes? (Got Ego?)

If you scroll down the right side of this blog (okay, if you scroll down and look at the right side; you can't actually scroll down just the right side), you might notice a couple of new-ish ads for pictures of mine that have been submitted to JPG Magazine. If you're a fan of this blog, of my photography, or just of me in general -- and who isn't? -- I urge you to click on those ads and go vote for those pictures to be included in the next issue of the magazine.

Please...?

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

IOKIYAR (Isn't It Always?)

Simpering, Bush-ass-kissing lickspittle US Attorney General Michael Mukasey says he will not prosecute any former Department of Justice personnel (read: Monica Goodling and Alberto Gonzales) who violated the law by hiring prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers based on their political allegiances. Mukasey went so far as to tell the American Bar Association that "not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

Well, of course not. I mean, if that were the case, the entire Bush administration would have all been behind bars years ago. You see, it's only a crime when Democrats do it, obviously. Republicans are physically and morally incapable of committing crimes, even when they violate the law. Jesus said so, and you can look it up.

God, I hate these fucking people.

**UPDATE** Check out this post from The least dangerous branch on the subject.

Whose Opening Line Is It, Anyway: You Got Nothing To Lose

This week's theme will be dead simple for some of you, and a complete mystery for others. But isn't that the way it works every week? Personally, I think this is a relatively easy one, but then, I'm not necessarily the best judge of that. Let's see how you folks do...

1. What's the matter with me? I don't have much to say.
2. My love, she speaks like silence, without ideals or violence.
3. Cloud so swift, the rain fallin' in, gonna see a movie called Gunga Din...
4. There's a long-distance train rollin' through the rain, tears on the letter I write.
5. Well, the comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus. The poor little chauffeur, though, she was back in bed.
6. Crimson flames tied through my ears, rollin’ high and mighty traps.
7. Just like old Saxophone Joe when he’s got the hogshead up on his toe, oh me, oh my…
8. Man came to the door, I say, “For whom were you lookin’?” Says, “your wife,” I say, “She’s busy in the kitchen cookin’.”
9. Far between sundown’s finish and midnight’s broken toll, we ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing.
10. They say everything can be replaced, they say every distance is not near.

**Bonus** Oh, the benches were stained with tears and perspiration, the birdies were flying from tree to tree.

Friday is for answering.

Monday, August 11, 2008

IMPEACH, DAMN IT!!

I've been saying it for the past seven years, and I'll keep saying it until these criminal bastards leave office -- hell, I'll probably be saying it long after that, even given the fact that America's Most Treasonous Criminal in Chief EVAR will have by then issued Get Out Of Jail Free cards to himself and all and sundry -- but these evil sons of bitches need to be called to account for their multiple crimes against the Constitution and the people of the United States. To make yourself feel better momentarily, and to add your name to the allegedly growing number of people calling for the impeachment of the so-called president, go here and sign Rep. Dennis Kucinich's petition. Because sometimes useless, futile gestures are more than just useless, futile gestures.

I'm not sure when, but I'm told that they are. So, you know, make the effort. Useless and futile though it may be.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

"The Party Of Stupid"

Unfortunately, far too often in America, stupid sells.


GOP is now the party of stupid

By PAUL KRUGMAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

So the GOP has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: "Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!" OK, I added that last part.

And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I've been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the "party of ideas," have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don't mean that GOP politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don't mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism – the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise – has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: "Real men don't think things through."

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: "The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking," said Rep. John Shadegg.

What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be "insignificant"? Presumably they're just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Rep. Michele Bachmann assures us, "want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs."

Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don't count on it.

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, "They attacked us, and we're going to strike back" – and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama weren't the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.

Let's also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. "Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man," declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. "He's not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world."

It wasn't until Hurricane Katrina – when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, "if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and help" revealed the true costs of obliviousness – that the cult began to fade.

What's more, the politics of stupidity didn't just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly – that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

All this is in the past. But the state of the energy debate shows that Republicans, despite Bush's plunge into record unpopularity and their defeat in 2006, still think that know-nothing politics works. And they may be right.

Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor expanded offshore drilling – and 51 percent of them believe that removing restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.

The headway Republicans are making on this issue won't prevent Democrats from expanding their majority in Congress, but it might limit their gains – and could conceivably swing the presidential election, where the polls show a much closer race.

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country's problems. It's not going to happen – not as long as one of America's two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

Paul Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times. Copyright 2008 New York Times News Service.

Friday, August 08, 2008

GYWO: It Moves!

The funniest (and rudest -- more on that in a minute) political strip on all the internetz, Get Your War On, is now animated, with a new episode posting every week at 23/6. Here's the latest, musically-themed episode:




The one thing about this that concerns me is that the first time I watched one of these -- and it was a different episode than this one -- the "fucks" and "shits" were bleeped out! Uh... dude, what the fuckin' fuck?!? The profanity rampant in the strip is part of what makes it so fucking great. If the animated series continues to bleep out all the dirty words, then it will probably just fucking suck, dude. I mean really.

T-Shirts

My good friend Buffoon sends a link to this T-shirt site with politically-themed and other shirts available. Here are two of my favorite:



Bless The Beasts And Answers

So, it would appear that this week's quiz was a lot tougher than even I thought it would be. I posted Eric B's answers in the comments section, and even he only got five lines correct. Really, I expected that the first couple and the last couple would be gimmes (but not the Bonus line, which I'm not surprised no one knew). Obviously it was not that way. The theme, to the surprise of few of you, was bands with animal names, and I kind of thought that some of the more contemporary ones might get recognized by you younger readers. Oh well!

All right, let's take a look at what you all missed, shall we?

1. In this dirty old part of the city, where the sun refuse to shine… We Gotta Get Out Of This Place; The Animals

2. Oh, I’d rather go and journey where the diamond crest is flowing… I Wasn't Born To Follow; The Byrds

3. City’s breaking down on a camel’s back. They just have to go ‘cause they don’t know wack. Feel Good, Inc.; Gorillaz

4. It’s not your face or the color of your hair or the sound of your voice, my dear. Living Proof; Cat Power

5. Anything’s hard to change, but hey, I got you down on your knees again. You Can't Count On Me; Counting Crows

6. I can’t look at the rocket launch, the trophy wives of astronauts, and I won’t listen to their words… I Like Birds; Eels

7. With frizzy hair, was a metaphor, festival time. Then this woman is a goddess on that festival shrine. Sly; The Cat Empire

8. It’s the big show tongue tip tied to the roof of my mouth, bad, naughty little angels come rushin’ out. 3 Inch Horses, Two Faced Monsters; Modest Mouse

9. You know, I’ve smoked a lot of grass; oh Lord, I’ve popped a lot of pills… The Pusher; Steppenwolf

10. The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload. I Don't Like Mondays; Boomtown Rats

**Bonus** If you say you need me, I will surely run away. If you swear that you don’t care, you know I’ll stay around until you do. Then I’ll leave. The Trouble With Love; Dogs Eye View

Hey, I think we might do this again next week if anyone's game.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Glenzilla On the Anthrax Mystery

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

A top U.S. government scientist, suspected of the anthrax attacks, commits suicide. ABC News knows who is responsible for false reports blaming those attacks on Iraq, but refuses to say.

Glenn Greenwald

Aug. 01, 2008 | (Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI - Update VII - Update VIII)

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters -- with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax -- sent directly into the heart of the country's elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets -- that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks. This was the letter sent to Brokaw:


The letter sent to Leahy contained this message:

We have anthrax.

You die now.

Are you afraid?

Death to America.

Death to Israel.

Allah is great.

By design, those attacks put the American population into a state of intense fear of Islamic terrorism, far more than the 9/11 attacks alone could have accomplished.

Much more important than the general attempt to link the anthrax to Islamic terrorists, there was a specific intent -- indispensably aided by ABC News -- to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. In my view, and I've written about this several times and in great detail to no avail, the role played by ABC News in this episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade. News of Ivins' suicide, which means (presumably) that the anthrax attacks originated from Ft. Detrick, adds critical new facts and heightens how scandalous ABC News' conduct continues to be in this matter.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.
Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:
The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.
Clearly, Ross' allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really "well-placed," one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted -- Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.

It's extremely possible -- one could say highly likely -- that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain -- as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax -- is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).

Seven years later, it's difficult for many people to recall, but, as I've amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply -- by design -- into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country. As but one example: after Ross' lead report on the October 26, 2001 edition of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings claiming that the Government had found bentonite, this is what Jennings said into the camera:

This news about bentonite as the additive being a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program is very significant. Partly because there's been a lot of pressure on the Bush administration inside and out to go after Saddam Hussein. And some are going to be quick to pick up on this as a smoking gun.
That's exactly what happened. The Weekly Standard published two lengthy articles attacking the FBI for focusing on a domestic culprit and -- relying almost exclusively on the ABC/Ross report -- insisted that Saddam was one of the most likely sources for those attacks. In November, 2001, they published an article (via Lexis) which began:
On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it's time to give credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around most other news organizations. Here's a bit from a comprehensive story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq -- and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type -- is behind the germ warfare.
The Weekly Standard published a much lengthier and more dogmatic article in April, 2002 again pushing the ABC "bentonite" claims and arguing: "There is purely circumstantial though highly suggestive evidence that might seem to link Iraq with last fall's anthrax terrorism." The American Enterprise Institute's Laurie Mylroie (who had an AEI article linking Saddam to 9/11 ready for publication at the AEI on September 13) expressly claimed in November, 2001 that "there is also tremendous evidence that subsequent anthrax attacks are connected to Iraq" and based that accusation almost exclusively on the report from ABC and Ross ("Mylroie: Evidence Shows Saddam Is Behind Anthrax Attacks").

And then, when President Bush named Iraq as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech -- just two months after ABC's report, when the anthrax attacks were still very vividly on the minds of Americans -- he specifically touted this claim:

The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.
Bush's invocation of Iraq was the only reference in the State of the Union address to the unsolved anthrax attacks. And the Iraq-anthrax connection was explicitly made by the President at a time when, as we now know, he was already eagerly planning an attack on Iraq.

There can't be any question that this extremely flamboyant though totally false linkage between Iraq and the anthrax attacks -- accomplished primarily by the false bentonite reports from ABC News and Brian Ross -- played a very significant role in how Americans perceived of the Islamic threat generally and Iraq specifically. As but one very illustrative example, The Washington Post's columnist, Richard Cohen, supported the invasion of Iraq, came to regret that support, and then explained what led him to do so, in a 2004 Post column entitled "Our Forgotten Panic":

I'm not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack -- more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.
Cohen -- in a March 18, 2008 Slate article in which he explains why he wrongfully supported the attack on Iraq -- disclosed this:
Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore -- at least it's never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York Post and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC. . . . There was ample reason to be afraid.

The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.

For this and other reasons, the anthrax letters appeared linked to the awful events of Sept. 11. It all seemed one and the same. Already, my impulse had been to strike back, an overwhelming urge that had, in fact, taken me by surprise on Sept. 11 itself when the first of the Twin Towers had collapsed. . . .

In the following days, as the horror started to be airbrushed -- no more bodies plummeting to the sidewalk -- the anthrax letters started to come, some to people I knew. And I thought, No, I'm not going to sit here passively and wait for it to happen. I wanted to go to "them," whoever "they" were, grab them by the neck, and get them before they could get us. One of "them" was Saddam Hussein. He had messed around with anthrax . . . He was a nasty little fascist, and he needed to be dealt with.

That, more or less, is how I made my decision to support the war in Iraq.

Cohen's mental process that led him to link anthrax to Iraq and then to support an attack on Iraq, warped as it is, was extremely common. Having heard ABC News in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack flamboyantly and repeatedly link Saddam to the anthrax attacks, followed by George Bush's making the same linkage (albeit more subtly) in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech, much of the public had implanted into their minds that Saddam Hussein was not just evil, but a severe threat to the U.S., likely the primary culprit behind the anthrax attacks. All along, though, the anthrax came from a U.S. Government/Army research lab.

Critically, ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted, as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax attacks -- every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks -- persisted.

We now know -- we knew even before news of Ivins' suicide last night, and know especially in light of it -- that the anthrax attacks didn't come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It came from our own Government's scientist, from the top Army bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government -- from people with some type of significant links to the same facility responsible for the attacks themselves.

Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant role -- I'd argue a very major role -- in propagandizing the American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further, propagandized the public to believe that our country was sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside of the Bush administration wanted to pursue -- including an attack an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional framework -- were justified and even necessary in order to survive.

ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and -- as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.

They're not protecting "sources." The people who fed them the bentonite story aren't "sources." They're fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate and attention than it has received thus far.

UPDATE: One other fact to note here is how bizarrely inept the effort by the Bush DOJ to find the real attacker has been. Extremely suspicious behavior from Ivins -- including his having found and completely cleaned anthrax traces on a co-worker's desk at the Ft. Detrick lab without telling anyone that he did so and then offering extremely strange explanations for why -- was publicly reported as early as 2004 by The LA Times (Ivins "detected an apparent anthrax leak in December 2001, at the height of the anthrax mailings investigation, but did not report it. Ivins considered the problem solved when he cleaned the affected office with bleach").

In October 2004, USA Today reported that Ivins was involved in another similar incident, in April of 2002, when Ivins performed unauthorized tests to detect the origins of more anthrax residue found at Ft. Detrick. Yet rather than having that repeated, strange behavior lead the FBI to discover that he was involved in the attacks, there was a very public effort -- as Atrios notes here -- to blame the attacks on Iraq and then, ultimately, to blame Steven Hatfill. Amazingly, as Atrios notes here, very few people other than "a few crazy bloggers are even interested" in finding out what happened here and why -- at least to demand that ABC News report the vital information that it already has that will shed very significant light on much of this.

UPDATE II: Ivins' local paper, Frederick News in Maryland, has printed several Letters to the Editor written by Ivins over the years. Though the underlying ideology is a bit difficult to discern, he seems clearly driven by a belief in the need for Christian doctrine to govern our laws and political institutions, with a particular interest in Catholic dogma. He wrote things like this:

Today we frequently admonish people who oppose abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide or capital punishment to keep their religious, moral, and philosophical beliefs to themselves.

Before dispensing such admonishments in the future, perhaps we should gratefully consider some of our country's most courageous, historical figures who refused to do so.

And then there's this rather cryptic message, published in 2006:
Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."

By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue."

It should be noted that the lawyer who had been representing Ivins in connection with the anthrax investigation categorically maintains Ivins' innocence and attributes his suicide to "the relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo."

On a note related to the main topic of the post, macgupta in comments notes the numerous prominent people in addition to those mentioned here -- including The Wall St. Jorunal Editors and former CIA Director James Woolsey -- who insisted rather emphatically from the beginning of the anthrax attacks that Saddam was likely to blame. Indeed, the WSJ Editorial Page -- along with others on the Right such as Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report and Fox News -- continued even into 2007 to insist that the FBI was erring by focusing on domestic suspects rather than Middle Easterners.

The Nation's Michael Massing noted at the time (in November, 2001) that as a direct result of the anthrax attacks, and the numerous claims insinuating that Iraq was behind them, "the political and journalistic establishment suddenly seems united in wanting to attack Iraq." There has long been an intense desire on the neoconservative Right to falsely link anthrax to Saddam specifically and Muslims generally. ABC News was, and (as a result of its inexcusable silence) continues to be, their best friend.

UPDATE III: See this important point from Atrios about Richard Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks happened by a "high government official" to take cipro. Atrios writes: "now that we know that the US gov't believes that anthrax came from the inside, shouldn't Cohen be a wee bit curious about what this warning was based on?"

That applies to much of the Beltway class, including many well-connected journalists, who were quietly popping cipro back then because, like Cohen, they heard from Government sources that they should. Leave aside the ethical questions about the fact that these journalists kept those warnings to themselves. Wouldn't the most basic journalistic instincts lead them now -- in light of the claims by our Government that the attacks came from a Government scientist -- to wonder why and how their Government sources were warning about an anthrax attack? Then again, the most basic journalistic instincts would have led ABC News to reveal who concocted and fed them the false "Saddam/anthrax" reports in the first place, and yet we still are forced to guess at those questions because ABC News continues to cover up the identity of the perpetrators.

UPDATE IV: John McCain, on the David Letterman Show, October 18, 2001 (days before ABC News first broadcast their bentonite report):

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we're doing fine . . . I think we'll do fine. The second phase -- if I could just make one, very quickly -- the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may -- have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.

ThinkProgress has the video. Someone ought to ask McCain what "indication" he was referencing that the anthrax "may have come from Iraq."

After all, three days later, McCain and Joe Lieberman went on Meet the Press (on October 21, 2001) and both strongly suggested that we would have to attack Iraq. Lieberman said that the anthrax was so complex and potent that "there's either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program."

As I said, it is not possible to overstate the importance of anthrax in putting the country into the state of fear that led to the attack on Iraq and so many of the other abuses of the Bush era. There are few news stories more significant, if there are any, than unveiling who the culprits were behind this deliberate propaganda. The fact that the current GOP presidential nominee claimed back then on national television to have some "indication" linking Saddam to the anthrax attacks makes it a bigger story still.

UPDATE V: I tried to be careful here to avoid accepting as True the matter of Ivins' guilt. Very early on in the article, I framed the analysis this way: "If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab," and I then noted in Update II that Ivins' lawyer vehemently maintains his innocence. My whole point here is that the U.S. Government now claims the anthrax attacks came from a Government scientist at a U.S. Army lab, and my conclusions follow from that premise, accepted as true only for purposes of this analysis.

It's worth underscoring that it is far from clear that Ivins had anything to do with the anthrax attacks, and someone in comments claiming (anonymously though credibly) that he knew Ivins personally asserts that Ivins was innocent and makes the case as to why the Government's accusations are suspect. As I see it, the more doubt there is about who was responsible for the anthrax attacks, the greater is the need for ABC News to reveal who fabricated their reports linking the attacks to Iraq.

UPDATE VI: I'll be on Rachel Maddow's radio show tonight at 8:30 p.m. EST to discuss this story. Local listings and live audio feed are here.

Numerous people have advised me in comments and via email that ABC News is deleting any mention of my piece today in the comment section to their article on the Ivins suicide (though many such comments now seem to be posted there). Last year, ABC was in full denial mode when responding to the stories I wrote about this issue. The key here, I think, will be to try to devise the right strategy to induce the right Congressional Committee to hold hearings on the false ABC News stories and the anthrax issue generally. I hope to have more details on that effort shortly.

UPDATE VII: Two prominent journalism professors -- Jay Rosen of NYU and Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University and a practicing journalist for 25 years -- have added their names to the list of people calling on ABC News and Brian Ross to reveal their sources for ABC's false bentonite story that was used to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq. Rosen and Gillmor both write that ABC and Ross should answer three questions which they jointly outline, and they both set forth the reasons, grounded in widely accepted principles of journalistic ethics, as to why ABC and Ross should do so.

UPDATE VIII: More here.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Big Peace

Our friend and colleague, the Freewayblogger, got his hands on some billboard vinyl recently, with pleasantly predictable results. Check it out, yo.

Whose Opening Line Is It, Anyway: Creature Comforts

Bone-bustin' busy day (week, month, year) here at the ol' Gene-Splicin' Dude Ranch, Bait Shop and Dance Emporium, so let's dispense with the small talk and just get to the meat of the thing. I expect there will be more than a couple of tough nuts in this week's quiz, and if anyone gets them all right, I'll... give that person my undying respect and admiration. Yep, that's what I'll do, honest. I promise.

Okay, go!

1. In this dirty old part of the city, where the sun refuse to shine…
2. Oh, I’d rather go and journey where the diamond crest is flowing…
3. City’s breaking down on a camel’s back. They just have to go ‘cause they don’t know wack.
4. It’s not your face or the color of your hair or the sound of your voice, my dear.
5. Anything’s hard to change, but hey, I got you down on your knees again.
6. I can’t look at the rocket launch, the trophy wives of astronauts, and I won’t listen to their words…
7. With frizzy hair, was a metaphor, festival time. Then this woman is a goddess on that festival shrine.
8. It’s the big show tongue tip tied to the roof of my mouth, bad, naughty little angels come rushin’ out.
9. You know, I’ve smoked a lot of grass; oh Lord, I’ve popped a lot of pills…
10. The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload.

**Bonus** If you say you need me, I will surely run away. If you swear that you don’t care, you know I’ll stay around until you do. Then I’ll leave.

Answers Friday!

Friday, August 01, 2008

Another Letter The Chronicle Won't Print

Editor --

As I read the Open Forum piece by Mark V. Vlasic in Friday's Chronicle ("The end of impunity?", 8/1), all I could think about was the possibility that maybe someday our own war criminal in chief, George W. Bush, along with his co-conspirators Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, et al, will one day face charges at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague for their illegal invasion of Iraq and multiple violations of the Geneva Convention sanctions against torture. The thought filled me with satisfaction for a long moment, even if the possibility of it actually happening is quite remote.

Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

Love, Generik

*****

(For a letter that the Chronicle did print -- and just today -- from our esteemed BARBARian colleague Tom Hilton, go here and scroll down to the sixth post. Congrats, Tom!)

Answers Of The Female Persuasion

After last week’s collection of pin-ups, I guess I’ve had women on the brain lately.

Not a bad collective showing from you testosterone-laden rabble this week, though you all missed #7 (understandably) and the Bonus line (which even Eric B missed – in fact, he only got six out of this week’s eleven right, missing that plus #1, #3, #7 and #10). And I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m still a bit surprised that there are no English Beat fans among my readers. What is it about the premier ska band of the ‘80s, a band that makes you want to dance for hours with every groove it lays down that you don’t like? I’m mystified and bewildered.

But I’m not so mystified or bewildered that I can’t post the answers here for you. Props to all of you who helped identify most of these lines, and a shout-out to robo’s lovely wife, who is named after one of my very favorite Allman Brothers’ songs.

1. Crossroads seem to come and go, yeah. The gypsy flies from coast to coast… Melissa; Allman Brothers

2. She tries not to shatter, kaleidoscope style, personality changes behind her red smile… Christine; Siouxsie & The Banshees

3. She plays wipeout on the drums, the squirrels and the birds come gather round and sing the guitar. Kate; Ben Folds Five

4. I got on a city bus and found a vacant seat, I thought I saw my future bride walking up the street… Nadine; Chuck Berry

5. (Oh yeah, come on) I met you at J.C. Penny, I think your nametag said Jenny. Debra; Beck

6. Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you… Julia; The Beatles

7. Your prettiness is seeping through, out from the dress I took from you, so pretty. Naomi; Neutral Milk Hotel

8. From distant star to this here bar, the me, the you, where are we now? Allison; Pixies

9. Is it all in that pretty little head of yours? What goes on in that place in the dark? Veronica; Elvis Costello

10. Long ago life was clean, sex was bad and obscene and the rich were so mean. Victoria; The Kinks

**Bonus** All set luncheonette, kitchenette to let. I bet I get hamburgerette again. Jeanette; English Beat

I guess we'll probably do this again next week, unless we don't.
Free Counter
Online Universities