Wampum

One of the works I read while I was wintering in Leavenworth and working at Army Charm School was a treatis on the 1939 engagement at Khalkhyn Gol (aka "the Nomonhan Incident"). The Imperial Staff's model of Soviet command and control was that it was rigid and predictable, rather like the model of Soviet C3I current in NATO Staffs fifty years later. The Soviet forces were lead by then-Lt. Gen. Georgi Zhukov, who committed 450 tanks and armored cars without infantry support in a counter-attack that was the first battle of its kind in June, and in August, committed 500 tanks and armored cars supported by motorized infantry and air assets and a logistical train of over a thousand trucks to a battle of maneuver and obtained the double envelopment and the complete destruction of the Japanese forces.

This particular tank was lost to the Red Army in November 1941, when it fell off of a pontoon bridge or a barge into a river near Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Its crew presumably drowned, like no small number of American armored vehicle crews that have gone into the Tigris or the Euphrates in the past four years.

But the point isn't the obviousness that for the foreseeable future, bits of American armor are going to be pulled out of rivers, canals, and ditches in Iraq. It is that the Kharkov Locomotive Plant produced almost 2,000 of the BT-5 tank, and another 6,000 of the BT-7 and 85,000 of the successor main battle tank, the T-34.

The PNAC dystopian vision is for the US to fight and win "resource wars", that is, to control the world's petroleum market.

The premise behind the "Revolution in Military Affairs" and the "smaller, lighter, more lethal" force structure, not to mention the entire intellectual wasteland of asymmetric conflict, is that the US will dominate the battle space (low orbit too) in conflicts with states that have much, much less advanced conventional arms, and at best, only rudimentary NBC capabilities, and those only "in theater".

Presumably, states with capacities equivalent to the Kharkov Locomotive Plant will just observe or write notes of protest as petroleum markets pass from nominally autonomous control to substantively US-dependent control. Because China, India, and Europe have no need of petroleum, and Russia has no strategic concerns in West Asia.

To cite Donald Rumsfeld, states articulate what force structures they have. So if the American force structure has been tuned for very high profit in the defense tech industry sector, and corresponding low volumns of highly leathal weapons systems, and minimal manpower and logistic depth, organized around C-130 air lift, not sea lift, for the purpose of quickly liquidating conventional forces which are operationally at the level of major states in the 1950s (the Iran-Iraq war was fought by armor that stopped to aim and fire the main armament, corresponding to NATO and WARSAW Pact forces prior to the 1960's, as did Iraqi armour in the 1991 and 2003 contests with modern US armour and operational art), what contests has the US force planners already decided won't happen, or the US simply won't win?

Answers on the back of a napkin please. And, as LTC Paul Yingling wrote in the May issue of Armed Forces Journal A Failure in Generalship, for the second time in a generation the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency,that is, force structures that have no critical dependency upon limited inventories of high-value targets for operational capabilities. He's looking at the asymmetric no-target problem, and I'm looking at the symmetric but in-depth problem.

Posted by EBW at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The marriage of two former Interior Department appointees, Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles and Solicitor and Deputy Chief of Staff Sue Ellen Wooldridge made headlines last spring, as it occurred three days after Griles entered into a plea agreement with Wooldridge's most recent employer, the Department of Justice. Talking heads abound suggested that it was an attempt by Griles, who had once been Wooldridge's boss, to protect himself from further prosecution by envoking spousal privilege.

After the last volley in the Washington Post's four-part take-down of "a branch of government unto himself" Dick Cheney, I think the nuptial motivation may have been a bit misplaced. Wooldridge was clearly outted as one of the VP's moles in the Interior Department (and one should not forget, later in the Justice Department). In regards to the 2001-2 Klamath River Basin drought, the WaPo reported:

Bush and Cheney couldn't afford to anger thousands of solidly Republican farmers and ranchers during the midterm elections and beyond. The case also was rapidly becoming a test for conservatives nationwide of the administration's commitment to fixing what they saw as an imbalance between conservation and economics.

"What does the law say?" Christie, the former aide, recalled the vice president asking. "Isn't there some way around it?"

Next, Cheney called Wooldridge, who was then deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and the woman handling the Klamath situation.

Aides praise Cheney's habit of reaching down to officials who are best informed on a subject he is tackling. But the effect of his calls often leads those mid-level officials scrambling to do what they presume to be his bidding.

That's what happened when a mortified Wooldridge finally returned the vice president's call, after receiving a tart follow-up inquiry from one of his aides. Cheney, she said, "was coming from the perspective that the farmers had to be able to farm -- that was his concern. The fact that the vice president was interested meant that everyone paid attention."

Cheney made sure that attention did not wander. He had Wooldridge brief his staff weekly and, Smith said, he also called the interior secretary directly.

The WaPo pointed out in the first sentence of this segment that Wooldridge at the time was the "19th-ranking Interior Department official"; however, a mere three years later, she held the office of Solicitor, the third-ranking position., after Secretary Gale Norton, and her yet undisclosed romantic partner, Steve Griles (their relationship apparently began in February, 2003.) Wooldridge became Solicitor in June, 2004, as a Bush recess appointment, at a time when the initial revelations of Jack Abramoff's misdeeds were being reported, mostly by the Washington Post.

Senator John McCain, after the initial story broke in the post in late February, 2004, subpoenaed thousands of documents from Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff's firm, and held three hearings beginning in September, 2004. However, at no time during the 2004 hearings, despite having plenty of evidence, did McCain indicate that individuals at the DoI, DoJ or even the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy were party to the Abramoff scandal. This delay allowed the Interior Department to place one of its most compromised, politically and personally, players in the position of "gatekeeper" for DoI documents and employees, while, ostensibly, removing Wooldridge from her dangerous proximity, as Deputy Chief of Staff, to the Secretary. It is not at all surprising then, that when Griles' central role in the Abramoff affair became apparent though Senate testimony and related released documents, that Cheney's mole was moved out of DoI altogether, but into a position where she would have direct oversight into Interior affairs - as Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice, a position previously held by none other than close Cheney friend and fellow Wyomingite, Thomas Sansonetti.

Griles was one of the few people at Interior who knew of Wooldridge's long-time connection to Cheney, and marrying him essentially shut-off that line of attack by would be detractors. One now has to wonder if the huge outpouring of support for leniency (91 letters) in Griles' sentencing was orchestrated as a reward for this nuptial sacrifice.

Italia Federici, however, has not been so lucky, and, having been so thoroughly spurned, has agreed to cooperate with the investigation. Is she a threat at all to Wooldridge? Yesterday, while combing through CREW's pile of FOIA documents released by DoI, I came across this entry in Gale Norton's calendar:

Tuesday, July 10, 2001: 1:00 - 2:00 pm: Italia Federici, Wooldridge, Bettenberg, Ruff, Pfiefle.

William Bettenberg was Director of the Office of Policy Analysis, specializing in hydroelectricity, according to his July 19, 2001 testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He was also, however, Director of the Minerals Management Service during the Reagan Administration, and an expert on allowing BigEnergy to run off with billions in unpaid royalties. Eric Ruff was DoI communications director, and Mark Pfeifle, Norton's press secretary.
When I first noticed that meeting eighteen months ago, I figured it was related to CREA's ANWR campaign, as three weeks later Federici scored a meeting with DoE Secretary Spencer Abraham's CoE, joined by a Teamster's organizer and GOP PR guru, William Greener. However, Wooldridge wasn't directly involved at that time in ANWR, although she had represented Norton and the DoI on Cheney's Energy Task Force working group. And the inclusion of Bettenberg was thoroughly confusing, as he was completely wrapped up in hydroelectric at the time.

While the WaPo's article leaves out the specific timeframe regarding his first contact with Wooldridge, it clearly was in the midst of the initial 2001 crisis, which came to a head in early summer 2001,

when hundreds of farmers and their supporters used torches and crowbars to open the headgates of an irrigation canal four times in one week. Local sheriffs and police stood by, claiming lack of jurisdiction. Now National Park Service police and FBI agents guard the headwaters, but that hasn’t deterred the farmers. They are laying a pipeline that will take water from Upper Klamath Lake directly to the irrigation ditches, bypassing the headgates.

Was the July 10th meeting in response to the call placed a couple weeks earlier by Cheney? There's nothing to indicate one way or another, but clearly, Federici, who at the time was romantically involved with Steve Griles (who was nominated, but not yet confirmed as Deputy Secretary of Interior) and Wooldridge were working on some project together, a project that was important enough for Norton herself to be involved, needed the expertise of Bettelberg, and was a communications/PR issue.

If Cheney Inc. was worried about Griles, it seems clear that they would have figured a way out to silence Federici. It seems, however, that the real danger is Wooldridge, and effectively shutting down Griles' subpoenaed testimony was a nearly brilliant move. Of course, Griles thought he'd be spending three months of newly wedded-bliss in home confinement at the time. I wonder if he's rethinking the wedding now that he's looking at ten months in Club Fed.

Update: McClatchy is reporting that the House Resources Committee, chaired by Nick Rahall (D-WV) is opening hearings on the Klamath due to the WaPo's reporting:

House panel to investigate Cheney's Klamath River actions
David Whitney | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 28, 2007 07:58:29 PM

WASHINGTON — The House Natural Resources Committee announced Thursday that it will hold hearings into Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement in Klamath River water management that many think led to the die-off of more than 70,000 salmon four years ago.

"It certainly appears that this administration will stop at nothing to achieve political gain from natural resources disasters," said Rep. Nick J. Rahall, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the panel.

Three dozen House Democrats from Oregon and California asked for the hearing in a letter to Rahall after the Washington Post reported on details of Cheney's intervention.

According to the newspaper, Cheney personally contacted Sue Ellen Wooldridge -- a Northern Californian who then was Interior Secretary Gale Norton's top aide for the Klamath -- about his concerns over the Bureau of Land Management's decision to stop deliveries of irrigation water. At the time the region was emerging from a severe drought in 2001, and the BLM was enforcing a finding by scientists that water diversions to farmers would harm endangered salmon and suckerfish.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The World Bank has released a study on gender and labor migration.

The major finding is that when the labor migration is from a region in which there are large differences between the school leaving ages of boys and girls, and the labor migration is to a region in which there is little or no differences in the school leaving ages of boys and girls, the girls with as few as one extended family member working abroad experience a substantial increase in access to education, and a corresponding multi-year delay in first births.

The finding is for Pakistani, Turkish, and Moroccan girls, with one or more extended family members working in Europe, the United States or Canada, and for girls in the Americas, with one or more extended members working in the United States or Canada

No benefit was observed when the labor migration was to a region with equivalent (or worse) differences in the school leaving ages, e.g., girls in extended families in Egypt or Pakistan with a male relative working in Persian Gulf Monarchies.

Every person the INS shackles up and sends south has the unavoidable consequence of taking girls out of school, and lowering the age of reproduction, and increases the total birth rate. Deportation of Europeans has no equivalent effect on the condition of girls and women in Europe.

The World Bank also found that the 3% of the world population that works abroad contributes two times as much as all international public assistance towards the development of poor countries, with none of the "repatriated" money lost to weapons acquisitions or simply captured by local elites.

Posted by EBW at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Poll of Democrats reveals Gore could still steal the show

Posted by MB Williams at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

John Doolittle's in the news again today, and not because tens of thousands of residents of the CA-04 are watching fire crews (staffing on the Agoura fire is now 2,174 -- which is a big fire crew) struggle with 60 mph overnight winds, when fire attack, containment and burn-out should be conducted, and ongoing high winds, high temps, and low humidity.

The estimate is that 800 homes and 275 commercial properties are threatened by the fire, which is burning on the edge of South Lake Tahoe and threatens South Lake Tahoe, Tahoe Valley, Gardner Mountain, Camp Richardson and the Tahoe Keys. The website for the fire is here, and the estimated loss for the almost 200 families already burned out is $141,000,000.

Nope, John Doolittle's in the news today because the DoJ is closing in on his cash cover with Jack Abramoff. The Sac Bee has a nice piece here.

What the SacBee doesn't have is the first page of Gail Norton's daybook. Guess who was first to call Secretary Gail Norton? -- Why yes, it was John Doolittle. Do you suppose he was under the impression that the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture actually reported to the Secretary of the Interior, and not the Secretary of Agriculture? Or was he calling on behalf of all the the CA-04's residents who engage in hard rock mining, or drill for oil, or irrigate with federal water? Maybe he was trying to get USGS topo maps at a discount?

I'm sure there was a good reason for a guy with Doolittle's connections to be calling the person Tom Sansonetti, on behallf of the Western States "Wise Use" faction in the Cheney transition, selected for Secretary of the Interior. He needed a recipe for s'mores and instructions on how to start a campfire.

Posted by EBW at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The decision is here. I've been meaning to ask some Dems, members of the Congressional Black Caucus in particular, but also the junior Senator from New York, their views on John Doe v Kamehameha Schools and the issue of jurisdiction. I appear to have lost my only unions-good-tribes-bad commenter (the CA-37 post), but the capacity to create substantive difference(s) in policy, for (Bishop Trust) private school selection, for public school selection, and for variances from the NLRB (federal) or subordinate (state) labor laws, arises from jurisdiction. White-on-Black discrimination no longer creates a capacity to create a remedy, at least for children in grades K-12.

I'm certain the Bishop Estates Trust, now called Kamehameha Schools, were correct to pay off the non-Hawai'ian who wanted to steal a place at the King Kamehameha School in Honolulu, and stop at the the loss at the 9th Circuit. They saved the 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 cohorts of Hawai'ian children from a hostile Supreme Court.

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Rationing went into force yesterday in Iran. The per-vehicle monthly allotment is 100 liters. Le Monde reports long lines, some resistance (12 stations burned in Tehran). The police report making 80 arrests, also in Tehran.

The plan of record is that rationing will be in effect until October or December. Recall that the mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ran for president of the Islamic Republic on a platform of uplifting the poor. His initial nominees for the Oil and Welfare-and-Cooperatives ministries, Ali Saeedlou (Oil) and Hashemi (Welfare), both deputies in the Ahmadinejad administration of Tehran, were rejected by the Majlis, and this is where he's in trouble, again.

Five months ago I wrote about the limited circulation report by the Majlis on sanctions. Ahmadinejad and Larijani have said that sanctions couldn't hurt Iran, the authors of the Majlis report came to the conclusion that freezing (or seizing) its overseas bank accounts, an embargo on crude oil from Iran, and an embargo on refined petroleum products, gasoline in particular, to Iran, would hurt Iran economically, and therefore socially.

I suppose its time to enter Iran in Marc Lynch's Who'll be the first t'blow? spec-u-race over at Abu Aardvark. Not because the remaining Rehnquist Puchists (aka "the Cheney Gang") are twisting the right knobs in Congress (the S.970 fiasco is really about restarting the arms race with the Soviet fissiles inventory custodian, packaged neatly for the members of the Federal Legislature who let Cheney and Rumsfeld Gates do their thinking for them), because no one in Iran uses uranium in any form to get from point A to points B and C, but for the same reasons many Americans associate failure with the Carter years.

I've no idea if the average '00 or '04 Bush/Cheney voter has buyer's remorse, but I expect I'll see former Speaker of the (6th) Majlis, Medhi Karrubi (Assembly of Combatant Clergy, 1st-Gen revolutionary clergy, as well as a reformer), who offered to make the poor in Iran at least $62 better off, in the news again.

In the US, which in 1942 was, like Iran then and today, a petroleum exporter, the general population (class A) was limited to 4 gallons/week, those essential to the war effort (class B) were limited to 8 gallons/week, and doctors and mullahs clergy, etc. (class C), and members of Congress were not rationed.

Posted by EBW at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We moved to a new campground today, and an hour later, were presented this amazing gift. The lightshow is still going on, five hours later. Can anyone blame us for not wanting to leave?

Posted by MB Williams at 12:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With PBS handing Frank Luntz, a longtime Republican pollster with unresolved ethical issues and strategist, the job of providing "immediate public feedback on the performances of the candidates" during post-forum coverage on the Tavis Smiley program, you'd think that every presidential campaign's (left) at-home team would scramble to provide multi-screen, pizza and beer, and local surrogates to local media and accredited bloggers. You can't beat PBS for sticky eyes, they have the next few minutes when the spin that sticks starts, and you can't beat the networks for their late news sticky eyes and spin agenda either, but what you can do is offer the local affiliates a stand-up that looks as much like "news" as the shows the network and PBS are running, with local color, and targeted messages, both for your guy and about the competition, or even message on the meta, the FOX-Congressional Black Caucus event, or CNN bumping Michale Moore for some frontal semi-nudity with Paris Hilton's nearly headless torso. It is a chance to frame, and message the morning news and the local talk, and please a whole bunch of bloggers, and we are a viral lot, with access and beer and pizza.

Its a chance to get more air minutes and column inches than the wire copy from Washington normally gets in the local media, an opportunity for the campaign to run two events, an A event away and a B event at home, simultaneous, and a video remote with the candidate still hot and sweaty from the main show, and virally, move that local blog payload into the blog contest for best campaign and candidate.

So I called the Richardson offices in ABQ and Santa Fe. No event planned. Sigh.

Posted by EBW at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just posted this as a comment over at The Next Hurrah, in regards to Marcy's post yesterday on Kempthorne's secretive New Subcommittee on Royalty Revenue Management, which, according to POGO, met this week.

The subcommittee itself is just chockful of interesting folk. First, there's David Deal, who was originally picked by Kempthorne to head the subcommittee, but withdrew that idea after outcry from Senators investigating MMS. So who is Deal? From Findlaw,

"Immediately prior to joining the firm, Mr. Deal served as Assistant General Counsel & Director, Office of General Counsel, for the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C., the nation's largest petroleum industry association. Mr. Deal, who has extensive experience in the federal regulatory process, had worked for the Institute since 1975. He has written and delivered testimony before Congress, analyzed legislation, managed challenges of agency regulations in federal courts, mostly the DC Circuit, and participated in regulatory negotiation. His natural resources and environmental experience includes serving as senior legal advisor on the Clean Air Act, with 10 years devoted almost exclusively to state and federal motor fuels issues.

For more than 20 years, he was the sole API lawyer on federal royalty management matters including legislation, rulemaking, litigation, and Congressional investigations. In addition, he was the sole API lawyer on OCS Lands Act, Mineral Lands Leasing Act and Coastal Zone Management Act matters. He served as a two-term member of the Secretary of the Interior's Royalty Management Advisory Committee. Most recently, for his work in the federal royalty management area, Mr. Deal was named to receive a US Department of the Interior Mineral Management Service's Corporate Leadership Award for 2002."

Then there are the two chairs Kempthorne ended up going with: Bob Kerrey and Jake Garn. I'm sure most Progressives have more than a few things to say about Kerrey, but for our purposes, one of the things he is not is an expert on Mineral Management - he spent his time in the Senate on Ag, which has oversite for the Department of Agriculture, not Interior, wherein MMS lies.

More interesting is the selection of Jake Garn, former Senator from Utah. Garn is best known for his authoring of the 1982 Garn - St Germain Depository Institutions Act, which led to the Savings and Loan meltdown later in the decade. And who was the lobbyist who wrote most of that bill? Fred Thompson.

Also on the committee is Cynthia Lummis, who most recently was one of the three finalists selected by the Wyoming GOP for consideration by the Wyoming Governor to replace Craig Thomas. Thomas was co-chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which has oversight on MMS regarding royalities from Indian Lands. (One of the other finalists was our friend, Tom Sansonetti.) Lummis was Wyoming Treasurer when former MMS director Johnnie Burton was head of the Wyoming Department of Revenue, and they'd previously served in the Wyoming Legislature together.

Of all the committee members, only Deal and Lummis have experience with Mineral Royalties (nearly all of Wyoming's revenue comes from oil, gas and mining royalties.) Clearly, while Kerrey and Garn are figureheads, this is Deal's committee, just like Kempthorne planned all along.

Boy, this gets more interesting by the minute, neh?

With all the dirt the WaPo is slinging at Cheney regarding his hands-on involvement in Interior, this is an intriguing footnote.

Update: Here's an interesting tidbit. While Koch Industries was being investigated in the late 1990s for royalties fraud, Bob Kerrey received contributions totalling $7000 from Koch.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Next to Road and Track in the magazine room of the Santa Fe Public Library is the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science. While Jonah looked at cars, I flipped through the current issue of Science and found this:

Trial for Vaccines
Parents who blame vaccines for their children's autism finally have their day in court. Congress shielded vaccine manufacturers from liability in 1986, requiring that claims be filed with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., before a federal compensation fund pay damages. More than 4800 parents have filed claims since 1999, and the court began hearing evidence this week in a representative test case.

The main focus is on a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal. Epidemiologists have found no link between autism and this ingredient, which has been phased out of almost all childhood vaccines (Science, 12 September 2003, p. 1454). "This sort of palaver has the potential to inhibit vaccination," rues William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. A ruling could take as long as a year. ERIK STOKSTAD

That's it. That is what passes for reporting to the AAAS membership readers. 133 words, of which 19 go to "palavar" Bill, and 10 to the epidemiologists (is that the only valid methodology to detect causation, and are there issues of method with the published studies that find no correlation? The correct answers are "No" and "Yes", respectively). 50% of the copy identifies the generic name (original trade name Merthiolate, Eli Lilly, circa 1929) for a derivative of ethyl mercury and exonerates the unnamed manufacturers and transforms the knowledge and policy problem from causation and the cost (or profit) associated with vaccine delivery via multi-dose vials over vaccine delivery via single-dose vials, with vaccination generally, independent of vaccine type (live or dead), mode of delivery (oral or injected), mode of delivery (multi-dose or single-dose), and age and frequency of vaccination.

Jonah had the better read.

Posted by EBW at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last September we camped on both sides of where the fire is currently burning -- on the edge of the city of South Lake Tahoe. Today a crew doing a defensive burn-out was burned-over when the wind picked up --they weren't injured. I've been burned over once when I worked fire suppression just west of Yosemite. Its not something one forgets. The forecast for tomorrow is not good. Wind.

I'm going to contact Charlie Brown's campagin tomorrow. 200 families have lost their homes already, and it could get a lot worse, and there are dots connecting Cheney, Norton, Griles, Abramoff, and the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, even if very few, prior to this week's WaPo series, were aware of them.

Posted by EBW at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I was busy doing family stuff most of the day, I didn't get around to reading the latest in the WaPo's War on Cheney, Leaving No Tracks, until this evening. The details on Cheney's involvement in the Klamath River case was gut-wrenching, I as was very familiar with how the government's action devastated native fishing in the region (a point the WaPo happened to leave out - I guess fishermen are fishermen, whether Indian, and thus doubly "protected" by the Interior Department due to the Trust relationship.)

While the report is fairly damning, huge details are left out, details which would send all but the most cynical and jaded into the streets in protest. No mention of Sue Ellen Woodridge's former boss and current husband's sentencing hearing today,in which the judge threw out the recommendations of both the defendant and the DoJ, and doubled the prison tmie to ten months. The article mentions that Cheney was "aided by loyalists who owe him for their careers," but makes no mention of one of the highest placed loyalists, Tom Sansonetti, head of the Bush-Cheney Transition Team for Interior, and Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the department which is supposed to have legal oversight over Interior. Sansonetti was not only from Wyoming, but he was chair of the state GOP while Cheney was in Congress, and ran for the seat when Cheney was appointed Defense Secretary under Bush I. Sansonetti was beat out on the fifth ballot by Craig Thomas, who went on to become a Wyoming Senator. Sansonetti was Thomas' first Chief of Staff, and later, campaign manager.

There's a lot more there, and I'll dive into all tomorrow, when allergies and heat exhaustion lessen, and I've a clear head.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's only been one year, eight months since the former Deputy Secretary of the Interior lied to Congressional investigators, but hey, I'll take it. From the DoJ press release:

Former Interior Deputy Secretary Steven Griles Sentenced to 10 Months in Prison for Obstructing U.S. Senate Investigation into Abramoff Corruption Scandal

WASHINGTON - James Steven Griles, the former Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI), has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for obstructing the U.S. Senate’s investigation into the corruption allegations surrounding former Washington lobbyist Jack A. Abramoff, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.

Griles, 59, of Falls Church, Va., was also ordered to pay a fine of $30,000, and serve a term of three years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle for the District of Columbia.

On March 23, 2007, Griles pleaded guilty to a one-count criminal information charging him with obstructing U.S. Senate Proceedings. In pleading guilty, Griles admitted that he knowingly and willfully lied and concealed material information from senators and Senate investigators about the unique relationship that he had with Abramoff immediately prior to and during his tenure as DOI Deputy Secretary.

Its been a year, five months since I first predicted Griles would in fact do time for his relationship with Abramoff. The question is now, who is next? Norton? Sansonetti? Norquist? Have to put my thinking cap on to make that prediction.

Posted by MB Williams at 08:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

S.970 will end nuclear cooperation with the successor-in-fissiles to the Soviet Union.

Only a handful of us wrote out against the mistranslation of Mahmud Ahmadinejad's recital of Imam (or Ayatollah if you prefer) Khomeini's oft-quoted call for Israel-as-we-regret-it to be transformed into something less horrible. Only two members of the House, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich voted with scholarship, on the phrasing, its original context, its representation on many Qud's Day anniversaries since its original utterance, and the political capabilities and incapabilities of the 6th President of the Islamic Republic. The rest voted against scholarship. Juan's got a longish piece up today here, and I've written about it in the past here and here and here and here and here and ...

Mark Spittle had this down to an art.

Turning to the politics, the DSCC has been burning money in the Portland media market on Gordon Smith's Iraq votes, so why are they handing him a drip torch and permission to set fires Iran and Russia?

'08 cycle Democratic competitor co-sponsors: Clinton, Dodd, and Obama
'08 cycle Democratic competitor non-sponsors: Biden

Also not co-sponsoring are Byrd, Feinstein, Kennedy, Murry, Whitehouse and Saunders (I).

There's a question for Suzie, who's credentialed as media for Thursday night's PBS sponsored Presidential Debate -- under what conditions, if any, is former Senator John Edwards willing to end nuclear cooperation with Russia. I'm interested in Bill Richardson's response also, though I'm sure I know what his is. Color me curious and yellow, but even Joe Biden's response is potentially interesting.

Posted by EBW at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Only Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Bernie would have made three, were he not in the Senate.

Its twice as many as the last important moment, when only Barbara Lee voted correctly.

Posted by EBW at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After stopping at the post office and mailing Grace's volume of poetry and Jonah's DK title "Weather", and my "La casa en Mango Street" back to the Tahlequah Public Library, the kids and I headed back over to the Santa Fe Public Library to kill an hour before swimming. Jonah was as direct as a jay at a picnic, he went right to where we'd left The Hello, Goodbye Window and said Hello, Goodbye Window in his sweet singsong. It had been shelved since we were there last, but with a little help Jonah found it and backed into my lap, holding it and laughing.
Nanna and Poppy live in a big house
in the middle of town.
There's a brick path
that goes to the
back porch, but
before you get there
you pass right by
the kitchen window.
I've no idea why right by is hysterically funny, but it is. Breaking up on each line, stumbling over the unfamiliar Nanna (his died when he was two, my mom is a different kind of elder, a grandmother) and porch, repeating for a comic effect only he knew, but it was pretty funny even without the punch line, Jonah read the first page, and then bounded out of my lap, and up off the floor, and off to car books, eventually the current copy of Road and Driver in the magazine reading room on the main floor.

The multi-page narrative thread is a long ways away for the boy who hits skip between scenes of movies, to repeat some moment of visual kaleidoscopic joy, but Jonah was reading and laughing, which is about the best thing a life of letters can touch in passing.

Posted by EBW at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Did we expect anything different? From the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court sided with developers and the Bush administration Monday in a dispute with environmentalists over protecting endangered species.

The court ruled 5-4 for home builders and the Environmental Protection Agency in a case that involved the intersection of two environmental laws, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the conservative majority, said the endangered species law takes a back seat to the clean water law when it comes to the EPA handing authority to a state to issue water pollution permits. Developers often need such permits before they can begin building.

A federal appeals court had said that EPA did not do enough to ensure that endangered species would not be harmed if the state took over the permitting.

Environmental groups, backed by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal, said the administration position would in essence gut a key provision of the endangered species law. The act prohibits federal agency action that will jeopardize a species and calls for consultation between federal agencies.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The cast of characters includes 18 candidates, none of whom should reach 50% of the ballots cast, even in a district that had only a 6% turn-out for its last special election (a school board seat), and three (or four if you count the PDA) factions or figures contesting for control over which two candidates will be in the run-off.

Maxine Waters, in the adjacent CA-35th, is pushing Assemblywoman Laura Richardson, who was elected to the Assembly to fill the seat held previosuly held by State Senator Jenny Oropeza.

Richardson's final mailing landed on the 22nd and reads (in large font) "Oropeza Chose her Own Interests Over Our Kids By Going Missing for 137 Days" and contains this gem "she was absent for 137 days and missed many critical votes on issues affecting the health and safety of California's children".

Oropeza was being treated for liver cancer. Richardson hasn't offered to die or resign if she contracts an illness that causes her to miss some votes that the Democratic majority in the California Assembly wouldn't need unless eight members of the majority suddenly forgot their party affiliation and started speaking in tounges. Ditto for the US House, where 31 Democrats would have to vaporize for Richarson's physical presence to make a whit of difference, and the outlook for the '08 cycle would suggest that Richardson would need to be spiking a large volume of koolaide with cyanide to be the vote that made a difference.

Richardson is being supported by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which is categorically opposed to California entering gaming compacts that allow labor contracts with Indian preference language to exist -- and it wasn't so long ago that Blacks, Hispanics or Women weren't good enough for Federation of Labor affiliated unions to admit or protect.

Diane Watson, in the adjacent CA-33rd, is pushing the daughter of the deceased Congresswoman, Valerie McDonald, who is running on the Southern Baptist / American Taliban platform of virulent hostility towards those who fornicate for reasons other than reproduction. This plays well in the Cults but she passed on a debate at the NAACP Carson-Torrance Branch, where people tend to take civil rights seriously. She claimed she was in D.C., fundraising.

The Morongo Band of Mission Indians have made in independent expenditure of $219,000 for a GOTV push for Jenny Oropeza to counter the endorsement and contributions the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor gave Richardson. Oropeza has voted for gaming compacts, and Richardson won't.

I hope Jenny Oropeza does well. The PDA effort seems misdirected to me, as their candidate won't make the run-off, and the choice is between really bad candidates running as saviours of the (Black) community, in secular and cultist costume, and a decent (Hispanic) candidate who isn't owned by a kind of unionism that has chosen to eliminate Indian hiring preference language from hospitality industry labor contracts where the employer is ... a Tribal corporation that exists by virtue of a Tribal Government.

My family has been in Long Beach, Harbor City, San Pedro, etc. since the 1880s, so I sort of care if we finally have a Hispanic representing a district that was majority or plurality Hispanic until the demographic changes of the Great Depression and Second World War, and is now plurality, tending towards majority Hispanic again.

Posted by EBW at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The man-packed explosive used to engage the Hotel Al-Mansour Melia in the center of Baghdad at noon today had a specific target.

Killed were Hussein Chaalan, a Shi'i tribal chief from Diwaniyah and deputy in the list of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Fassal Al-Kaoud, a member of the coalition named "Dawn of Al-Anbar" aka "Anbar Salvation Council" engaged in operations targeting Al Qaida in Anbar province. See Marc's piece on the ASC at Abu Aardvark.

Also toe-tagged was Rahim Al-Maliki, a poet working for the Iraqia TV station and two Sunni tribal leaders (names not yet released).

The dead had assembled in the hotel lobby and were about to leave the hotel to meet an (unnamed) member of the current regime for the purpose of talks on national reconcilliation.

The WaPo is still reporting this as simply more of the day's senseless random splatter-and-morgue, a hit on a high value hotel.

Update: The AP now has this:

[unnamed police officer] identified four tribal leaders killed as former Anbar governor Fassal al-Guood, sheik of the al-Bu Nimir tribe, Sheik Abdul-Azizi al-Fahdawi of the Fahad tribe, Sheik Tariq Saleh al-Assafi and Col. Fadil al-Nimrawi, both of the al-Bu Nimr tribe. Three of al-Guood's guards also were killed.

It also has this interesting bit:

After the blast, a member of the Anbar Salvation Council said in the provincial capital of Ramadi that the sheiks meeting at the Mansour Hotel had been dropped from the council "because they did not continue working with us." He said they had been meeting secretly with government officials, about unspecified matters.

So the ASC leaked their 20 to the Opfors? Our tax dollars at work.

The Embassy of the People's Republic of China is located within the Mansour, and a number of Iraqi parliament members reside there when in Baghdad. It is 2,000 feet from the Green Zone and its physical security has at least three checkpoints the man-packed munition had to pass through undetected, or unreported.

Posted by EBW at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Heading out to the Jemez Mountains, to get away from the computers and out into the sunshine. Feel free to comment and offer suggestions as to how you think the Cherokee should proceed. We'll be back this evening.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The absentee ballots moved Smith's margin from 400 to nearly 2,000 -- out of recount range.

Leeds and Vann carried Districts 1 and 2, and the in-person Absentee ballots.

Smith and Grayson carried Districts 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9. The votes were close in Districts 3 and 6.

District 5 is close enough to recount.

Districts 4, 7 and 8 have results that are significantly at variance with all the other Districts, though they are consistent with the Absentee (not in-person) ballots, with a 2 to 1 advantage for Smith.

In Districts 1, 2 and 4, Grayson significantly outpolled Smith.

There appears to be a ballot design problem, in the Grayson and Vann portion of the ballot, but its effect is not consistent in all Districts. In particular, in three out of the four ballot sets where Smith obtained landslide margins (Districts 7, 8 and the Absentee (not in-person)), the effect is absent, and the Smith and Grayson votes differ by only 2, 11, and 31 votes, resp.

Here's an interesting dilemma. According to the Cherokee election results site

So what can account for the difference? Did absentee voters care so little about the resolution removing federal oversight? Did they get the second absentee ballots, the one with the resolution too late, or not at all? Was there some other explanation?

Posted by EBW at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Polls closed 90 minutes ago.

Incumbant Chad Smith -- 4,027 (52.5%)

Challenger Stacy Leeds -- 3,645 (47.5%) [7,672 total]

48,160 citizens of the Cherokee Nation are registered to vote. This includes the 18,000 "at-large" voters.

6,233 requested absentee ballots, and almost 800 of these voted "absentee-in-person", leaving 5,400 yet to be counted.

... out of 250,000 enrolled citizens of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma

In the 1st District Stacy is ahead, and Bill John Baker (reform slate), the target of the "Friend of the Freedman" hit piece is at 1,236, and Barbara Dawes Martins (Team Cherokee) is at 710.

Something peculiar is the disparity between the Deputy Chief vote and the Principal Chief vote.

Updates.

Incumbant Joe Grayson -- 4,210

Challenger Raymond Vann -- 3,538 [7,748 total]

The in-person absentees are peculiar, 80 ballots went for Joe, but not Chad, and half of those voted for Stacy. In several districts the ballots are going Leeds Grayson, which suggests a ballot design problem.

Absentees just posted.
Smith 3492
Leeds 1544

Absentees have always be suspected to be fixed, for the last 4 elections. No surprise here.

I told Eric that the final would be 60% Smith, 40% Leeds. Smith had to make sure with the absentees that it was more than the margin of error.

Nearly 5000 absentees voted, 2/3rd of the number of in-district voters. Many of these people, like one of our commenters in an earlier thread, have CDIBs of 1/256th. That's a Cherokee ancestor eight generations back, or between 200 - 250 years. These are the people who decided that Chad Smith was correct to disenfranchise the Cherokee Freedman, all of whom have ancestors on the Dawes Rolls (circa 1900.) It's important to remember that many of the white Cherokees (1/16 - 1/64th) who were listed on the Dawed Rolls did so in order to get the land allotment, which many sold off as soon as it was allowed - one reason there are so many of them now in California.

In total, less than 13,000 Cherokees voted, out of a population of over 250,000. The system is broken and no election it seems can fix it.

Think good thoughts for Stacy. She deserves them. Personally, I think should run for Dan Boren's seat, and I'd work my butt off for her if she ever chose to do so.

Posted by EBW at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

The pact between Chad Smith and Diane Watson is a much smaller affair than the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but it leaves the citizens of the Cherokee Nation with two profoundly bad choices.

The pact worked out by Smith and Watson delayed full disclosure of Watson's bill until only one news cycle remained before the polls opened in the nine Cherokee districts of North Eastern Oklahoma.

Diane Watson did not want to disclose that Chad Smith was offering (a) Cherokee trust land, (b) a portion of the Arkansas riverbed settlement, and (c) creation of a fourth Federally Recognized Cherokee political entity, and (d) one of the five existing Cherokee Nation casino operations. Offers he is legally incapable of making, on behalf of the Cheorkee Nation (a & b), or the United States (c & d).

As early as March 13th Watson was organizing the Congressional Black Caucus to exercise Plenary Powers to prevent Smith's faction from violating the civil rights (Cherokee Nation law), of at least two thousand citizens of the Cherokee Nation and United States. As early as June 7th we contacted Diane Watson's office and were informed that her bill would be dropped "as early as next week" -- a week that ended June 15th, no fewer than seven complete news cycles before the polls opened, and the basic contours of the bill itself. As early as June 9th, the Vann plaintiffs filings contained language which contains the core of the Watson bill -- termination of government-to-government status, federal funding, and authority to conduct gaming under the IGRA, a full two weeks of news cycles before the polls opened.

There is only one reason why Diane Watson would want to suppress news in the last weeks of an election, whether the news was dropping the proposed bill into the "hopper" that sits on the House, or more electrifying than that, Chad Smith's offer to saw off bits of the Cherokee Nation, either to buy time, or simply to buy off, a case he can't win, which she knew, again, seven full news cycles before the polls opened in the nine districts of the Cherokee Nation. Congresswoman Watson needs an enemy more than she needs the Cherokee Nation electorate to make a change in the Tribal Council and Tribal Executives. Diane hearts Chad. Hers is fundamentally a phoney war, contrived, like the hunt for WMDs in Iraq after 2001, serving some completely different purpose altogether.

Edward Rydz-Smigly described the choices facing Poland in 1939. "With the Germans we run the risk of losing our liberty. With the Russians we will lose our soul". Cherokees, and Indian Country more generally, have two poor choices: side with Diane Watson or side with Chad Smith.

There is an alternative.

The Department of the Interior and the energy exploitation industry does not want a complete accounting of what is owed to the Cobell v Kempthorne plaintiffs in the Individual Indian Trust case. Secretaries Babbit, Norton and now Kempthorne have proposed pennies on the dollar -- their current proposal is $7 bn to fund disolution of the Individual Indian Trust, with no monies at all going to the individual Indian trustees, for a breach of fiduciary trust estimated in excess of $200 bn, according to the latest numbers from Attorney General Alberto Gonzolas, or 3.5¢s on the dollar.

Eloise Cobell and her team want the Individual Indian Trust Fund to be placed in receivership, with a court appointed receiver, who will open the books on what the energy exploitation industry paid, and as importantly, failed to pay, the Minerals and Mining Services of the Department of the Interior. The core legal problem -- knowning what the commercial terms were, from 1880's to the present -- will be discovered rather than invented.

In the present we have a legal mess consisting of two jurisdictions, Cherokee Nation and United States, with one, if not both, overturning a central act of the other in the past five years. We can't know the eventual D.C. Circuit Court's ruling on the issues, nor can we know if the D.C. Circuit will consider the the full scope of substantive law issues present in this tangle, and it is not impossible that if the case goes to the Supreme Court, the Roberts Court will fabricate an imaginary pan-Indian "fact pattern", as the Rehnquist Court did in Oliphant, which in turn created the necessity for repeated Congressional action to determin what personal jurisdiction tribal governments have over non-member Indians, and non-Indians, for misconduct within the tribe's territorial jurisdiction.

We don't actually know the law -- that is, there is no consensus among the candidates for office on June 23rd, 2007, as to what the controlling law, American or Cherokee Nation, is on this day. That is a problem for the citizens of the Cherokee Nation.

We don't actually know the law and we don't want the law to be invented. To have a rule of law we must first find the law, and that cannot be the product of "precident" that draws incoherently upon bits and pieces selected from two, or three, or even four or more, distinct theories of what the controlling law of the Cherokee Nation is on June 23rd, 2007.

The core political problem -- knowning what the law is, from the Constitution of 1839 to the Curtis Act to the Principal Chiefs Act to the present -- must be discovered, not invented. That is a problem for the members of the Federal Legislature.

The alternative we have is to draft a bill establishing a receivership for the Cherokee Nation, and to find a sponsor and co-sponsors for that bill, and to make the case in the Congress of the United States that there are better choices, wiser choices, than an up-or-down vote on Termination, choices that remove corrupt administrations from the control of the ballot box, and make the government-to-government relationship healthier for both governments, and the people each exists to serve.

We can't do away with Plenary Powers, as popular as that desire is, so we must find a way to work with Congress so that its Plenary Powers do the least harm, and the greatest good, while properly punishing the stingy.

Posted by EBW at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Title: To sever United States' government relations with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma until such time as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma restores full tribal citizenship to the Cherokee Freedmen disenfranchised in the March 3, 2007, Cherokee Nation vote and fulfills all its treaty obligations with the Government of the United States, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Rep Watson, Diane E. [CA-33] (introduced 6/21/2007) Cosponsors (11)
Latest Major Action: 6/21/2007 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.

The following are now listed as co-sponsors to Diane Watson's bill:

Rep Butterfield, G. K. [NC-1] - 6/21/2007
Rep Christensen, Donna M. [VI] - 6/21/2007
Rep Clay, Wm. Lacy [MO-1] - 6/21/2007
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] - 6/21/2007
Rep Cummings, Elijah E. [MD-7] - 6/21/2007
Rep Faleomavaega, Eni F.H. [AS] - 6/21/2007
Rep Fattah, Chaka [PA-2] - 6/21/2007
Rep Green, Al [TX-9] - 6/21/2007
Rep Lee, Barbara [CA-9] - 6/21/2007
Rep Norton, Eleanor Holmes [DC] - 6/21/2007
Rep Towns, Edolphus [NY-10] - 6/21/2007

Thomas.loc.gov link

Posted by EBW at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The polling places opened this morning and the Saturday ballot will close this evening, barring surprises.

We support Stacy Leeds and Raymond Vann and the reform slate -- District 1 Baker and Walkingstick, District 2 Leach and Crittenden, District 3 Yargee and Thornton, District 4 Igert (only), District 5 O'Leary and Shotpouch, District 6 None, District 7 Boen (alone), District 8 Herman and Earley, District 9 Hoskin (alone), and for the two at-large seats created in the 2003 election, which the BIA has correctly declined to approve due to the unlawful exclusion of a portion of the electorate, Keen and Nordwall.

Posted by EBW at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The media property that ran with the WMB-in-Iraq campaign has another campaign in play -- non-correlation between Autism Spectrum Disorder and Thimerosal.

Please see Special Report: ABC Obscures Truth About Autism and Thimerosal at Media Blood Hound.

h/t Avedon.

Posted by EBW at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Freudenthal went with the right-wing nutcase:

John Barrasso new U.S. Senator from Wyoming
Friday, June 22, 2007

This morning Governor Dave Freudenthal announced the appointment of state senator John Barrasso to the United States Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Craig Thomas.

Barrasso is an othopaedic surgeon from Casper who has served in the Wyoming Senate, as Wyoming Republican Party Committeeman and Treasurer, among other positions.

Well, well, well, I was wrong. Maybe this means Sansonetti's indictment is closer than we know.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A bill was introduced in Congress today to pull our federal funds, close our casinos, and terminate our federal recognition. It's truly a sad day for the Cherokee Nation. The rash decisions and inconsistent legal arguments of our current administration bring us to this point.

Will the bill pass? Doubtful.

Does the introduction of the bill matter? Without a doubt.

In addition to this proposed legislation, a federal court case is pending and there is on-going review by the BIA regarding the legality of the March 3rd Special Election. Now all three branches of the United States government are fully engaged in the fall out of our decision to expel a class of tribal citizens.

Why is this happening? The Cherokee people, although certainly possessing the right to redefine citizenship, were not told the whole story by the current administration. The Cherokee people were not fully advised of the legal and political consequences of the special election. Instead, the decision was rushed and public debate and deliberations were suppressed.

Why was the federal bill not introduced earlier? Principal Chief Chad Smith has been in negotiations to delay the introduction of this bill so that it would not be introduced the week before the election. He didn't want to allow the Cherokee people the opportunity to know the seriousness of our present situation. Instead, he attempted to negotiate some undisclosed deal to keep this out of the media.

My concern is two fold: (1) The Principal Chief does not have the authority to strike a secret "deal" with the Freedmen without discussing it with the Tribal Council; and (2) exactly what were the details of Chief Smith's "offer" to the Freedmen?

The introduction of the bill was delayed for a week based on the Principal Chief's promises. What exactly did he promise? How much would his promise cost the Cherokee people?

I will alway support the Cherokee people's right to make decisions, good or bad. What must end, if we are to be a healthy nation, are the half-truths and secret dealings of our present leadership.

A positive change is just around the corner . . . . vote Saturday June 23rd.

StacyLeeds.com

Posted by MB Williams at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Meteor Blades reminds us that sometime in the next few hours falls the 43rd anniversary of the murder of three young civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi. As I posted in comments,

I was born early in the morning...

June 22, 1964. My parents were strong supporters of civil rights, and my mom, when I followed in her shoes as a teenage radical (filed a Title IX suit at 14 and was arrested for the first time protesting nukes at 19) always asserted that one of the souls of the Neshoba Three passed through my little baby body that night.

Michael Schwerner, a 24-year old from Brooklyn, New York, James Chaney, a 21-year old voting rights acivist from Meridian, Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old anthropology student from New York all were shot in the head and their bodies buried with a backhoe sometime after 11pm, June 21, 1964. Both Schwerner and Goodman were Jewish; Chaney was African-American.

Frankly, I'm not all that sure so much has changed in 43 years, any more than it had the nearly 80 years from when my gr-gr-uncle was lynched by an anti-Indian mob in Norridgewock, Maine, for just, well, breathing while Indian. We have a long way to go. Hopefully by the time I reach 86, things will have improved dramatically.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The United States STRATCOM Space Surveillance Network has been publishing satellite data that France did not want published.

The Naval Space Command operates a continuous wave fence radar which consists of three multistatic emitters at Jordan Lake, Alabama, Lake Kickapoo, Texas, and Gila River, Arizona, and six receivers at Tattnall, Georgia., Hawkinsville, Georgia, Silver Lake, Mississippi, Red River, Arkansas, Elephant Butte, New Mexico, and San Diego, California.

France now has a a system consisting only of a set of bistatic emitters located in the canton of Broye les Pesmes (Haute-Saône) and a receiver array in the canton of Apt (Vaucluse). Its was wicked cheap to develop, and trés wicked cheap to operate, compared to the SPASUR system, and the Grand Reseau Adapte a la VEille Spatiale (GRAVES) system has now cateloged more than 20 low orbit objects, some with solar arrays, which do not appear in the U.S. Defense Department's published catalogue.

France is now in a position to reciprocate.

At a cost of only 30 million €s a year.

Posted by EBW at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Usually I don't include entire articles due to copyright infringement, but this time, the article in its entirety is necessary to prove the point.

Donna Hales, of the Muskogee Phoenix, on the Chad Smith/Freedmen negotiations:

Negotiation over freedmen faces deadline
By Donna Hales
Phoenix Staff Writer

Legislation will be filed to sever relations between the federal government and the Cherokee Nation if an agreement is not reached by 2 p.m. today to restore rights to Cherokee freedmen.

Freedmen, black descendants of Cherokees, were voted out of the tribe on March 3 and temporarily restored to citizenship in May 2007.

U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., will file a bill today that proposes cutting off tribal funding from several federal agencies and suspending the Cherokee’s gaming authority until the Cherokees restore full rights to the freedmen and fulfill all Cherokee Nation treaty obligations.

"She will drop (introduce) it today," Watson's spokesman, Bert Hammons, told the Phoenix.

Negotiators for the Cherokee Nation are representatives of Principal Chief Chad Smith, said Wayne Thompson, a former lobbyist who works as a consultant and as an advocate. He is a negotiator for the freedmen.

Dr. Ron Daniels, national civil rights leader associated with the freedmen, said negotiators continue to work toward an acceptable agreement to all parties.

Thompson denied rumors on various Web sites that negotiations had included talk of the freedmen receiving land within the Cherokee Nation, receiving part of the Cherokee's Arkansas riverbed settlement, help in getting a casino and a promise not to protest the freedmen receiving federal recognition on their own.

Smith emphatically denied all such offers.

"We would never support creating a federal band," Smith said.

The proposed legislation calls not only for suspension of the right to conduct gaming operations but includes not being able to administer any funds from such gaming until the Cherokee Nation is in compliance with all treaty and other obligations with the United States.

The proposed legislation, if passed, could affect other tribes. No later than six