Glenn Greenwald:

Via Daily Mail:

Spies may soon be bugging conversations using actual insects, thanks to research funded by the US military.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has spent years developing a whole host of cyborg critters, in the hopes of creating the ultimate 'fly on the wall'.

Now a team of researchers led by Hirotaka Sato have created cyborg beetles which are guided wirelessly via a laptop.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have implanted surveillance equipment into beetles that allows them to control where they fly

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Here it is, Friday morning, the G20 got underway last night a couple of miles from where I sit, and I ain't seen nothing yet except what's on my computer, unless you count the helicopter that hovered over my neighborhood for an unconscionable length of time day before yesterday.

So I went in search of news this morning, partly to prepare myself for this afternoon's march, partly to have something to share with all of you.

First thing that hits me from McClatchy is a cute little paragraph that reminded me of my disgust the other day at hearing the phrase "G20 wives":

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A United States Air Force Reservist, Major David Frakt, JAG Corps, has promised to continue fighting on behalf of his client, as the Obama Administration is opposed to the young man's release. Major Frakt's expertise has earned accolades outside the courtroom, from the ACLU to firedoglake.

A federal judge who had earlier challenged the government's evidence against the detainee ordered him released today, offering a further curb to the unitary executive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/us/31gitmo.html

“Enough has been imposed on this young man to date,” the judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle, said in a courtroom crowded with people drawn by what had become a confrontation between the judge and the Obama administration.

But it was not clear Thursday whether Judge Huvelle’s order will mean freedom for the detainee, Mohammed Jawad, who has long faced American charges that, as a teenager, he threw a hand grenade in Kabul in 2002 that injured two American servicemen and their Afghan interpreter.

The ruling on Thursday came after a concession by the government last week that it could no longer defend Mr. Jawad’s military detention in the habeas corpus case before Judge Huvelle. She had declared that the administration’s case for continuing his detention after nearly seven years was “riddled with holes” and that virtually all of the government’s evidence came from confessions he made after being threatened with death.

Justice Department officials said they were studying whether to file civilian criminal charges against Mr. Jawad. If they do, officials say, he could be transferred to the United States to face charges, instead of being sent to Afghanistan, where his lawyers say he would be released to his mother.

“It is a very real possibility,” a Justice Department official said in an interview, “but whether we can compile enough evidence to support a case is a question we don’t yet know the answer to.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the department does not discuss investigations.

Mr. Jawad’s military lawyer, Maj. David J. R. Frakt, said he would file court challenges to any effort by the administration to move his client to the United States to face charges. But Major Frakt conceded that the Aug. 21 deadline Judge Huvelle gave the government to send Mr. Jawad to Afghanistan also gave prosecutors time to work on a grand jury investigation.

“We have won the battle,” he said outside the federal courthouse here. “Have we won the war? Perhaps it remains to be seen.”

Mohamed Jawad's age is unknown. He was accused of taking part in a 2002 grenade attack that injured two GIs and a translator in Kabul, but Major Frakt has provided evidence that at least three adults

The SEIU, Service Emloyees Internal Union, headed by Andy Stern has decided to concentrate its effort, not on the goals and the benefits of the union members, on usurping parts of the UNITE HERE union. SEIU represents over 100 occupations in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The main divisions are health care (around 50% of the union's membership), including hospital, home care and nursing home workers, public services (government employees), and property services (including janitors and security officers). UNITE HERE represents predominantly in the hotel, food services employees with a very strong division of the gaming industry (e.g. Las Vegas).

In the end, 19 House Democrats backed the [war funding] bill who had opposed it the first time, although some cited loyalty, not agreement with Obama's plans, as their reason.

"I want to support my president," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who changed her no vote to a yes.

Stephen Colbert is on a USO tour in Iraq.

The Colbert Report visited the troops at Camp Victory Friday. Colbert gave up his hair at the behest of President Obama. Three more shows to be broadcast this week will originate from the Persian Gulf, where Colbert is entertaining US troops in a forgotten theatre.

Shortly after the inauguration, though, he began talking to a fellow board member at Donorschoose about the troops in Iraq.

There was a general feeling among soldiers there, the board member said, that Americans had largely tuned the war out, that the economy had vacuumed up all the attention even though there are around 135,000 troops still here and still doing dangerous work.

“There’s a thesis statement there, which is something for my character to hang on to,” he said. “My character thinks the war is over because he doesn’t hear about it anymore. He’s like a child. A ball rolls behind the couch and he thinks it’s gone forever.”

Soldiers here are all too aware of America’s attention span about this war, several of them at the taping said. So the visit of Mr. Colbert, postmodern or not, was an unexpectedly high-caliber event among the recent string of retired baseball managers (Tommy Lasorda actually), wrestlers, cheerleaders and actors whose names require a little Googling.

“I’m surprised that anybody comes here,” said 27-year-old Lt. Travis Klempan of the Navy, from Lafayette, Colo. “I mean we had the guy from the Allstate commercial. It’s like: that’s nice.”

We still have more than 140,000 GIs in harm's way. More than 4,300 have died since w started this war of choice in March 2003.

The comedian who masquerades as a journalist on Comedy Central and whose stock-in-trade is a satirical "conservative" outlook on the news and the subjects of his interviews puts his money where his mouth is for a number of worthy causes -- and not least of these is his genuine support for the men and women in uniform.

For openers, U.S. President Barack Obama appeared by video to thank the troops. "You're welcome," the mock pundit answered.

"I wasn't talking to you," the president deadpanned.

To the roaring approval of hundreds of troops at Camp Victory, on the western edge of Baghdad, Colbert taped the first of four episodes of The Colbert Report, in which he plays a pompous, blustering conservative TV host.

His first guest was the towering, bald Gen. Ray Odierno. When Obama and the U.S. commander suggested Colbert had to look like a soldier in order to be a soldier, the general took an electric razor to Colbert's perfectly parted cable-news coif.

The four shows being taped in the domed marble hall at Saddam Hussein's former Al Faw Palace are to air this week starting Monday on Comedy Central. The Colbert Report airs on CTV and the Comedy Network in Canada.

Colbert has promoted the trip for weeks, but only vaguely because the military urged caution. Instead, the pundit introduced segments with a jaunty theme: "Where in the World and When in Time is Stephen Colbert Going to Be in the Persian Gulf?"

At Camp Victory, Colbert was in typical, cluelessly egotistical form. He showed a clip pretending that he himself didn't know his destination until he got off the plane and somebody threw a shoe at him.

Colbert also made some serious points during his monologue -- in typical 'unserious' fashion.

laiming the war must be over because nobody's talking about it anymore, Colbert invoked the power of cable television to "officially declare we won the Iraq war."

He offered a list of successes and commentary to bolster his point.

They included weapons of mass destruction, which was deemed "easier than we thought," and telling the troops that President Barack Obama should deploy them to the struggling General Motors.

However, his first guest, Odierno, disagreed the war has ended.

"We're not quite ready to declare victory," he said. "Things are moving forward but again, it's about bringing long-term stability."

Colbert, who sat at a desk propped up by sandbags painted to simulate an American flag, responded by asking Odierno if he can bring long-term stability to the United States when he's done in Iraq.

Like anything, the USO tour has had its setbacks as a result of the impact of reality on plans.   Read more…

But it's not what Alec Baldwin and Dennis whatsisname want you to think it is.
It's not really that aliens are trying to turn your brain to mush to make you tastier.
It's that fearmongers are turning your brain and your conscience and your national policy to garbage in service of their commercial interests.

Fear itself is the strongest agent for raising sales known to advertisers. The current incarnation of the Republican Party is using fear -- pure unadulterated berating fearmongery -- to change the tone of our national discussion despite their recent overwhelming electoral loss.

We need to stop letting them.

Ezra Klein has been talking to anonymous administration officials. And they explain why they don't want to nationalize the banks. I link, you decide.

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So the Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine Hartford and the Navy LPD New Orleans (which is an amphibious dock ship, meaning essentially it can launch and recover amphibious boats for landings:

Improved LIFT - strategic and tactical - is critical to the sustainment of power projection operations. The SAN ANTONIO class is the functional replacement for four classes of less capable amphibious ships equipped with 1970's and early 1980's technology, including its predecessor, the USS AUSTIN (LPD-4) class. Each LPD-17 class ship has 25,000 square feet of vehicle storage space, similar to the larger WASP (LHD-1) class multi-purpose assault ship and double that of the LPD-4.

The LPD-17 ships are the first amphibious ships designed to accommodate the Marine Corps' "mobility triad" - Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAAV), Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), and the Marine Corps' new tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey - for high-speed, long-range tactical-lift operations. Just as "littoral" has come to mean operations that begin well "over-the-horizon" (OTH), as far as 600 miles from an adversary's coastline, the "mobility triad" will ensure our ability to "reach out and touch someone" hundreds of miles inland, at revolutionary speeds.

They collide.

Running into one of these can ruin your whole day:

And no, it doesn't help if this is what you're driving:

As you may imagine, this is not a good thing. The best possible news out of this wreck is that the sub's power plant sustained no damage. Its crew were not so lucky, and nor was the sub's sail, with its sensitive and expensive equipment.

Reuters reports shipping in the Strait wasn't disrupted by or after the wreck. Howsomesoever, comma ... with 15 sailors hurt aboard, and the sail damaged, the sub's commander is more than likely in more trouble than one Naval career can sustain.

Prayers, if you be so inclined, please, for all the folks on both these vessels -- not to mention the folks, fishes and others in the vicinity, because the New Orleans' fuel tank was gutted, sending a boatload (literally) of diesel fuel marine into the already anything-but-pristine Hormuz.

This is what the sub looks like, after:

There are a couple different ways something like this can happen.

War never does anybody any favors. Under the George W. Bush regime, however, it appears that not only did the women and children of Iraq suffer on a wholesale basis, but female GIs also faced torture, rape, and murder while on US-controlled ground in Iraq. From an article about rape, murder and coverup at commondreams seeking investigation into the death of 19-year-old Army PFC Lavena Lynn Johnson at Balad, where she was found in a KBR tent in July 2005, come the details:

Perhaps, it's because this is only the unconfirmed word of a former CIA agent (though, are these things ever confirmed?), or maybe it's a double standard, but why did the media give this story such a passing glance? Can you hear the uprorar if the script was flipped and it was Iran clandestinely trying to disrupt and sabotage the internal governmental instruments of Israel or the United States?

Israel engaged in covert war inside Iran: report

LONDON (Reuters) – Israel is involved in a covert war of sabotage inside Iran to try to delay Tehran's alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, a British newspaper said on Tuesday, quoting a former CIA agent and intelligence experts.

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Whether it is because of Barack Obama, or not, I don't care. I'm just happy to see the very Bushwellian-sounding "War on Terror" (much like the "War on Drugs") fading away into obscurity. It's always been one of my pet peeves since Bush drilled it into the public lexicon back in 2001:

WASHINGTON – The "War on Terror" is losing the war of words.

The catchphrase burned into the American lexicon hours after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is fading away, slowly if not deliberately being replaced by a new administration bent on repairing the U.S. image among Muslim nations.

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The New York Times is reporting that we almost helped carry out an act of war against Iran at the behest of our BFF:

WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush rejected a plea from Israel last year to help it raid Iran's main nuclear complex, opting instead to authorize a new U.S. covert action aimed at sabotaging Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported.

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Gandhi, his Grandson, Israel, and the Jews --

... what did Mahatma Gandhi actually think of the idea of Israel, and of the fate of the Jews of his time?

As it turns out, M.K. Gandhi engaged in sustained conversation with Jewish intellectuals of his day—many of whom were dismayed by the great man's insistence, for example, that Jews in Germany should have willingly "offered themselves to the butcher's knife."

In this essay, Shalom Goldman sketches out the little-known background to a contemporary controversy. ...

This paper explores nihilism in terms of the Vietnam War, a Cold War conflict against Communism, in terms of the movie Causalities of War. Nihilism is prominent in some political philosophies including Communism and the horrors of war tend to bring out nihilistic tendencies. Interestingly, this term was coined in Russia during the 1830s and 1840s and was more commonly used after the publishing of Ivan Turgenev’s book Fathers and Sons. According to the novel, first translated and published in English in 1862, this “most advanced idea” (Bolshevism) was brewing in Russia. One of the main characters, Yevgeny Bazarov, is referred to as the "first Bolshevik" for his revolutionary rejection of the old order and nihilistic beliefs.

Quite a list here of who he's meeting with and learning from, and those supposedly "sensible Republicans" are far outnumbered by the usual warmongering criminal ones -- but all is not lost: he's actually read 2 whole books by non-warmongers! (but not spoken to them or met with them or asked them for advice)

A World of Issues Waiting, Obama and His Foreign Policy Squad Brush Up --

... Besides reaching out to Mr. Scowcroft, Mr. Obama has also called former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a Reagan administration official who is known in some foreign policy circles as the father of the Bush doctrine because of his advocacy of preventive war. It is unclear what the two men talked about.

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Obama Plans Guantanamo Close, US Trials

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

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I watched part of Senator Joe Biden's appearance on Jay Leno tonight. I wasn't aware that his son is a service member. Recently elected AG of Delaware, Joseph Biden III is a National Guard captain. Last Friday he shipped out from home for Fort Hood, to train for deployment
to Iraq. What a contrast to the 'service' Bush rendered.

So hat tip to BTD at Talk Left for the link to Matt Yglesias piece regarding the "Bush Doctrine". Unfortunately, for varying reasons, each author's post focuses on the Palin angle (Bashing Palin for Yglesias, combating PDS for BTD).

What is missing is exploring one of the reasons why people who aren't thrilled about Obama (to put it mildly) still could find a reason to vote for him over risking McCain in office: John McCain apparently believes in Bush's idea of prophylactic (he would call "preventive") war.

From Yglesias:

Moon over Alabama:

More seriously, the Russian Federation Army today launched an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

The Topol RS-12M ballistic missile, designed to defeat anti-ballistic missile systems, has hit a designated target at a testing range on the Kamchatka Peninsula, said Alexander Vovk, head of the Russian Strategic Missile Troops press service.

This is the really, really serious signal. The Russian Federation can go nuclear if needed. They do not threaten this because they feel strong. They do threaten this because they feel weak.

Don't worry. Everything's going to be fine.

I linked this earlier in a comment, but for those who missed it, suicide bombers killed 60 people in Pakistan. Along those same lines, the Pentagon will be sending 12-15,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

The very serious people of both parties seem to have decided that to make up for the Iraq fiasco, we will double down in Afghanistan so we can win the "good" war against al Qaeda. This is not a McCain v. Obama thing since both seem to think sending more troops to Afghanistan and threatening Pakistan is fantastic foreign policy.

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

It is pretty clear that Russia and Georgia are at war (see excellent background article here). It is not like there were no warning signs that Russia did not enjoy having its power challenged, as happened with the independence of Kosovo where the UN ignored Russia's opposition and went ahead with support for the new republic over its objections. Then, a few weeks ago, I posted on the fact that it seemed that Russia was engaging in a new Cold War in an attempt to reclaim some global military leadership. The invasion of parts of Georgia in support of independent movements in Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia should be read in that context.

As usual, I find Michael Mann's conceptualization of different forms of power useful to understand what is going on here. As Jonathan Steele puts it in the Guardian, this is not just an economic war, a "pipeline war", but a war of political influence. Political power, more than economic, might be at work here:

In light of the different posts on good and bad Democrats I thought I'd post on the principle of party invariance and why I think it should be considered for PB2.0.

For the men killed July 13 at Wanat, Afghanistan.
Senator McCain, if we're winning the war, where did the AFGHANI insurgents get enough RPGs to supply a two-hour-long firefight?

And why were US weapons malfunctioning from heat generated by their use, after 600 to 800 rounds of fire through MACHINE GUNS? Rate-of-fire wins battles. Gunbarrels melting shut get soldiers killed.

The first RPG and machine gun fire came at dawn, strategically striking the forward operating base’s mortar pit. The insurgents next sighted their RPGs on the tow truck inside the combat outpost, taking it out. That was around 4:30 a.m.

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