command and control...,

The Titan II carried a W-53 thermonuclear warhead, with more than 560 times the explosive yield of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

motherjones | The term "wake-up call" is a tired cliché, but it is appropriate in the case of Command and Control, the frightening new exposé of America's nuclear weapons mishaps by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser. (Click here to read an excerpt and my detailed review.) In short, Schlosser delivers a book full of revelations that left me agape. While we still worry in the abstract about Iran and North Korea and Pakistan, it's easy to forget that we still have thousands of our own ungodly devices on hair-trigger alert at this very moment. And even if we never drop or launch another nuke on purpose, these weapons are, in Schlosser's words, "the most dangerous machines ever invented. And like every machine, sometimes they go wrong."

That's what the book is about. Through hard-fought documents and deep digging and extensive interviews, Schlosser reveals how close we've come, on numerous occasions, to a domestic nuclear detonation or an accidental war in which there are only losers. Command and Control will leave many readers with a deep unease about America's ability to handle our nukes safely. Schlosser's hope is that this unease will beget a long-neglected debate about "why we have them and when we use them and how many we need." But his book is no screed. Schlosser delivers an engrossing page-turner. Would that it were fiction.

the cowboy of the nsa

foreignpolicy | The NSA was already a data behemoth when Alexander took over. But under his watch, the breadth, scale, and ambition of its mission have expanded beyond anything ever contemplated by his predecessors. In 2007, the NSA began collecting information from Internet and technology companies under the so-called PRISM program. In essence, it was a pipes-bending operation. The NSA gets access to the companies' raw data--including e-mails, video chats, and messages sent through social media--and analysts then mine it for clues about terrorists and other foreign intelligence subjects. Similar to how Alexander wanted the NSA to feed him with intelligence at INSCOM, now some of the world's biggest technology companies -- including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple -- are feeding the NSA. But unlike Hayden, the companies cannot refuse Alexander's advances. The PRISM program operates under a legal regime, put in place a few years after Alexander arrived at the NSA, that allows the agency to demand broad categories of information from technology companies. 

Never in history has one agency of the U.S. government had the capacity, as well as the legal authority, to collect and store so much electronic information. Leaked NSA documents show the agency sucking up data from approximately 150 collection sites on six continents. The agency estimates that 1.6 percent of all data on the Internet flows through its systems on a given day -- an amount of information about 50 percent larger than what Google processes in the same period.

When Alexander arrived, the NSA was secretly investing in experimental databases to store these oceans of electronic signals and give analysts access to it all in as close to real time as possible. Under his direction, it has helped pioneer new methods of massive storage and retrieval. That has led to a data glut. The agency has collected so much information that it ran out of storage capacity at its 350-acre headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C. At a cost of more than $2 billion, it has built a new processing facility in the Utah desert, and it recently broke ground on a complex in Maryland. There is a line item in the NSA's budget just for research on "coping with information overload." 

Yet it's still not enough for Alexander, who has proposed installing the NSA's surveillance equipment on the networks of defense contractors, banks, and other organizations deemed essential to the U.S. economy or national security. Never has this intelligence agency -- whose primary mission is espionage, stealing secrets from other governments -- proposed to become the electronic watchman of American businesses. 

This kind of radical expansion shouldn't come as a surprise. In fact, it's a hallmark of Alexander's career. During the Iraq war, for example, he pioneered a suite of real-time intelligence analysis tools that aimed to scoop up every phone call, email, and text message in the country in a search for terrorists and insurgents. Military and intelligence officials say it provided valuable insights that helped turn the tide of the war.  It was also unprecedented in its scope and scale. He has transferred that architecture to a global scale now, and with his responsibilities at Cyber Command, he is expanding his writ into the world of computer network defense and cyber warfare. 

As a result, the NSA has never been more powerful, more pervasive, and more politically imperiled. The same philosophy that turned Alexander into a giant -- acquire as much data from as many sources as possible -- is now threatening to undo him. Alexander today finds himself in the unusual position of having to publicly defend once-secret programs and reassure Americans that the growth of his agency, which employs more than 35,000 people, is not a cause for alarm. In July, the House of Representatives almost approved a law to constrain the NSA's authorities -- the closest Congress has come to reining in the agency since the 9/11 attacks. That narrow defeat for surveillance opponents has set the stage for a Supreme Court ruling on whether metadata -- the information Alexander has most often sought about Americans -- should be afforded protection under the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against "unreasonable searches and seizures," which would make metadata harder for the government to acquire.

Alexander declined Foreign Policy's request for an interview, but in response to questions about his leadership, his respect for civil liberties, and the Snowden leaks, he provided a written statement.

"The missions of NSA and USCYBERCOM are conducted in a manner that is lawful, appropriate, and effective, and under the oversight of all three branches of the U.S. government," Alexander stated. "Our mission is to protect our people and defend the nation within the authorities granted by Congress, the courts and the president. There is an ongoing investigation into the damage sustained by our nation and our allies because of the recent unauthorized disclosure of classified material. Based on what we know to date, we believe these disclosures have caused significant and irreversible harm to the security of the nation." 

In lieu of an interview about his career, Alexander's spokesperson recommended a laudatory profile about him that appeared in West Point magazine. It begins: "At key moments throughout its history, the United States has been fortunate to have the right leader -- someone with an ideal combination of rare talent and strong character -- rise to a position of great responsibility in public service. With General Keith B. Alexander ... Americans are again experiencing this auspicious state of affairs."

Lawmakers and the public are increasingly taking a different view. They are skeptical about what Alexander has been doing with all the data he's collecting -- and why he's been willing to push the bounds of the law to get it. If he's going to preserve his empire, he'll have to mount the biggest charm offensive of his career. Fortunately for him, Alexander has spent as much time building a political base of power as a technological one.

information dominance center modelled after the deck of the starship enterprise...,

pbs | Congressional leaders already have a lot of power, but do they secretly want to captain the USS Enterprise? In an in-depth profile of NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, Foreign Policy reveals that one of the ways the general endeared himself to lawmakers and officials was to make them feel like Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the starship Enterprise from the TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

"When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a 'whoosh' sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather 'captain's chair' in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen. 'Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,' says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits."

twelve conscious men working together CAN rule the world...,

This video provides a visual analogy for how social cohesion is obtained in groups of people.  Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions are influenced in the direction of the group norm by information received from other group members.  Over time, the psychological pressure on non-conforming members tends to bring them into line with the developing group consensus.  It's an evolved mechanism, and explains why it's so hard to get action on an issue when the group consensus either opposes it or favors another action that has mutually exclusive requirements.  Like respectable americans vs. ratchet dysgenic breeders, legalization vs. war on drugs, infrastructure investment vs. war on terra, culture of competence vs. dopamine hegemony....,

It takes strong system-level pressure to shift the overall group norm from one stable state to another. That pressure can be in the form of either effective legislation or a shift embraced by a minimum critical mass of non-conformants and supported by generally available information. Fist tap io9.

parental investment and discipline nogroes - everything else is limp-wristed conversation...,

HuffPo | Wanting African-Americans to take responsibility for their lives, their kids and their education, Bill Cosby has offered some strong words to a group of people he has dubbed "no-groes."

In an interview with CNN's Don Lemon Saturday, the comedian was asked to reflect on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and to comment on the future of black leadership in the United States. 

“I think it has to come from the universities,” Cosby said, stressing that education is the key to a community's success. And it's not just prestigious universities, either. 

"Okay, you backed up and didn’t do well. You quit school but now you find you need that high school credential. Go to the community college,” he advised. 

The veteran actor went on to say that while women appear to be the leaders in the majority of households, he hopes to see more men step up to the plate. 

"What we need is for people to realize -- 'I want to raise my kid. I want to go back and get my three kids. I want to take on that responsibility. I want to love my children,'" he said, adding that he would love to see more black men taking a more visible role in parenting. 

Later in the interview, Cosby, who has previously stirred up controversy for telling blacks to "stop complaining" and take more responsibility for their choices, went on to talk about what he sees as the shortfalls of the juvenile rehabilitation system. He argued that juvenile inmates are often given medication instead of being counseled or equipped with skills to change their behavior. 

“If you drug these people, and then you release them, and there’s no prescription for them to get to take to do the same thing, and they go back to the same place,” he said.

At this juncture, Cosby interrupted himself, saying: “Now, about this time, this is when you hear the no-groes jump up and say, ‘Why don’t you talk about the good things?’”

The issue, Cosby argued, is that while the good things are "taking care of themselves pretty well," he wants to help people get to a position "so they will understand" how to take control of their lives.

dramatic race films are for losers...,

Calvin and Muad'Dib

guardian | Lee Daniel's new film The Butler is a box office success, already generating Oscar buzz, but I am not interested in seeing it. I'm also skipping British filmmaker Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, another movie about black people dealing with slavery.

I'm convinced these black race films are created for a white, liberal film audience to engender white guilt and make them feel bad about themselves. Regardless of your race, these films are unlikely to teach you anything you don't already know. Frankly, why can't black people get over slavery? Or, at least, why doesn't anyone want to see more contemporary portrayals of black lives?

The narrow range of films about the black life experience being produced by Hollywood is actually dangerous because it limits the imagination, it doesn't allow real progress to take place. Yet, sadly, these roles are some of the only ones open to black talent. People want us to cheer that black actors from The Butler and 12 Years a Slave are likely to be up for best actor and actress awards, yet it feels like a throwback, almost to the Gone with the Wind era.

I am not against revisiting the past, but there are already numerous black films that have covered the civil rights era and slavery. The quandary with black movies is they are overly fixated on the past, only depicting black suffering in relation to race, which is bizarre and peculiar. 

Can a black film be created about black people not focusing on race? Is race the only central conflict the lives of people of colour? 

I don't know about other black people, but I don't sit around all day thinking only about the fact I am black. I think about the problems in my life: the struggles, the joys, the happiness, most of which don't involve the issue of race. As a black person, I can honestly say I am exhausted and bored with these kinds of "dramatic race" films.

I might have to turn in my black card, because I don't care much about slavery. I've already watched the television series Roots, which I feel covered the subject matter extremely well. Of course, I understand slavery is an important part of any black person's history, but dwelling on slavery is pathetic. It ended in North America over 100 years ago, yet since Django Unchained made over $400m last year, more slavery movies emerge.

culture of competence in twenty five words or less...,

Calvin and Muad'Dib

greenwald better start looking over his shoulder for nazgul from tel aviv...,

guardian | The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.

The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.

But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."

According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection", it says.

Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.

why never no call for israel to disarm?

alalam | Syria President Bashar Assad says Israel should be the first to disarm from weapons of mass destructions, since it has nuclear, biological and chemical arms.

He added on Thursday that that all countries in the Mideast should be held to international protocol in order to achieve stability in the region.

Syria decided to cede control of its chemical weapons because of a Russian proposal and not the threat of US military intervention, Interfax news agency quoted President Bashar Assad as saying in an interview with Russia's state-run Rossiya-24 channel.

"Syria is placing its chemical weapons under international control because of Russia. The US threats did not influence the decision," he said.

Assad also told Rossiya-24 that Syria would submit documents to the United Nations for an agreement governing the handover of its chemical arsenal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the initiative will not succeed unless Washington abandons plans for potential air strikes on Syria on the pretext of an alleged Aug. 21 poison gas attack which US President Barack Obama blames on Syrian government forces.

Syria has denied any involvement in the attack, but agreed to Moscow's proposal that it give up its chemical weapons stocks.

one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...,

latimes | Israel has 80 nuclear warheads and the potential to double that number, according to a new report by U.S. experts.

In the Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, proliferation experts Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris write that Israel stopped production of nuclear warheads in 2004.

But the country has enough fissile material for an additional 115 to 190 warheads, according to the report, meaning it could as much as double its arsenal.

Previous estimates have been higher but the new figures agree with the 2013 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute yearbook on armament and international security. The yearbook estimated 50 of Israel's nuclear warheads were for medium-range ballistic missiles and 30 were for for bombs carried by aircraft, according to a report in the Guardian. 

Although widely assumed a nuclear power, Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons or capabilities and continues to maintain its decades-old "strategic ambiguity" policy on the matter, neither confirming nor denying foreign reports on the issue. 

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, leaked the country's alleged nuclear secrets to a British newspaper, and said Israel had at least 100 nuclear weapons. Vanunu was later convicted of espionage and treason and was released from jail in 2004 after serving 17 years.

Israel continued to adhere to its vagueness policy after comments made by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2006 were interpreted by many as an inadvertent confirmation that Israel had nuclear weapons. 

Following Sunday's reports, Israeli defense analyst Amir Oren wrote that the ambiguity policy has done "its duty honorably and can now retire." In the current regional conditions, Israel could benefit from giving up the vagueness, he wrote in Haaretz.

Founded in 1952, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, is nearly as old as the state. It acknowledges two "nuclear research centers," one in central Israel, the other in the Negev desert.

old soldiers can't catch a break...,

foxnews | It could be a long semester for David Petraeus.

The retired four-star general and former CIA director — whose career ended in scandal last year — was heckled by roughly a dozen protesters following his first lecture at the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College on Monday, according to a 90-second video posted online Wednesday that has been viewed more than 130,000 times.

“Why are you teaching at CUNY?” one heckler screamed as Petraeus walked near Central Park. “What do you have to say, huh?”

The hecklers seemed more enraged by Petraeus' 37-year military career, which culminated in his commanding U.S. forces in Afghanistan, than the adultery scandal which prompted his resignation from the CIA in November.

Petraeus, 60, was also blasted as a “scumbag” and a “war criminal” by the angry throng. The heckling became so intense at one point that Petraeus walked into the street and dodged oncoming traffic — including a city bus — as his critics closely followed.

“Petraeus out of CUNY! Petraeus out of CUNY!” the hecklers continued.

Several in the crowd promised to harass Petraeus after “every class” at the public university, while another demanded that he "leave.”

“He’s a war criminal, there’s a war criminal right here,” another protester said. “He deserves to be tried.”

Petraeus admitted having an affair with Paula Broadwell — author of his biography "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus" — when he resigned from the CIA. The affair came to light in a messy fashion: Broadwell was accused of sending harassing emails to a Florida socialite who was friends with the general's family, prompting her to complain to an acquaintance who worked for the FBI. Investigators traced the emails to Broadwell, and in the course of doing so, uncovered intimate messages between Broadwell and Petraeus. Although the affair, which would have violated military rules, allegedly occurred after Petraeus left the Army, it was also seen as a serious matter at the CIA, where such secrets could make someone vulnerable to compromise.

Months after stepping down, Petraeus made it known he would seek a career in academia. The New York Times reported in July that Petraeus would teach a seminar at the school for just $1 following a report by Gawker.com that indicated he was to be paid $200,000 according to documents the website obtained.

Petraeus proposed the salary reduction following criticism of his anticipated compensation to “remove money as a point of controversy,” according to his attorney, Robert Barnett.

"The general never was taking on this teaching assignment for the money," Barnett told The Associated Press. "Once controversy arose about the amount he was being paid, he decided it was much more important to keep the focus on the students, on the school and on the teaching and not have it be about the money."

Petraeus, who has a doctorate from Princeton University and extensive teaching experience, was scheduled to start at the school as a visiting professor on Aug. 1.

The college’s dean, Ann Kirschner, lauded Petraeus while announcing the hire in April, saying the position correlates with his research interests in energy, manufacturing, life sciences and information technology and their implications for the U.S. His first seminar this fall is a course in American Studies called “Are We on the Threshold of the North American Decade?”

In a statement posted to the college's website, Kirschner called for a more civilized debate.

uh.., you don't pay us enough to get mixed up in this medieval isht...,

militarytimes | To the list of skeptics who question the need for air strikes against Syria, add an another unlikely group — many U.S. troops.

“I haven’t heard one single person be supportive of it,” said an Army staff sergeant at Fort Hood who asked not to be identified by name.

A Military Times survey of more than 750 active-duty troops this week found service members oppose military action in Syria by a margin of about three to one.

 

The survey conducted online Monday and Tuesday found that about 75 percent of troops are not in favor of air strikes in response to reports that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to kill civilians in that country.

A higher percentage of troops, about 80 percent, say they do not believe getting involved in the two-year-old civil war is in the U.S. national interest.

The results suggest that opposition inside the military may be more intense than among the U.S. population at large. About 64 percent of Americans oppose air strikes, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll published Monday.

The Military Times survey is an unscientific sampling of Military Times readers and reflects the views of many career enlisted members and officers.

For many troops, money is a key consideration. Troops question the cost of bombing Syria at a time when budget cuts are shrinking their pay raises, putting their benefits package at risk and forcing some of their friends to separate involuntarily.

“We don’t have money for anything else but we have a couple hundred million dollars to lob some Tomahawks and mount an expensive campaign in Syria?” said Army Sgt. 1st Class Chris Larue, a 39-year-old maintenance expert at Fort Eustis, Va., referring to the precision-guided missiles that are likely to be used in any strike.

The debate about striking Syria is also revealing a strain of isolationism growing inside a battle-weary military that has spent more than a decade supporting high-tempo war operations overseas.

“People are just sick of it,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Harvey, a nuclear-trained officer who works at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

“It’s like the old pre-World War II isolationism, I hear grumblings of that. People would rather withdraw all our troops and let the rest of the world figure out what to do. I think there is a lot of credence to that argument.”

drug war discloses sheer moral horror at the heart of this allegedly "free society"...,

wakingtimes | In 2011 the federal government decreed that marijuana had no accepted medical use use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin. Accepting and promoting the powerful health benefits of marijuana would instantly cut huge profits geared towards cancer treatment and the U.S. would have to admit it imprisons the population for no cause. Nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States are for marijuana.

According to MarijuanaNews.com editor Richard Cowan, the answer is because it is a threat to cannabis prohibition “…there really is massive proof that the suppression of medical cannabis represents the greatest failure of the institutions of a free society, medicine, journalism, science, and our fundamental values,” Cowan notes.

While Colorado and Washington have not yet set up their regulatory systems, both states will likely sell licenses to farmers who want to grow marijuana as well as to manufacturing plants and retail sellers. The marijuana will also likely be taxed at each stage of its growth, processing, and sale.

“In both Colorado and Washington, legalization was done by citizens with no participation by elected representatives until they had to pass laws to comply with the initiative. In other initiative states I would expect such measures – I would expect a new one in California, for instance – and roughly half the states permit this and the rest don’t.

“In the states that do have initiatives I expect efforts to get it on the ballot. The other half it will be much tougher. It’s hard to get elected representatives to do this,” Collins said.

Armantano is more optimistic about the spread of legalized pot. He compared the DOJ’s announcement to the federal government’s actions toward the end of alcohol prohibition in America a century ago, when states decided to stop following the federal ban on alcohol sales and the federal government said it would not step in and prosecute crimes.

“For first time we now have clear message from fed government saying they will not stand in way of states that wish to implement alternative regulatory schemes in lieu of federal prohibition,” Armantano said.

He predicted that within the next one to three years, five or six other states may join Colorado and Washington in legalizing the drug, setting the stage for the rest of the country to follow.

The Age of Deception is Ending 

In 2003, the U.S. Government as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services filed for, and was awarded a patent on cannabinoids. The reason? Because research into cannabinoids allowed pharmaceutical companies to acquire practical knowledge on one of the most powerful antioxidants and neuroprotectants known to the natural world.

The U.S. Patent 6630507 was specifically initiated when researchers found that cannabinoids had specific antioxidant properties making them useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention.

Besides the top 10 health benefits below, findings published in the journalPLoS ONE, researchers have now have now discovered that marijuana-like chemicals trigger receptors on human immune cells that can directly inhibit a type of human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) found in late-stage AIDS.

Recent studies have even shown it to be an effective atypical anti-psychotic in treating schizophrenia, a disease many other studies have inconsistently found it causing.

tired of waiting?

you remember chase and payton?

Chase and Payton when it was news.

truthout | Berwyn Heights officer Amir Johnson knew this was his mayor’s house, but had no idea what the commotion was about because the Prince George’s County Police Department hadn’t bothered to contact the Berwyn Heights police chief, as they were required to do under a memorandum of understanding between the two agencies. Johnson told the Washington Post that an officer at the scene told him, “The guy in there is crazy. He says he is the mayor of Berwyn Heights.”

Johnson replied, “That is the mayor of Berwyn Heights.”

Johnson then called Berwyn Heights police chief Patrick Murphy. Eventually, Murphy was put in touch with the supervising officer, Det. Sgt. David Martini. Murphy recounted the conversation to the Post: “Martini tells me that when the SWAT team came to the door, the mayor met them at the door, opened it partially, saw who it was, and then tried to slam the door on them,” Murphy recalled. “And that at that point, Martini claimed, they had to force entry, the dogs took aggressive stances, and they were shot.”

If that indeed was what Martini told Murphy, he was either lying or repeating a lie told to him by one of his subordinates. There was never any further mention of Calvo shutting the door on the SWAT team - because it never happened. Calvo later had his dogs autopsied - the trajectories the bullets took through the dogs’ bodies weren’t consistent with the SWAT team’s story.

But the lies, obfuscations, and stonewalling were only beginning.

The police department would first claim that they had obtained a no-knock warrant for the raid. They then backtracked and blamed Calvo’s mother-in-law, arguing that when her scream blew their cover, they were no longer obligated to knock and announce themselves. (This was an interesting theory, given that the knock-and-announce requirement, by definition, would have required them to blow their own cover. That’s the point of the requirement.) Maj. Mark Magaw, commander of the Prince George’s County narcotics enforcement division, claimed that the SWAT team couldn’t have obtained a no-knock warrant if they had wanted to, because the state of Maryland doesn’t allow them. This too was false. The state had passed a bill allowing for no-knock warrants in 2005. It’s the sort of law that one would think would have a day-to-day impact on the drug unit of a police department that conducts several raids each week. Yet the head narcotics unit in Prince George’s County was completely ignorant of it. Three years later, Magaw would be promoted to Prince George’s County police chief.

The affidavit for the search warrant was prepared by Det. Shawn Scarlata. It is incredibly thin. In a few paragraphs, Scarlata relates that he intercepted a FedEx package containing thirty-two pounds of marijuana at one of the company’s warehouses. The package was addressed to Trinity Tomsic at her home address. A police officer disguised as a delivery man then took the package to Calvo’s house, where it was accepted by Georgia Porter. There was also a one-paragraph description of Calvo’s home. That’s the only information in the warrant specific to Calvo and his family. The remainder of the six-page affidavit is a cut-and-paste recitation of Scarlata’s training, qualifications, and assumptions he felt he could make based on his experience as a narcotics officer. As Calvo described the warrant in an online chat, “It talks about all the stuff a drug trafficker should have in his or her home and then says something like, ‘Although we know that the police have no evidence of these things, they can be inferred from the very nature of the charge.’ It is circular reasoning that says because we are suspicious of you, there must be evidence of your guilt.”

On August 7, police arrested a FedEx driver and an accomplice and charged them with various crimes related to drug trafficking. Trinity Tomsic was never supposed to receive that package of marijuana. A drug distributor in Arizona had used her address to get the package into the general Prince George’s County area, at which point an accomplice working for the delivery company was supposed to intercept it. The police had found several similar packages. Worse, county police knew the scheme was going on and knew some packages had been delivered to residences unbeknownst to the people who lived in them. The Washington Post reported a couple of months later on cases in which innocent people had been arrested. “Defense lawyers who practice in the county said authorities appear to arrest and charge anyone who picks up a package containing marijuana without conducting a further investigation,” the Post reported. “The more I think about that, the angrier I get,” Calvo later told Post columnist Marc Fisher. “They knew this scheme was going on, yet it never occurred to them from the moment they found out about that package that we were anything but drug dealers.”

Stepin Fetchit and Muhammad Ali...,

NYTimes | Loosely inspired by an actual friendship between the two men, the play explores how each dealt with the pressure of being a black public figure trying to shape his identity in the face of outside forces. Fetchit became Hollywood’s first black star, but only by embodying a demeaning stereotype of black men as lazy and shiftless. Despite Ali’s new fame as a boxing champ, his alliance with the Nation of Islam made him controversial. Mr. Power’s play suggests that while Fetchit became indelibly associated with racial prejudice, and Ali with black pride, their divergent stories may have had more to do with the eras in which they were born than the characters of the men themselves. 

The play takes place primarily in Lewiston, Me., in 1965, where Ali is preparing for a rematch with Sonny Liston, whom he had beaten the year before to take the heavyweight title. The atmosphere is fraught, since the recent assassination of Malcolm X has put a spotlight on Ali’s relations with the Nation of Islam. (That group, which Malcolm X had left, was rumored to be behind the killing.) The remote Lewiston was selected for the fight because no more prominent city would host it after rumors began that allies of Malcolm X would be gunning — literally — for Ali. 

In this tense atmosphere, Ali (Ray Fisher) turns to Fetchit (K. Todd Freeman) for informal advice. He knows that Fetchit was an intimate friend of the great black fighter Jack Johnson, and despite his preening egoism, Ali wouldn’t mind having an ace in the hole: knowledge of a legendary maneuver called the “anchor punch” that he believes might have been entrusted to Fetchit. 

Fetchit claims to know nothing of this secret weapon but is eager to rehabilitate his image by linking himself with a figure who embodies self-determination. (In the scene of their first meeting, Ali teasingly calls him “a traitor to their race.”) Having established the reason for their alliance, however, Mr. Power cannot make it a convincing focus of the narrative, so the play bobs and weaves among a host of subplots. 

Flashbacks to Hollywood in the 1920s depict Fetchit — his real name was Lincoln Perry — shrewdly negotiating his contract with the paternalistic studio chief William Fox (a feisty Richard Masur). A star of the vaudeville circuit with a huge following, Fetchit knows his value, and manages to secure highly favorable terms — albeit only by inventing a fictional white lawyer to blame for his demands.

it's all about strengthening the fourth...,

npr | We've all had the experience of watching a great athletic performance — from gymnast Mary Lou Retton defying gravity to Michael Jordan sinking a mind-blowing turnaround jumper — and wondered: Were they born with that talent or can you get there with hard work and practice?

Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein says scientists are learning a lot more about the role of genetics in athletic performance. In his new book, The Sports Gene, he looks at whether big league hitters have naturally faster reflexes, whether some people are born with speed and that delicate question of whether African-Americans are better athletes than whites. Epstein says that science now has answers, or at least insights, into all those questions. He joins Fresh Air's Dave Davies to talk about the secret to hitting a fastball and why slow dogs win the Iditarod.

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Interview Highlights

On the truth about baseball and softball hitter reflexes

"Going into it, I figured that they would have these superhuman reaction speeds because they face 100-mile-an-hour pitches everyday, and [softball pitcher] Jennie Finch's fastballs take exactly the amount of time as a mid-'90s baseball does. So the baseball comes at 60 feet 6 inches, 95 miles an hour; Jennie Finch throws from about 43 feet at about 65 miles an hour. Same exact time and the ball is bigger and yet they couldn't hit it all. It turns out that even the best hitters in the world have perfectly pedestrian reaction times."

On how, then, hitters manage to hit the ball

"They pick up on cues from the players' bodies before their pitch. So for a pitcher, without knowing it, the hitters are actually focusing in on the motion of the pitcher's shoulder and the pitcher's torso and hand. And then, as soon as the ball is released, [hitters focus] on what is called the flicker, which is a flashing pattern that the [ball's] red seams make as they rotate. And it's only picking up those anticipatory cues that allows the hitter to hit the ball.

"... This is a learned perceptual skill. And in fact, if you do a digital simulation, which some scientists have done, where you delete the pitcher's shoulder, [the Los Angeles Angels'] Albert Pujols becomes me, basically. You have to delete a little more than the shoulder to get him to that novice level, but he basically becomes a novice if you do that. And you can do the same thing with tennis players."

On breeding sled dogs for the Iditarod

"As I write in the book, it's not the fastest dogs that win. So sled dogs, when they were first bred for racing, the mushers bred for speed traits, and the idea was to race between checkpoints in the Iditarod very, very quickly, and they topped out in their top speed. And then what became popular because of [four-time Iditarod champion] Lance Mackey, who I write about, who couldn't afford to breed fast dogs, he had to breed instead dogs that were slower but would just go and go and go, and had a drive to pull the sled all the time and never wanted to stop. And it turns out — and scientists look at some of those sled dogs — they've actually been bred for motivation, they've been bred for work ethic. And the speeds of the Iditarod races are getting faster because the dogs are pulling longer, not faster."

On the question of whether African-Americans are predisposed for athletics

"Most of our ancestry as humans has occurred in Africa, so people have been in Africa for far longer than they've been outside of Africa. So genes for hundreds of thousands of years were evolving, changing inside of Africa, and then just a tiny group of people — maybe no more than 150 people, or a small group — left East Africa en route to populating the rest of the world. At each stop, their genes changed to accommodate their environments and sometimes just by random chance. ... But what this means is that most of the genetic differences that have been built up in our history are all still in Africa. All of us outside of Africa are just tiny subsets of a tiny subset that left Africa. So if you got rid of everyone in the world outside of Africa you would lose a little, but you would preserve most of the genetic variation for all of humanity.

"... [For] a particular trait, you might find the most diversity within an African population, as opposed to comparing someone in an African population and someone in a European population. So you might find the fastest 10 runners and the slowest 10 runners. But nobody is looking for the slowest 10 runners."

the enduring false narratives of segregation...,

theatlantic | The September issue of The Atlantic, now available online, includes a "Chartist" feature that graphically synthesizes some of the research we've covered at Cities on the changing shape of segregation in America since the 1960s, its consequences and its costs for everyone.

Several people helped me pull together some of the data points mentioned in the magazine, notably the University of California Berkeley's Rucker Johnson, who has done extensive work on the life outcomes of children who attend segregated schools, and Robert Bullard, who has amassed a frightening collection of research on the health hazards of living in minority communities.

I wanted to share a few more findings that we couldn't squeeze onto the page in the magazine and then throw out some broader questions about why all of these trends persist. First, a few more data points on what segregation means today, even for middle-class minority families:

• On average, affluent blacks and Hispanics live in neighborhoods with fewer resources than poor whites do.
• Census data from 2000, for example, showed that the average black household making more than $60,000 lived in a neighborhood with a higher poverty rate than the average white household earning less than $20,000.
• A longitudinal study run from 1968-2005 found that the average black child spent one-quarter of his or her childhood living in a high-poverty neighborhood. For the average white child, that number is 3 percent.
• The black child poverty rate in 1968 was 35 percent; it is the same today.
• Minorities make up 56 percent of the population living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation's commercial hazardous waste facilities.
• Middle-income blacks (with household incomes between $50,000-$60,000) live in neighborhoods that are on average more polluted than the average neighborhood where white households making less than $10,000 live.

Segregation still matters because segregated neighborhoods are associated with worse outcomes for health, educational attainment, imprisonment, access to jobs and more. In the magazine, we tried to walk through some of these consequences in terms of the economic growth of whole metropolitan areas.

But one issue we did not get into is why such stark segregation persists, now two full generations after the civil rights era. NYU sociologist Patrick Sharkey discussed this question recently with Richard Florida, drawing on the findings of his recent book, Stuck in Place.

We often blame poor people for their own poverty, and blame whole neighborhoods for the fact that government has systematically failed to invest in them – as the comments on this story recently reminded me. This narrative suggests that everyone would leave segregated, high-poverty, polluted neighborhoods if they just had the money to move out, and that people who don't live in such places arrived where they are through their own hard work and responsibility.

That story, which focuses on the faults and skills of individual people, ignores the fact that we've arrived at this picture of segregation for a lot of complicated, long-running, systemic reasons that are so much bigger than individual families (and whether they have dads or not). For decades, policies around who is eligible for home loans, where we pave highways, and what kinds of houses can be built in some communities have encouraged middle-class whites to leave the city and move into the suburbs. At the same time, ill-fated government ideas about public housing clustered low-income blacks in high-rise housing projects. Mass incarceration further weakened minority communities.

And as Sharkey points out, in the midst of all this, the changing economy also decimated the very same good industrial jobs that drew many blacks to northern cities during the Great Migration in the first place.

All of which is to say that the responsibility for lessening the consequences of segregation does not solely fall on the people who experience it.

the third wave - crashed and still crashing...,

NYTimes | In many northern cities, the 1974 United States Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley killed any hopes of integrating the public schools. That ruling, involving Detroit and its suburbs, said that a mandatory plan to achieve integration by busing black children from Detroit across district lines to mainly white suburbs was unconstitutional. The result accelerated white flight to the suburbs, leaving the schools in urban centers even more segregated than they had been. 

Most famously, this happened in Boston, where court-ordered integration resulted in a busing plan that wound up mainly moving children of color around the city. 

But busing had greater success in some places, particularly those where the plans were carried out countywide, reducing the chances of white flight. They included Louisville-Jefferson County, Raleigh-Wake County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. 

This week’s Retro Report video, “The Battle for Busing,” follows the story of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, which became a national model for racial integration for 30 years only to resegregate about a decade ago, after a court ruling lifted the mandatory integration plan.

When the Charlotte busing plan began in 1971, there were whites who threatened to go to jail before they would let their children attend schools with blacks. The open racism voiced by whites in the Retro Report’s archival footage is vicious and ugly; students were injured when fistfights broke out between whites and blacks. 

But by 1974, the district was being singled out in the news media as a national model, particularly West Charlotte High, which had previously been all black. The impact of integration was visible almost immediately at the school. When whites arrived, the facilities were upgraded, said a former chairman of the school board, Arthur Griffin. A gravel parking lot was paved, and the football stadium and the gymnasium were renovated. 

Over the years, researchers like Prof. Roslyn Mickelson at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, conducted studies concluding that children of any race who attended diverse schools were more likely to succeed, in areas like graduating, avoiding crime and attending college. 

But in the end, the same federal courts that had ushered in integration helped kill it. In the late 1990s, Judge Robert D. Potter of Federal District Court essentially said that the Charlotte district had met its constitutional duty by successfully creating a single school system serving all children regardless of race and that no more need be done.

In a few years’ time, West Charlotte High, which had been roughly 40 percent black and 60 percent white in the 1970s, became 88 percent black and 1 percent white. And it wasn’t just Charlotte. Today, nearly two-thirds of the school districts that had been ordered to desegregate are no longer required to do so, including Seminole County, Fla. (2006); Little Rock, Ark. (2007); and Galveston County, Tex. (2009). 

The New York City system is more segregated than it was in the 1980s: half the schools are more than 90 percent black and Hispanic. For more about the nation’s “steady and massive resegregation,” see this Reporter’s Notebook from Retro Report. 

This week’s Retro Report is the 10th in our documentary project, which was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report has a staff of 12 journalists and 6 contributors led by Kyra Darnton. It is a nonprofit video news organization that aims to provide a thoughtful counterweight to today’s 24/7 news cycle. The videos are typically 10 to 12 minutes long.

the second wave of winning hearts and minds?

henrymakow | FLASHBACK TO 1976 by Nancy Borman Reprinted from the Village Voice May 21, 1979, pp. 117-122. Abridged by Henry Makow

At Random House on March 15, 1976, "Feminist Revolution" was just another women's book in production. It consisted of a multifaceted analysis of the women's liberation movement edited by members of Redstockings, an early radical feminist group. A self-published edition released the previous fall had stirred up controversy with its indictment of liberals, lesbian pseudo-leftists, and foundation grant feminists. 5000 copies had sold out.

Part of the book-some say the most interesting part-was titled "Agents, Opportunists and Fools." It attempted to link the CIA and the corporate establishment to several individuals and institutions connected with Ms. Magazine... Feminist Revolution had passed an initial libel reading by Random House's legal department on March 2nd, and a contract was signed in the office that March morning. 20,000 copies of the book were scheduled to hit the stores in June.

That afternoon, an unannounced visitor appeared in the citadel of the free press. A presumably angry Gloria Steinem asked to see Random House president Robert Bernstein. She was there to hand-deliver a letter from her attorney threatening to sue for libel unless the chapter on the CIA was removed from the book.

No one knows what Steinem and Bernstein said in their private meeting, and it may have been just coincidence that, within weeks Random House was blitzed with similar threats from other people and groups mentioned in the CIA chapter: Clay Felker, Women's Action AlIiance, Warner Communications, Franklin Thomas, the Overseas Education Fund of the League of Women Voters, and Katherine Graham.

But, in any case, publication of Feminist Revolution was delayed nearly 3 years; the printing run was cut to 12,500, despite 13,000 advance orders; and when the book was finally released last month, the chapter on Gloria Steinem and the CIA had been deleted in its entirety. Somehow, the word "abridged" on the cover fails to answer the question: What happened?

the first wave of winning hearts and minds...,

HuffPo | Comedian and "The Talk" co-host Sheryl Underwood is apologizing for comments she made about natural black hair.

On Friday, Aug. 31, a re-run episode of CBS' "The Talk" featured the ladies discussing what supermodel Heidi Klum does with her biracial sons' shorn hair, Mediate first reported. (In a previous interview with Your Tango, Klum had detailed how she kept sons Henry's and Johan's hair after shaving their afros and made art out of the pieces.)

Underwood, apparently, couldn't understand.

"OK, I'm sorry, but why would you save afro hair?" Underwood asked. “You can’t weave afro hair. You never see us at the hair place going ‘Look, here, what I need here is, I need those curly, nappy beads.' That just seems nasty.”

When Sara Gilbert admitted to keeping some of her own son's hair, Underwood interjected saying, "Which is probably some beautiful, long, silky stuff."

Twitter exploded with critics blasting Underwood for her insensitive comments, The Root noted.

On Wednesday morning, Underwood called into Steve Harvey's radio show to apologize. Harvey defended his friend, saying "we all make mistakes." He also gave her the chance to read a prepared statement:

I want to apologize for my recent attempt at humor that missed the target and hit my people squarely in the heart. To all of you I say, I’m very sorry for my failed attempt at humor surrounding something that’s very sensitive to us: our hair. I could use this time to try to explain the intent of what I said, but misunderstanding aside, the way the joke came out offended my people and my community, which was not my intent.

Underwood thanked those who called her out on her comments and asked for forgiveness.

Prior to this apology, she spoke with natural hair blogger Curly Nikki about the incident, saying she was "misunderstood." She said it was a "bad choice of words" to juxtapose descriptions about the "nappy" afro hair of a black boy with the "silky" hair of a white boy. She admitted it was a mistake.

"I am going to make mistakes, because I’m human," she added. "And I’m sorry for what my words inferred, but it doesn’t call my Blackness into question. My Blackness comes out in other ways, subtle ways. On the show, when they refer to him as simply, ‘Obama’, I straighten them up and remind them that he ain’t your boy, he’s the president. President Obama. I’m learning lessons, and I cannot evolve if I’m not allowed to be empowering."

sammy sosa is a vampire...,

inquistr | Sammy Sosa may be best known for being a major league baseball player but we now have photographic evidence of his other occupation: Blood sucker. Yes, it appears that Sammy Sosa is a vampire. 

Don’t believe me? OK, let’s do a little test. 

Close your eyes and picture a vampire. Do you see a man with a sickly white face? A large widow’s peak hanging down from a carefully sculpted oily mas of slicked back hair? A tailored suit with a blood red tie? Is your vampire standing next to an unsuspecting pretty woman? OK, now check out the photo of Sammy Sosa courtesy of Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan. 

 Widow’s peak? Check. Pale face? Check. Tailored suit? Blood red tie? Unsuspecting victim? Check, check check. Sammy Sosa is a vampire. There’s just no other explanation. Except for this one: NESN reports that Sosa has been experimenting with “skin conditioning” procedures since 2009 to give himself lighter skin. The good news is that the process seems to be working. The bad news is that it has made Sosa looking like a vampire.

 The former Cubs slugger has kept himself out of the spotlight since he retired in 2007. Some people speculate that Sosa has avoided the spotlight because of the steroid issues that stained his career. But I think we all know the real reason: He’ll turn to stone if he’s hit with direct light.

Sammy Sosa may be best known for being a major league baseball player but we now have photographic evidence of his other occupation: Blood sucker. Yes, it appears that Sammy Sosa is a vampire. Don’t believe me? OK, let’s do a little test. Close your eyes and picture a vampire. Do you see a man with a sickly white face? A large widow’s peak hanging down from a carefully sculpted oily mas of slicked back hair? A tailored suit with a blood red tie? Is your vampire standing next to an unsuspecting pretty woman? OK, now check out the photo of Sammy Sosa courtesy of Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan. Widow’s peak? Check. Pale face? Check. Tailored suit? Blood red tie? Unsuspecting victim? Check, check check. Sammy Sosa is a vampire. There’s just no other explanation. Except for this one: NESN reports that Sosa has been experimenting with “skin conditioning” procedures since 2009 to give himself lighter skin. The good news is that the process seems to be working. The bad news is that it has made Sosa looking like a vampire. The former Cubs slugger has kept himself out of the spotlight since he retired in 2007. Some people speculate that Sosa has avoided the spotlight because of the steroid issues that stained his career. But I think we all know the real reason: He’ll turn to stone if he’s hit with direct light.
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/946021/sammy-sosa-is-a-vampire/#Bqm4Juu2xcVyRDuY.99

Sammy Sosa may be best known for being a major league baseball player but we now have photographic evidence of his other occupation: Blood sucker. Yes, it appears that Sammy Sosa is a vampire. Don’t believe me? OK, let’s do a little test. Close your eyes and picture a vampire. Do you see a man with a sickly white face? A large widow’s peak hanging down from a carefully sculpted oily mas of slicked back hair? A tailored suit with a blood red tie? Is your vampire standing next to an unsuspecting pretty woman? OK, now check out the photo of Sammy Sosa courtesy of Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan. Widow’s peak? Check. Pale face? Check. Tailored suit? Blood red tie? Unsuspecting victim? Check, check check. Sammy Sosa is a vampire. There’s just no other explanation. Except for this one: NESN reports that Sosa has been experimenting with “skin conditioning” procedures since 2009 to give himself lighter skin. The good news is that the process seems to be working. The bad news is that it has made Sosa looking like a vampire. The former Cubs slugger has kept himself out of the spotlight since he retired in 2007. Some people speculate that Sosa has avoided the spotlight because of the steroid issues that stained his career. But I think we all know the real reason: He’ll turn to stone if he’s hit with direct light.
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/946021/sammy-sosa-is-a-vampire/#Bqm4Juu2xcVyRDuY.99

the long-legged mack daddy imperative...,

pcr | support behind the liar obama is feeble and limited. The ability of the Western countries to dominate international politics came to an end at the G20 meeting. The moral authority of the West is completely gone, shattered and eroded by countless lies and shameless acts of aggression based on nothing but lies and self-interests. Nothing remains of the West’s “moral authority,” which was never anything but a cover for self-interest, murder, and genocide.

The West has been destroyed by its own governments, who have told too many self-serving lies, and by its capitalist corporations, who offshored the West’s jobs and technology to China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, depriving the Western governments of a tax base and the support of its citizens.

It is difficult to know whether citizens in the West hate their corrupt governments any less than do Muslims, whose lives and countries have been devastated by Western aggression, or than do citizens of third world countries who have been impoverished by being looted by predatory First World financial organizations.

The idiot Western governments have pissed away their clout. There is no prospect whatsoever of the neoconservative fantasy of US hegemony being exercised over Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, South America, Iran. These countries can establish their own system of international payments and finance and leave the dollar standard whenever they wish. One wonders why they wait. The US dollar is being printed in unbelievable quantities and is no longer qualified to be the world reserve currency. The US dollar is on the verge of total worthlessness.

The G20 Summit made it clear that the world is no longer willing to go along with the West’s lies and murderous ways. The world has caught on to the West. Every country now understands that the bailouts offered by the West are merely mechanisms for looting the bailed-out countries and impoverishing the people.

In the 21st century Washington has treated its own citizens the way it treats citizens of third world countries. Untold trillions of dollars have been lavished on a handful of banks, while the banks threw millions of Americans out of their homes and seized any remaining assets of the broken families.

US corporations had their taxes cut to practically nothing, with few paying any taxes at all, while the corporations gave the jobs and careers of millions of Americans to the Chinese and Indians. With those jobs went US GDP, tax base, and economic power, leaving Americans with massive budget deficits, a debased currency, and bankrupt cities, such as Detroit, which once was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.

How long before Washington shoots down its own homeless, hungry, and protesting citizens in the streets?

Washington represents Israel and a handful of powerful organized private interests. Washington represents no one else. Washington is a plague upon the American people and a plague upon the world.

the farcical emperor is naked...,

asiatimes | Then there's the ''credibility'' farce. The Obama administration has convoluted the whole world in its own self-spun net, insisting that the responsibility for the ''red line'' recklessly drawn by the president is in fact global. Yet the pesky ''world'' is not buying it.

The Arab street doesn't buy it because they clearly see through the hypocrisy; the desperate rush to ''punish'' the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria while justifying everything the apartheid state of Israel perpetrates in occupied Palestine.

The Muslim world doesn't buy it because it clearly sees the demonization only applies to Muslims - from Arafat to bin Laden to Saddam to Gaddafi and now Assad. It would never apply to the military junta in Myanmar, which was clever enough to engineer an ''opening''; the next day Westerners were lining up to kiss the hem of Burmese longyis.

It would never apply to the Islam Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan because ''we'' always need to seduce him as one of our bastards away from Russia and China.

It eventually applies, on and off, to the Kim dynasty in North Korea, but with no consequences - because these are badass Asians who can actually respond to an US attack.

Informed public opinion across the developing world does not buy it because they clearly see, examining the historical record, that Washington would never really be bothered with the sorry spectacle of Arabs killing Arabs, or Muslims killing Muslims, non-stop. The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war is a prime piece of evidence.

At the Group of 20 summit last week, the BRICS group of emerging powers - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - as well as Indonesia and Argentina, clearly stressed that a war on Syria without UN Security Council approval would qualify Obama as a war criminal.

Even among the European poodles ''support'' for the White House is extremely qualified. Germany's Angela Merkel and even France's attack dog Francois Hollande said the primacy is with the UN. The European Union as a whole wants a political solution. It's enlightening to remember that the EU in Brussels can issue arrest warrants for heads of EU governments guilty of war crimes. Someone in Paris must have warned attack dog Hollande that he would not welcome the prospect of slammer time.

''Evil'' as a political category is something worthy of the brain dead. The key question now revolves around the axis of warmongers - Washington, Israel and the House of Saud. Will the Israel lobby, the more discreet but no less powerful Saudi lobby, and the Return of the Living Dead neo-cons convince the US Congress to fight their war?

And then there's the curioser and curioser case of al-Qaeda - essentially the Arabic denomination for a CIA database of US-Pakistani-Saudi trained mujahideen during the 1980s: the oh so convenient transnational bogeyman that ''legitimized'' the Global War On Terror (GWOT) of the George W Bush years; the ''opening'' for al-Qaeda to move to Iraq; and now, no middle men; the CIA and the Obama administration fighting side-by-side with al-Qaeda in Syria. No wonder the denomination ''al-CIAeda'' has gone viral.

With farce after farce after farce piling up in their own Tower of Babel, the much-vaunted ''US credibility'' is in itself the biggest farce of all. Politically, no one knows how the vacuum will be filled. It won't be via the UN. It won't be via the BRICS. It won't be via the G-20 - which is seriously divided; at least new multipolar players are carrying way more weight than US poodles.