The chain starts with this post by Soj at Daily Kos, a lengthy and thorough introduction to the mystery that was Nick Berg, particularly with respect to his relationship with Aziz Taee.
Following this are the speculations about Berg's chair (this detail about the coincidence of a mass-produced, ubiquitous item never impressed me), and CNN's agreement with the conspiracy theorists that the Jordanian Zarqawi doesn't sound Jordanian, according to Octavia Nadr, CNN Sr. Editor for Arab Affairs.
But the slippery slope of suspicions leads us to this all-Berg blog, authored by Soj, the Daily Kos poster mentioned above, where we can find out reams of information about connections between Berg and Zacharias Moussaoui, and many other incredible details.
Confession: I have not seen the video. I don't like violent movies and the purported reality behind violent propaganda is even more difficult to stomach.
But most difficult to stomach is the uncertainty of not knowing whose propaganda the Berg video is. The numerous inconsistencies and illogical aspects of the video (Why does a self-identified man wear a mask? Why are the timelines so screwy? Doesn't the real Zarqawi wear a prosthesis? Why are the masked men so damn fat?), combined with the fact that the political value and timing of the video was much more beneficial to the Bush administration than to any other party, makes the whole thing a big, sickening, persistent question mark.
Halliburton's shareholder meeting on Wednesday attracted more than 300 protesters, including a jazz combo, women dressed in pink and a 25-foot inflatable pig.
[...]
Some protesters, however, did manage to get inside the hotel to do more than talk.
Five slipped past front-door security at the luxury hotel 20 minutes before the meeting and shackled themselves to brass banisters in front of the security checkpoint on the third floor.
The four men and women chanted: "Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown and Root — go to Iraq to loot, loot, loot." They also shouted, "Oil is not worth human blood" before covering themselves in fake blood made out of corn syrup and red dye.
[...]
The five included Andrea Buffa, who was credited by many of the protesters outside as the main organizer of the demonstrations. She recruited the local activists who went to jail, secured the delivery of the inflatable pig, dubbed Hallibacon, for the occasion and scouted out the Four Seasons for a room above its front door.
Her colleague Jodie Evans rented the room for $355 so 15 minutes before the meeting she could unfurl a 10-foot-by-30-foot pink banner out a narrow window that read, "Cheney's in bed with Halliburton, but we got screwed."
[...]
After the meeting, [Halliburton chairman, president and CEO Dave] Lesar spent about 10 minutes answering shareholder questions.
One of the first ones asked was how many Halliburton workers have been killed or wounded in Iraq.
Lesar said 35 workers, most of them truck drivers, have been killed in the war zone. He did not know how many employees suffered injuries, but estimated 100 had.
[...]
More than an hour after the shareholder meeting adjourned, activists continued to chant, pass out fake $100 bills with Cheney's face on them, play their instruments and dance.
Interesting that the CEO had a rough idea of how many expendable truck drivers had been lost, but "did not know" how many Halliburton employees had been injured.
The liberal bias in the media coverage of this story was obvious when one of CNN's talking heads referred to one of the pig-masked protesters this morning, in all earnestness: "That's a pinko pig."
In another moment of editorial hilarity, the Houston's Chronicle's lead story wasn't the Halliburton pig-masked protesters but "A surgical alternative for obese kids."
Enron Corp. employees spoke of "stealing" up to $2 million a day from California during the 2000-01 energy crisis and suggested that their market-gaming ploys would be presented to top management, possibly including Jeffrey K. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay, according to documents released Monday.
The evidence of apparent scheming — in one recorded conversation, traders brag about taking money from "Grandma Millie" in California — is in a filing by a utility in Snohomish County, Wash. The municipal power unit north of Seattle wants refunds for alleged overcharges made by Enron during the electricity market meltdown.
The utility obtained transcripts of routinely recorded trader discussions from the Justice Department, which seized them in its Enron investigation.
While it has long been established that Enron engaged in market-gaming tactics — two top traders have pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges for manipulating California's energy market and a third awaits trial — the 450 pages of recorded conversations provide another vivid look into the organization's exploitive subculture.
They also suggest that knowledge of alleged wrongdoing may have reached the level of Skilling, Enron's former chief executive, and Lay, the former chairman.
In a Sept. 14, 2000, conversation, an employee named "Sue" [Susan J. Mara, Enron's California director of regulatory affairs until December 2001] from Enron's governmental affairs operation checks in with a trader named "Bob" for information that could be used in an in-house presentation to corporate executives.
"This is the time of year when government affairs has to prove how valuable it is to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling," Sue said, according to the transcript.
[...]
In a different conversation in the transcripts, Enron's West Coast trading chief, Timothy N. Belden, discusses the profitability of the company's strategies in California, particularly those executed by a trading desk led by Jeffrey S. Richter:
"Well he makes … between one and two [million] a day, which never shows up on any curve shift…. He steals money from California to the tune of about a million — "
At this point the other speaker interrupts, asking Belden to rephrase what he just said.
"OK," Belden says. "He, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day."
All of which leads to many questions, among them the focus of the quest for a guilty party: who would ultimately take the fall for siphoning billions of dollars from California ?
Lay and Skilling, to insulate themselves, would need a convenient scapegoat. The obvious choice would be the chairman and chief executive of Enron North America before he become chief strategy officer and then vice chairman: J. Clifford Baxter.
Not a stupid man, Cliff Baxter probably saw the writing on the wall about a week before the end of his life. That was when he visited Jeff Skilling, whose account of the meeting is unfortunately the only one we have and therefore highly suspect:
Baxter resigned in May 2001 reportedly after complaining about accounting practices that later brought down Enron. He, Skilling and other former and current Enron executives were sued by investors and employers after the company crashed.
About a week before his death, Baxter came to Skilling's home and talked for three hours.
"He was very angry about the plaintiffs' lawyers, and they were coming after him," Skilling said. "He was very angry about that because he had spent a lifetime building security for his family."
The account of the meeting Skilling gives is a little too pat. That's not a three-hour conversation. More likely what took place was something like Texas Hold 'Em: a game of who's going to show their cards first. And to whom, and at what price.
First the flop: Baxter's public dissent over the accounting practices made it probable that he was not in much of a position to insulate Skilling from anything.
Baxter's hole card: who knows, but it had to be substantially damning to the two people above him. And Skilling had to know that he and Lay were in big trouble if Baxter wouldn't cooperate.
Skilling's hole card: ruthlessness. By May 2001 Enron had already achieved everything it had set out to do: screwing California out of billions through its artificial energy pricing, and the successful secret engineering of US energy policy with a compliant vice president named Dick Cheney.
The scale of Enron's crimes were unparalleled, with devious strategies to screw everyone in sight — whole companies, states, and countries. Baxter knew it, bitched about it, and was now in a position to rat out the whole scheme to save his own ass.
In light of all that, the game ended predictably. The flicker of conscience named J. Clifford Baxter "committed suicide" a week after his three-hour poker game with Skilling. Are the quotation marks around "suicide" necessary? Maybe, maybe not.
Meanwhile, California stayed screwed. Lay and Skilling are still free men. Free and very rich men. And the ultimate mystery remains unsolved: we still don't know what Enron discussed with Cheney in those early 2001 meetings that set US energy policy.
The state's push to remove thousands of "potential felons" from voter rolls is causing angst among local election officials, who worry about inaccurate information, unfair results and yet another round of election-year lawsuits.
Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles, who has almost 2,200 potential felons to verify, said computer data supplied to counties by the state is riddled with problems, including wrong names and criminal charges that may have been reduced.
Under state law, it is county election officials, not the state, who must verify convictions and notify people who would be dropped from voter rolls.
"You have to sift through it all - and that comes down to us," said Cowles, a Democrat. "We become the one who needs to face the voter."
State officials have identified nearly 50,000 voters as "potential felons" who could be stripped from voter lists - many of them Democrats and minorities who could swing an election in a state where Republicans and Democrats are roughly equal in number.
How exactly does anyone identify a "potential felon"? Is it about history, or proximity, or intention, or temptation, or what? If I even think about committing an enormous fraud, will I go to prison, like Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling?
It's a tossup which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the chance to kill a top-level enemy in the war on terrorism for the sake of pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq—or a president who leaves a government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to his aides.
The "failure of leadership" meme that Taguba made public last week has the shape of a much larger theme that applies to the entire Bush White House.
So many are working so hard to ensure that the Republicans obtain a cacophonous New York experience [for their convention]. The antiwar, anti-Bush folks at United for Peace and Justice want to obtain a permit to march 250,000 people past Madison Square Garden -- home to the Republican convention -- and up to Central Park for a vast rally on the Sunday before the convention [August 29, 2004].
City parks officials have so far denied the permit, arguing that too many feet could cause irreparable harm to the grass.
A group known as the "hacktivists" vows to unleash a fury on the Republican convention Web site. Another one, Shadowprotest.org, encourages New Yorkers to volunteer to serve as goodwill ambassadors -- but not show up to work. "I don't need to reach every New Yorker," said David Lynn, the organizer of Shadowprotest.org. "I just need to find a couple thousand malcontents."
Firefighter and police unions will rally to protest their city contract offers. Anarchist bikers plot random street swarms. The Missile Dick Chicks want a permit, as do the Trotskyites and Billionaires for Bush, which wants to hold a benefit for corporate welfare.
The Yippie Party applied for a camping permit for 20,000 people in a Lower East Side park. To sweeten the request, it offered to provide cops and National Guard soldiers -- should they show up -- with free massages, bongo serenades and medical marijuana.
The Yippies leader (a relative term, that) acknowledged that the probability of obtaining such a permit was very low.
"We were denied in four days. We think that's a record," said John Penley, a Yippie elder. "Now we plan to open a welcome center staffed by punksters and anarchists and squatters. We just want to help out."
[…]
Civil libertarians note that more than 20 groups have applied for march and rally permits, and the city has not approved one. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed more than 300 complaints against the city for its treatment of demonstrators at a march just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since then, police have several times denied requests for high-visibility rallies.
Oddly enough, both the supposedly-lefty New York Times and the determinedly-righty New York Post agree that dissent is more important than a healthy lawn, which puts them at odds with America's increasingly suburban NIMBY-pambyism.
After all that New Yorkers have been through since 9-11-01, and after all the war crimes that have been carried out in their names, they don't need no stinking permit to make their voices heard. With their unbelievable resourcefulness and fuck-you-too spirit, New Yorkers will once again prove that they live in the greatest city in the world.
