Look at what Lanny Davis’ efforts on behalf of his golpista clients have wrought:

An important new investigative report from the Associated Press’ Alberto Arce describes the apparent ongoing activities of death squads within the Honduran police, reporting that:

In the last three years, the AP has learned, Honduran prosecutors have received as many as 150 formal complaints about death squad-style killings in the capital of Tegucigalpa, and at least 50 more in the economic hub of San Pedro Sula. The country’s National Autonomous University, citing police reports, has counted 149 civilians killed by police in the last two years, including 25 members of the 18th street gang.

The AP report also describes a now-infamous and disturbing video (posted here) that appears to show the extrajudicial, cold-blooded murders of two young men in city streets “by masked gunmen with AK-47s who pulled up in a large SUV” – consistent with the police death squad modus operandi as described in the article.

Arce writes that “Even the country’s top police chief has been charged with being complicit,” going on to summarize charges against Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla, now the National Chief of Police, for involvement in extrajudicial killings and disappearances back in 2002. Arce notes that “Last year, Bonilla was chosen to lead the national police force despite unanswered questions about his past. The U.S. Congress decided to withhold State Department funding to the police while they investigated the 2002 internal affairs report.”

So El Tigre’s so vile, even the Bush team knew better than to publicly embrace him? That’s pretty vile.

Yet now he’s the “top cop” in all of Honduras, and what do we do? We give him $16.3 million to use as he sees fit. And then Obama’s State Department tries and fails to cover up the stench of dead bodies.

(H/T to my co-blogger Charles over at Mercury Rising.)

Remember how the right-wing media, led by Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller, tried for months to get the mainstream press to pick up on an accusation concerning Dominican prostitutes and a Democratic senator, New Jersey’s Robert Menendez — and remember how that accusation fell apart when the prostitutes admitted to reporters for the Washington Post that they were paid to lie about Menendez and had never actually met him?

Remember how the WaPo followed up on this coup by finding a top Dominican law enforcement official who said that a Dominican lawyer, Melanio Figueroa — who was the only named Dominican source in the Caller‘s story — has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Bob Menendez?

Well, Tucker’s Smear Shop isn’t backing down — and it seems to have acquired the aid of its fellow Republican stenographers at The Politico, who are trying to turn this into a mere he-said-she-said story between the Caller and the Washington Post, whose reporters first punctured holes in the anti-Menendez smear, as if the WaPo was the only legitimate news source that found fault with the smear. But, buried at the very end of the Politico’s apologia for the Caller, we find this passage, tacked on seemingly as an afterthought, showing that at least one other major news organization had its doubts about the veracity of the smear:

The Post wasn’t the only news organization publishing on the story Friday: ABC News came out with a report stating that Polanco is seeking to identify “Carlos” [the man apparently behind the smear] and noting that a man named “Carlos” briefly appeared in a video it recorded last October during interviews with three women regarding Menendez. One of the women said during her interview with ABC that “Carlos” claimed “he works for a newspaper or something like that.

ABC News, along with several other news organizations, investigated prostitution allegations against Menendez before the Caller’s Nov. 1 report, but did not publish a story at the time. “ABC News did not report on the women’s allegations at the time because of doubts about their identity and veracity, later proven to be well-founded,” ABC News’s Rhonda Schwartz and Brian Ross wrote in Friday’s story.

Let’s have a look at that ABC News story mentioned in the above tacked-on passage. From the ABC news piece [all emphases mine]:

At the time, “Carlos” was described to ABC News by the lawyer Figueroa, as an associate who was in charge of organizing the interviews via a Skype hook-up. There was no mention made of any connection between “Carlos” and The Daily Caller.

The Skype address used by ABC News to make contact in the Dominican Republic included the names Carlos and Martinez. A message sent by ABC News Thursday to the same Skype address seeking comment has not been returned.

A Republican operative who insisted on anonymity made the introduction between ABC News and Figueroa and “Carlos.“

That’s rather interesting, don’t you think?

Now, the two Republican dirty-tricks artists most known for the sex-steeped nature of their work are Roger Stone and James “fuzzy handcuffs” O’Keefe, he of the debunked cut-and-paste ACORN tapes. And, we find, Roger Stone has had a hate-on for Menendez dating back to at least January of 2009, as his Rumpus piece from that time indicates.

Did Roger Stone and/or The Daily Caller suborn perjury to smear Bob Menendez? Paging Peggy Noonan! After all, she’s the one who said that it’s irresponsible not to speculate.

Meanwhile, even Mistah Kurtz, Sheri Annis’ hubby, says it’s time for Tucker Carlson to apologize. Let’s see how long it takes before Carlson does so.

(Crossposted to Mercury Rising.)

Politwoops catches Mike Rogers making a boo-boo

Hat tip to Boing Boing for passing along this juicy bit of Sunlight Foundation news:

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), a co-sponsor and major supporter of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), deleted a retweet of an analysis of contributions to lawmakers from pro-CISPA companies.

[...]

Rep. Rogers, or possibly a member of his staff, retweeted the [Maplight] story that identified that members of the House Intelligence Committee “have received, on average, 15 times more money in campaign contributions from pro-CISPA organizations than from anti-CISPA organizations.”

Twenty-three minutes later, somebody with the keys to Rogers’ Twitter account realized how graspingly greedy and stupid this made Rogers look, and deleted the tweet — but not before the fine folk at Sunlight’s Politwoops Project had spotted it and archived it for posterity — and for kicking Rogers’ posterior. (Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Rogers himself got $214,750 from the pro-CISPA lobby, per the Maplight piece he retweeted.)

Over at Boing Boing, the commenters were wondering why White-Flight Rogers would be so Alan-Simpsonesquely stupid as to openly boast of his and other congresscritters’ corruption. What I and others think is the most likely explanation is that he apparently thinks that the amount of money a position’s lobbyist throws at you is what makes that position “popular” — you know, as opposed to, say, hundreds of thousands of people massing in the streets over it.

Thanks again, Sunlight and Boing Boing!

Ever wonder who was put in charge of promoting the Neo-Confederate cause in the American South? Wonder no more — it was the group known as the United Daughters of the Confederacy:

And now you know.

Honestly, this is the sort of thing that makes one spout glub-glub noises — or post pictures of rabbits with pancakes on their heads.

Once again, it’s Glenn “Gone Wild” Gruenhagen (who many of you have met here before), and once again, Sally Jo Sorensen of Bluestem Prairie documents the cray-cray for posterity:

Just now in the Minnesota House, Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe) introduced his “ex-gay” friend Kevin Petersen who is now married and father of three. This was a point of personal privilege.

Members of the House either clapped or groaned.

Just as the House was about to adjourn, Speaker Thissen ruled that points of personal privilege had gotten out of hand in the past few sessions, declaring that they would no longer be allowed for random shout-outs to personal friends and family members visiting the House.

Thissen’s such a spoilsport.

But that’s not the end of it: Read the rest of this entry →

David Cameron

Here’s something I found en route to looking up something else:

David Cameron is under fresh pressure after a poll put the [UK Conservative or "Tory"] party on just 27% – one of its lowest ratings of recent years.

According to the Opinium research for the Observer, Ukip is just 10 points behind on 17% after luring voters away from the Tories and Labour.

It also found the Prime Minister’s personal rating dropped 8% in a fortnight to 18%.

The latest study comes after a poll of marginal constituencies on Saturday suggested Labour would scoop 93 seats from the Conservatives and take the keys to No 10 if a general election was held on Monday.

Even worse news for the Tories — it was one of their own polls that broke the bad news for them:

Labour would gain 93 seats from the Conservatives to become the next government if a general election were held now, according to a poll of marginal constituencies.

Labour would gain 109 seats in total, taking them to 367 MPs and giving them a majority of 84, the research found.

The survey, carried out by the Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft, found there would be an 8% swing to the opposition in the most closely contested seats.

It comes amid claims that a canvass of Tory activists found just 7% believed the prime minister, David Cameron, will secure victory in 2015 and is likely to increase unease among already unsettled party members.

Wow. Less than three years after a narrow Tory victory in the 2010 elections — so narrow that the Tories’ banker friends had to threaten to downgrade the UK’s credit rating to keep Clegg and the LibDems from forming a government with Labour — the Tories are now spiraling into the dirt. Yet even though the Tory win was much ballyhooed by the US media and pointed to by them as a bellwether for the 2010 midterm elections in the US, there’s been nothing so far in the US press about the Tories’ rapid fall from grace.

Funny how that works.

Granted, the 2015 elections are still two years away. But Cameron’s continued embrace of highly unpopular austerity measures is not exactly a recipe for guaranteeing electoral popularity for his party.

Just remember: If the morning of May 8, 2015 finds Labour in control of the UK once more, if you’re an American you will likely have heard it here first.

Two things you won't hear in many mainstream media obituaries of Hugo Chavez.

– Chavez’ oft-mocked paranoia about the US was justified, as the Second Bush Administration backed the 2002 coup attempt against him:

The failed coup in Venezuela was closely tied to senior officials in the US government, The Observer has established. They have long histories in the ‘dirty wars’ of the 1980s, and links to death squads working in Central America at that time.

Washington’s involvement in the turbulent events that briefly removed left-wing leader Hugo Chavez from power last weekend resurrects fears about US ambitions in the hemisphere.

It also also deepens doubts about policy in the region being made by appointees to the Bush administration, all of whom owe their careers to serving in the dirty wars under President Reagan.

One of them, Elliot Abrams, who gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup, has a conviction for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra affair.

– Chavez did a very good job of helping the 99% of Venezuela, something even people opposed to him admitted, as reporter Greg Palast found during a trip to Caracas some years ago:

While trolling around the poor housing blocks of Caracas, I ran into a local, Arturo Quiran, a merchant seaman and no big fan of Chavez. But over a beer at his kitchen table, he told me,

“Fifteen years ago under [then-President] Carlos Andrés Pérez, there was a lot of oil money in Venezuela. The ‘oil boom’ we called it. Here in Venezuela there was a lot of money, but we didn’t see it.”

But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, “get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how to sign their own papers.”

– One reason the neoliberals and neoconservatives who both worship at the altar of disaster capitalism hate him so much is that he got nations like Nicaragua and Bolivia and Cuba, among others, to join the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, or Alba for short, which is a cooperative partnership and mutual aid coalition. This alliance will outlive Chavez, and make it harder for economic feudalists of the Chicago School to recolonize the area.

That’s for starters.

Read the rest of this entry →

Conservatives desperately want to believe that Sen. Menendez ripped off two Dominican prostitutes, regardless of the truth.

It was so funny to see conservatives like Dinah Lord eagerly transmit the Daily Caller‘s smear of Robert Menendez to all and sundry:

So it looks like Senator Robert Menendez D-NJ, sponsor of the Lily Ledbetter Act doesn’t really believe in equal pay for women. Well, not if you are a hooker in the Dominican Republic that is.

And it was equally funny to see The Daily Beast jump on the bandwagon, too:

The smoke of scandal about Senator Bob Menendez keeps revealing flashes of fire.

Why is it so funny to see these people actively slime Senator Menendez? Because of this:

An escort who appeared on a video claiming that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) paid her for sex has told Dominican authorities that she was instead paid to make up the claims and has never met or seen the senator, according to court documents and two people briefed on her claim.

The woman said a local lawyer had approached her and a fellow escort and asked them to help frame Menendez and a top donor, Salomon Melgen, according to affidavits obtained by The Washington Post.

That lawyer has in turn identified a second Dominican lawyer who he said gave the woman a script and paid her to read the claims aloud. The first lawyer said he found out only later that the remarks would be videotaped and used against Menendez, the affidavits say.

And now all the entities that were so loudly pushing this ridiculous and improbable smear are oddly silent — and yes, that includes The Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson: “Daily Caller Editor Tucker Carlson did not reply to phone calls and e-mails requesting comment.”

While we wait for the smear stenographers to find their voices and apologize, let’s try to guess who fed The Failing Holler the smear in the first place. Early favorites so far are James “fuzzy handcuffs” O’Keefe and Roger Stone, though the Washington Post story exploding the smear presents the possibility that the smear was orchestrated by “dark sectors” in the Dominican Republic.

Read the rest of this entry →

Boycott ACS graphic courtesy of Tildology

In a 3-2 decision, the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled yesterday that locked-out American Crystal Sugar workers are owed unemployment benefits. Total benefits owed to workers may be $4 million dollars, but some fear the state legislature may act to block the payments.

Over 1200 workers have been locked out by Crystal Sugar management since August 1, 2011.

This judgement, if the North Dakota legislature (which is currently in session) doesn’t immediately try to block it with a bogus law (and considering that vote-suppression-eager Republicans just pulled the “hog house” stunt in order to smuggle a voter ID law under the radar and without the public’s being allowed to see it, that can’t be ruled out), means that these workers’ lives just got a little better. Keep your fingers crossed!

Earlier today, the NYT posted this:

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398,” said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”

What the NYT won’t tell you, Huffington Post will — namely, that Mandiant’s researchers credit Anonymous with providing the big break needed to crack the case:

Security researchers and government officials have long claimed that China is behind a growing number of cyber attacks against American computer networks, a charge that China has repeatedly denied. But Mandiant’s 73-page report was unusual in its level of detail, going so far as to profile the identities of three hackers who are believed to be working for the Chinese military. Mandiant said it was able to find connections between two of those hackers and China’s People’s Liberation Army by relying on public data first revealed by the hacker group Anonymous.

In February 2011, Anonymous gained access to the website rootkit.com — an online forum where hackers and researchers share information about hacking techniques — and published personal data of more than 40,000 registered users online. The data included email and IP addresses.

The breach was one of dozens by Anonymous over the past two years and gained relatively little media attention. But now, two years later, security researchers say the data was valuable in helping them find links between hackers and the Chinese military.

“We are fortunate to have access to the accounts disclosed from rootkit.com,” the Mandiant report said.

You can read the Mandiant report here. Read the rest of this entry →