62 Comments

1. Willie G:

Hmmmm….reckon this has anything to do with it?

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/munger/2009/01/ornls_foreign_visitors.html

Maybe I should go back to bed. I’m feeling cranky again….

Feb 9, 2009 - 5:59 am 2. twobyfour:

There seems to be a design at works. Bezmenov comes to mind. The balkanization of intel agencies is a symptom of a process that has been going on for a few decades now.

Somewhat tangential, but probably a piece of the whole puzzle:

Patronage Package

Smoking gun: caller explains Stimulus as Obama plan to fund permanent Democratic patronage system

“Chicago Bob”, calling into a radio talk show, explains the need to rush on the Stimulus package before anyone gets a good chance to review its sordid details. The transcript:

“I really feel that what I’m gonna give you here is a smoking gun.

I’m a conservative Democrat and I’m from Chicago… and I, I feel that I was betrayed.

I was in a meeting after Obama got elected and I was told by the Democratic officials in that meeting that we were gonna give billions of dollars that was gonna come down the pike, our way, and what we were to with it was we were supposed to with it…

We are gonna build an army of Democratic patronage jobs…. gonna completely freeze up the Republicans forever and ever…

It’s a job-capturing system, the same one they have in Chicago… everyone’s asking ‘why isn’t that money being release until 2011 and 2012?’

Because it needs to be released at a time that’s close to the election, so that they don’t go blow the money and spend it. So they’re gonna hold some back and that’s where… the real bucks will be spend, right up close to the election.

…It’s not a stimulus package, it’s not pork! It’s a job patronage system… there’s gonna be more [people] working for the Democrats in a patronage system than the United States Army…

And the jobs are gonna be camoflaged in a million different ways, whether you’re workin’ for the city, or workin’ for the state, but when the election comes around, you’re gonna be obligated to go out and get that vote… …like ACORN, except the jobs will be larger scale. I just wanted to say that, because I was really depressed when they told me, because I really thought they’d be different.

If I’ve done nothing else in my life, I’ve informed what that bill really is… it’s a job patronage system.”

A highway robbery is being perpetrated on American public. With a resulting indentured servitude for next generations that would be paying for this patronage sinecure.

Feb 9, 2009 - 6:45 am 3. joe buzz:

“The Chinese stole the design secrets to all — repeat, all — U.S. nuclear weapons,…” I though Clinton sold or gave them that stuff? In the least, he let their foot in the door by providing other weapon system details.

Feb 9, 2009 - 7:09 am 4. wildernesscalling:

We reap what we have sown, freedom is not for all and the deserving have died trying to preserve it, taking with them common sense, morality and service to your country, the living care only for themselves, this is America today! Hopefully the Chinese will be merciful and nuke us all at once…

Feb 9, 2009 - 7:28 am 5. Mark:

twobyfour writes:

“Smoking gun: caller explains Stimulus as Obama plan to fund permanent Democratic patronage system. ‘Chicago Bob,’ calling into a radio talk show, explains the need to rush on the Stimulus package before anyone gets a good chance to review its sordid details.”

Thank you twobyfour and Chicago Bob. That’s a great posting.

Public jobs and buying the votes of the job holders does indeed seem to be the key to the puzzle.

Feb 9, 2009 - 7:38 am 6. Mark:

And now the Chicago way has infiltrated Washington D.C. and has all the intelligence data it needs.

I suspect the politics of personal destruction (e.g. Michael Steele) has only just begun. But of course (what follows is rony) it will be justified since Bush and Cheney silenced so very many, especially in Hollywood, whose denizens are still feeling the pain, especially the mental anguish, that the Republicans visited upon the rich and famous.

As for secrets, if there are any left in the nation, perhaps a donation to the Clinton Initiative will turn a key or two, or even mobilize the Sandy Berger courier service.

Sorry for the vitriol. I’m not in a very irenic mood regarding politics these days.

Feb 9, 2009 - 7:46 am 7. joe buzz:

“politics of personal destruction (e.g. Michael Steele)” Yes, the so called “inadvertent leak” by the DOJ to the Washington Post is a bit disturbing. A leak is a leak is a leak but I doubt that anyone will receive so much as a wrist slap for this.

Feb 9, 2009 - 7:55 am 8. squirrel:

“[I]n America today, there are thousands of foreign-owned commercial establishments, hundreds of thousands of exchange students and visiting academicians, and countless routine trade and financial interactions.”

One of the big failings of libertarians is that they over-abstract here, failing to make distinctions between different categories of trade. As Thomas Sowell puts it, we don’t just want workers, we want citizens:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/02/sowell_on_econo.html
(See the comments at 59:58.)

And we can add to that the risks inherent in, say, buying networking technology from the Chinese.

Feb 9, 2009 - 8:11 am 9. Lifeofthemind:

Wretchard postulates two impediments to effective counter-intelligence,
1) Organizational, with bureaucrats focused on turf battles rather than their duty,
2) Political, with foreign agents covered by morally corrupt partisan interests.

May I suggest that the problem might be deeper than that? The political cover has metastasized to the point that it is no longer passive enabling but actual collaboration. For example consider the Iraqi WMD fiasco. Wretchard presumes that the Intel agencies mistakenly passed on a report that Iraq had WMD because a lack of Humint assets prevented us from knowing the error in the original British report. It is possible for the sake of argument to consider that the wilder rumors regarding the WMD could be correct. What if Saddam did have stocks of chemical weapons that were shipped to Syria during the months long period gained for him by French deceit and Democratic intransigence? What in fact if the WMD not only existed but was known to exist with physical evidence being located and personnel questioned? Given the pervasive information lockdown on anything that contradicted the party line “Bush lied, children died” only a dysfunctional fringe would pay attention to the information. Alternative considerations of sensitive subjects are rapidly confined to the tin foil hat ghetto inhabited by 9-11 Troofers, UFO enthusiasts, Illuminati or Masonic or Zionist conspiracy theorists, believers in the guilt of Alger Hiss, questioners of Obama’s qualification for his office and doubters of the efficacy of the New Deal. Some of these are fantasies of the deranged and some are simply wrong and one or two may be accurate. Without a healthy information distribution and testing culture it becomes hard to know.

Totalitarian cultures, like the Soviets or the Academic society of Politically Correct speech codes, can be highly effective at controlling the flow of information and convincing atomized individuals of the correctness of a predetermined position. Everyone can be made to believe that Bush lied or Obama is a brilliant achiever or there is no difference between men and women or raising the minimum wage will reduce poverty. What the cultural apparatus cannot do is eliminate the effects of people acting on these erroneous beliefs. If you act on a faulty belief, even one that is generally accepted, then the result will be failure. The costs of that failure can range from poverty to a holocaust.

Feb 9, 2009 - 8:37 am 10. Alexis:

I have come to the opinion that any President will be spied upon by at least a dozen spy agencies, half of them domestic. And it will probably get worse before it gets better.

America’s cultural defeatism is part of the problem. Not only does cultural defeatism undermine one’s ability to recruit effective spies, but it also sabotages America’s most effective weapon in counterespionage. America’s best defense against foreign spies has historically been our superior culture, which could lead some foreign spies to turn themselves in. Counterespionage is very important, but unless we have a strong enough cultural environment where foreign spies want to come over to our side of their own volition, our spies will probably get turned faster than the spies of our opponents.

It does not help that we have a president who gratuitously insults the United States as an immature nation within his inauguration speech. This telegraphs weakness and foreigners will pounce, whether they are our enemies or even our friends. So, now is the time for brainstorming so a future administration can implement solid ideas to vastly increase the effectiveness of our intelligence networks.

Feb 9, 2009 - 9:07 am 11. Alexis:

I don’t think it would be a good idea to force the CIA, FBI, and the military to cooperate too much, and especially to share intelligence. Why? A coordinated database is much easier to enemy spies to access our intelligence when it is all in one place.

Instead, counterintelligence operations all need to sign on to the same agenda. Easier said than done, of course. Still, while the agendas of American counterintelligence must be in general agreement, it is best to use differentiated methodologies so a full spectrum of capabilities is brought to bear on the task at hand. When different agencies have the same agenda, they can cooperate despite bureaucratic differences; when even different factions of the same agency have different agendas, the result is a muddled mess.

It would be wise to assume that the federal government is utterly transparent to enemy spies while being opaque to the American people. Although the American justice system necessarily operates from a presumption of innocence, counterespionage must operate from a presumption of guilt. All of this is giving me the impression that while American intelligence needs strong offensive espionage operations, it also needs to be organized in such a manner to limit the damage of getting compromised by enemy spies because we need to assume that American intelligence has been completely and systematically compromised.

Feb 9, 2009 - 9:21 am 12. Alexis:

The United States needs strong language programs. We need to understand what the enemy is saying and thinking, so we need strong foreign language programs. We also need strong domestic language programs in order to hide what we are saying from enemy agents and from their signals intelligence. For example, we should remember the effectiveness of code talkers during World War I and World War II.

Feb 9, 2009 - 9:26 am 13. Charles:

One of the key aspects of the McCarthy era was that Joe McCarthy’s relationship to J Edgar Hoover was much the same as the relationship of the FBI to the NSA. The NSA showed the FBI their decripted Venona cables that revealed the list spies. But then they told the FBI that the FBI had to get their own information to convict the spies. For the most part the FBI was unable to do so. So most of the spies were never prosecuted.

In 1950, within a month of the beginnings of weekly meetings between J Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy–McCarthy’s senate hearings began. Also, within a month subsequent to the end of the meetings between Joe McCarthy and J Edgar Hoover in 1954, McCarthy’s senate hearings ended. Was there any relationship between the two. To this day, the FBI denies that Hoover told McCarthy anything. Certainly, you can see by the McCarthy trials that McCarthy didn’t get any info from Hoover. But even if he did–its likely he would have been constrained by the same rules that J. Edgar Hoover was constrained by. He couldn’t use any of the info that Hoover might or might not have provided him.

The craziest thing about the Venona cables is that the Russians learned about them in 1948 because they had a spy in the US decript office. So they changed their codes.

US intelligence even knew that the the Russians knew about venona.

But the info was still not released to the general public.

Feb 9, 2009 - 9:42 am 14. Unsk:

Lifeofthemind,

WMD Inspector Dan Gaubatz says he found in 2003-4, four WMD sites in southern Iraq, encased by concrete walls as much as five feet thick that the Iraq Survey Group refused to investigate. Some of the sites were radioactive. Apparently, after a while the Syrians, according to locals, came and emptied the sites. I think both your impediments A and B were are work in this case.

So much for the storyline ” there’s no WMD in Iraq”.

Feb 9, 2009 - 9:53 am 15. geoffgo:

Folks, I’d very much like to remain an anti-conspiracist. But, but I am continously being made aware that our enemies could not be instigating the downfall of the US any more effectively. Which leads me to the ease with which it’s occuring must amaze them more than the readers here – they won’t need nukes.

Thanks Alexis and others for your cogent comments, and of course to our host.

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:04 am 16. Mongoose:

Alexis. The intel/mil community has tried this before. The libs in the universities resist it because of the CiA connections, etc.

There have been several attempts to start programs for foreign languages, and even select students and get them funding..

At the collegian level, either they discourage students, sabotage it or do not let it on campus. (I do realize that you were not just talking about “higher education”).

With all due respect, do you not think that people have no seen this solution before now?

I will also add that a lot of foreign language degenerate into foreign literature departments. Sure there are language experts, but but there are lots of folks walking around indulging in a sort of PC Philology focused on the relevant language or language group. This tends not to attract the sort of minds and perspectives that one would seek. Were more focused minds can come into language programs, they get co-opted by Foreign Officer Service programs. Departments of Educations and such places that focus on teaching credentials are, of course, an even greater disaster,

Somehow, rigorous foreign language programs have to start at the elementary level. With this approach, they become core skills long before college and thus the college years can be devoted to other more cogent disciplines. One would think that with all the immigrants we have, there would be simple and workable approaches, though certainly competent teacher would be a recurring problem. I think the central obstacle here is the collapse of the school system and all the lowering of standards which this entails.

But is is a chicken and egg problem: You have to find the competent teachers to start building up a program at a the pre college levels. So one cannot just focus on one level.

Of course, the disastrous American declinism out there, and noted in this thread, make one question just how many want to serve the nation.

Will we even be a meaningful power in 15 years? Is there a point? Only the upper crust go info this sort of thing in 3rd rate countries.

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:26 am 17. Mongoose:

WERE MORE=WHERE MORE

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:32 am 18. Armeggedon Rex:

Alexis: Our foreign language programs are severely constrained by lack of linguists who really understand the culture and implications of the material they intercept, partly through pig headedness. We have had difficulty recruiting enough of “the right kind” of natives who were reliable enough to work within the inner sanctums of NSA, CIA, or other entities that will remain nameless. Good COMINT work in today’s world often requires analysts to be right at the core of the Intelligence Operation Center and in very close and immediate cooperation with the Operation Center so the information they glean can be put to use at once. We are laying many of our trump cards on the table for the COMINT analyst to see so they can make the most efficient use of the data. This is a somewhat new practice that has saved lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Needless to say, a betrayal by one of these analysts would cause an enormous amount of damage.
As for effective counter-intelligence in America today, that was not my specialty, but with our reliance on networked computer systems in business, science, engineering and the military, I doubt very much strategic data gets past the Israelis or Chinese. Their problems will be similar to ours gathering COMINT data…too much information, not enough analysts. Civil libertarians were outraged when the U.S. governments use of CARNIVORE software became public knowledge. The Chinese and Israelis, and several other nations all have even more ambitious programs running now for both internal security and espionage. I’m afraid effective counter intelligence would require a paradigm change to “Fortress America” with a near ban on foreign visitors from all but closely allied nations. We all know this will never happen with the current administration.
Lifeofthemind: Be careful how loudly you trumpet some of your theories. If you continue to be a persistent and nagging advocate for these ideas you had best hope you are written off as a tin hat wearing fool to whom nobody pays attention. If you remain obstinately loud, and became suddenly ill and died, or met with an unfortunate accident and died, or just simply disappeared, I won’t be surprised.

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:33 am 19. buddy larsen:

with leaders like this, who needs foreign enemies ?

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:38 am 20. Lifeofthemind:

@Armeggedon Rex,
Thanks for the cheerful thought but Paranoia is not a solution, aside from the obvious costs it is an ineffective primitive defense mechanism that inhibits rather than enables the behaviors needed to respond to anticipated threats. I don’t intend to retreat and sulk but to create and build.

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:49 am 21. dan:

“The greatest trick the Devil ever played was to convince you that he doesn’t exist!” – Charles Baudelaire.

The enemy is the Communist bloc and its agents, among them the Islamist groups. Believe it. Or at least keep it as a possibility in the back of your mind as you watch the headlines roll by. Remember that the governments that rule Russia, China, every Middle Eastern (aside from Israel) and Islamic country, and increasingly the EU *are conspiracies.* They ARE CONSPIRACIES. So there is a difference between a “conspiracy theory” that posits the Elders of Zion or the Illuminati or the Bildgerberg Group or whomever as the agents of historical change, and a simple description of how ruling cliques established and maintain their regimes, and how they attack their enemies. There is a bizarre gap in the public imagination where knowledge of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union really, really ought to be, and a great weave of valid inferences is lost in that black hole. To make up for it, there is either lying or ideology sincerely believed (that is, self-deception), or there is simply blithe ignorance relying on images made of presumption and projection.

The most bizarre thing is all you have to do is cursorily acquaint yourself with Soviet Russia and all this makes absolutely perfect sense. It was a gigantic concentration camp, an armed military base governed by conspirators with imaginations so finely honed in the criminal underworld of an ancien regime so foreign to its target societies that it found – after direct military conquest proved only partly successful – its intelligence weapon succeeded because no one could even comprehend its nature. It’s vry easy to steal from and disinform people who are absolutely unaware they could be the victim of such things. And who would suspect, for example, your very own employee, the undersecretary for agriculture, who went to Yale and has such expensive patriotic families?

There is a game going in Iraq and below the radar involving primarily Russia. Contrary to public exaggeration, it was Russia and Warsaw Pact countries who supplied Iraq and its military complex. When it was recently revealed that Yevgeny Primakov – previously head of the foreign intelligence branch of the KGB’s successor in Russia – *gave* Saddam our order of battle, what did Condi do? Brush it off and say, publicly, “yes, yes we knew that let’s not talk about that anymore, thank you.” And she’s right: there is no way to publicly counteract the Left, because its messages have become the default judgment on virtually every issue and every moral sentiment. What do you think the whole anti-Bush global tantrum was about? Moral and political androids led by their masters into the most self-contradictory lather ever witnessed. And now a whole new generation is galvanized to have those same feelings – just as the Vietnam generation had been.

Russia is the enemy. Or, more specifically, the whole once-Communcist “counterintelligence” empire. Believe it, kiddies, and keep your eyes peeled: tempus fugit.

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:53 am 22. peterike:

In the days of my youth I was very into conspiracy theories. The whole Rockefellar conspiracy, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger thing, the nebulous gang of movers and shakers determined to create a single world government over which they could rule. Then I got older and figured this was all a lot of guff. Now I’m older still, and I’m wondering if I didn’t have it right all along.

What keeps me doubtful is that while I can certainly see a cabal of domestic one-worlders working perhaps in conjunction with the Euros, somehow I can’t see them bringing the Chinese into the mix, and maybe not the Russians either. I don’t really care about the Middle East, because they are weak players (in other words, if a US-Euro-Ruskie-Chinese group wanted to appropriate all ME oil resources, it would take them five minutes).

Could the currents be so deep that even the Chinese are allied at some level with U.S. power brokers? In any case, I don’t see these Illuminati being so keen on sharing with each other either, so if we start to move several steps toward one-world government consolidation, at some point there’s a power grab at the top. Or is it just going to be like a big mob family, with the world being divided up the way the Sopranos divvy up New Jersey street corners?

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:55 am 23. geoffgo:

Gosh peterike, I’d imagine the mob is already heavily involved through its Chicago branch office. I mean now they can steal a billion dollars per caper.

Feb 9, 2009 - 11:40 am 24. Thrasymachus:

That’s easy, they got most of it from Wen Ho Lee. How the heck that guy managed to make himself a victim of racism is beyond me. Just having hundreds of megabytes of classified information your home ought to put you in jail for a long time.

Feb 9, 2009 - 11:45 am 25. buddy larsen:

peterike, that’s about my arc, to. Chinese? search [ loral scandal ], search [ clinton riady ], search [ los alamos win ho lee reno ] and just keep going.

re my #19, and consider that “fear” is dragging down the precise behavior we now need from the American consumer. Consider that a speaker of the house inducing fear with the truth would be an arguable tactic, considering the fluidity of economies, but –inducing fear with LIES?

And even scarier, she is stupid enough to give us a picture worth a thousand words of her intent, her tactic, and her honesty.

just look at the link –and ask yourself, who put together the first chart, and why did they leave out entire elelments, an entire recession, and any reference to percentages –which are the way we find the ratios in different base numbers in order to get to the truthful comparisons.

Into such hands we have delivered our loved ones.

Feb 9, 2009 - 11:48 am 26. dan:

And of course the operations inside the USA are coordinated as much as possible with those outside the USA. How about how Russia and Kyrgystan just closed the US airbase there and forced supplies through Russia? The same week they really start knocking bridges out of the Karachi-Peshawar supply route. Interesting!

Wretch, how come you never have Russia topics – afraid people like me might take it over? A valid concern. But I would so like to hear your opinions on Russia, its governing apparatus, what its recent overt foreign policies mean, that I would gladly say nothing.

Feb 9, 2009 - 12:14 pm 27. Tcobb:

In order to stop espionage we need to have people in power who think that espionage is a problem. Most of our political class live in a bubble where they are incapable of even envisioning that the movers and shakers in the rest of the world have radically different motivations and goals than they do. They cannot imagine the idea of, for example, starting a war to enslave a native population for economic or ideological goals so therefore no one else would either. If someone steals the designs for hi-tech weapons–so what? They would only use them in self-defense defense, right? And by allowing them to steal such secrets (or by giving it to them directly) we have shown just how wonderfully moral to the Nth power we are.

There is nothing so dangerous as being led by a confederacy of idiots who are convinced they are geniuses. Insofar as current political conditions in the US are concerned I fear that this is precisely what we have.

Feb 9, 2009 - 12:32 pm 28. RWE:

Back in the early 90’s, I, on my own time and at my own expense, conducted debriefings of two fellow USAF officers who had gone to China to monitor the launch of US made commercial satellites on Chinese space boosters. Based on the information I got from these discussions, I put together a package to go to OSD that explained that the technology transfer control plans for the launches had a huge and irreparable flaw.

The control plans were focused on preventing the Chinese from cracking open the satellite itself and figuring out how to copy it, this required only simple security measures. The insurmountable problem was that the Chinese were so ignorant of Western launch methods that they learned a great deal from merely observing American contractors at work. Hughes and Loral were essentially running a training course for the Chinese.

The reaction in the Pentagon to this was a big yawn. No one there but me understood the significance of what I had found because they had no expertise in the area. And I was not in counter-intelligence, so any assessment I made was suspect at best. My boss’s boss threw the package away.

In November 1998 I had the pleasure – and it was a pleasure – of testifying before a Congressional committee probing Chinese acquisition of our technology.

One of our biggest problems is the tendency of people to discount the opinions of people whose expertise lies outside their own.

Feb 9, 2009 - 12:32 pm 29. Roderick Reilly:

RE: 2. twobyfour:

Big “surprise” about the job patronage thing. While I hadn’t though of it exactly that way, It did occur to me that the heavier spending in outlying years were “coincidental” to election cycles.

Feb 9, 2009 - 1:09 pm 30. whiskey:

The problem with the reluctance to address foreign intelligence in the US (Clinton got a lot of money from the Chinese and prevented anything from being done) is that eventually a catastrophic cost comes around that shakes up everything.

Chicago Bob is correct, the spendulus is a permanent Democratic patronage system, BUT … the US is not Chicago. the removal of the work requirements passed by Clinton for welfare in a recession generates huge, mostly racially-based resenetment which Obama plays with at his risk.

Already Robert Reich has said no White Men need apply for the Stimulus spending, something non-Whites and women find aggreeable, but leaves a huge (the largest) segment of the population out of the patronage system, it’s avowed enemy, and in a deepening depression.

Obama’s gamble on the Spendulus is that he can magically summon the economy back to life in 2012. BAd assumption. More like, he has four years of Blacks, Hispanics, and Women on the patronage system, everyone else not, and a permanent set of enemies he’s made poor. Machiavelli had thoughts on that.

Coupled with of course surrender to foreign inteilligence. What if the Chinese turn Venezuela into their outpost, or the Soviets, or the Iranians, and base missiles there? What if AQ runs lots of Bombay-style attacks in the US and Obama has nothing to stop it?

He risks being not only the economic enemy of White men, but their physical enemy too. The post-Racial candidate becomes the single most polarizing figure in American history, a sort of Super-Dinkins who erases the Democratic Party from national prominence, paving the way for a Perot type figure. Given Republican collapse it’s unlikely they will compete.

We’ve had guys like Ventura or Schwarzenegger win before, they were of course disasters, a guy like a Perot as President could be even worse than Obama, in erratic aggression as the world slides to catastrophe.

The “Bright Side” would be a military coup in the aftermath of huge WMD assaults on the US. At least the military is competent in some areas. We are witnessing the collapse of simple competence in nearly all areas. Not even a guy like Geithner can manage the simple task of tax evasion that leaves little public trace.

Feb 9, 2009 - 1:09 pm 31. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”24. Thrasymachus:

That’s easy, they got most of it from Wen Ho Lee. How the heck that guy managed to make himself a victim of racism is beyond me. Just having hundreds of megabytes of classified information your home ought to put you in jail for a long time.”"”"”"

Right. Thank you. Exactly. I was trying to remember his name.

Also, I had understood from somewhere that Chinese nationals with high-level tech jobs overseas expect, and are expected to, engage in espionage as a matter of course. This adds an additional dilemma for U.S. counterespionage because we’d have to treat Chinese nationals in much the same manner as Japanese-Americans were in WWII — that is — asuming that what i had read and heard is true.

Feb 9, 2009 - 1:42 pm 32. dan:

RWE – exactly: as observed by Deng Xiaoping and Mao themselves, the whole purpose of the opening to the West was to obtain Western technology. It was not, as many in the West imagine it, an admission of the defeat of the Leninisit system or enterprise. Lenin himself pioneered the deception with the New Economic Policy. Rather than demonstrating weakness, such a policy actually provides the Communist rulers with a new political lease on life and Enormously Expanded military and economic opportunities. They would be utterly unable to produce these themselves. And now they own $3 trillion in US T-bills. The strategy has worked. If Obama is allowed to go his way, the US will decommission almost completely our remaining nuclear arsenal on the basis of assurances from Russia and its Potemkin government. By the way – how many of the billions of $$$ spent on “safeguarding” Russian nukes was just used to upgrade the Russian arsenal and develop road-mobile nuclear ICBMs?

And even a bird’s eye analysis demonstrates that both China and Russia operate at about the same distance from their people/democracy. Please. These countries *are* conspiracies.

Nevertheless. I live in hope that all this is well-known to those who actually make such decisions in the USA, and there are nice shiny new nuclear weapons sitting atop unhittable ICBMs on in the CONUS hills well out of reach of the fools that be.

Feb 9, 2009 - 2:06 pm 33. dan:

“Patronage”

Yes – socialism “is” patronage; it’s just a new aristocracy. Maybe the strategy is to create a huge system of patrons and clients first – otherwise, who will inherit the huge nationalized conglomerates of Agriculture, Automobile Manufacture, Telecommunications, etc., when the capitalists have been squeezed out? And of course we must have our system of succession set up beforehand to guarantee the victory of the revolution…

Feb 9, 2009 - 2:10 pm 34. Morenuancedthanyou:

I delurk to ask if anyone else has searched for “Dan Gaubatz” and “Iraq”/”radioactive”/”WMD” and come up dry (Unsk #14). Did you spell his name correctly Unsk?

Feb 9, 2009 - 2:37 pm 35. buddy larsen:

FBI reported WH Lee taking top secret mtrl from Los Alamos, to AG Reno, a long time –6 months? –before Lee was busted. No one has ever stepped forwrd with any explanation of the lag; no ‘bigger fish’ SOP plausible explanation ever hit the public record that i can find. It’s as if Reno –who ran an extremely curious operation reportedly –was giving him time to finish his project.

dan, anyone trying think about Kremlin plans ought to read JR Nyquist’s short cogent weekly columns (archived here). –apparantly well-connected with defectors from the old KGB, he may be a nut but he sure doesn’t sound like one. Some site profiling him said he’s “from the Angleton school of sovietology”. not sure i know enough about Angleton to comment, but do recollect that he was pretty savagly attacked by the same sore of attack which crushed McCarthy, who was later proven to have been right along.

Feb 9, 2009 - 2:44 pm 36. buddy larsen:

just mystifying that USA is apparantly so thin of talent that only one man can run Treasury, and only one husband & wife team can interface with Chinese leaders –being that China-blind Reno’s old boss Bill is our new Sec of State’s husband.

Good God. if you put it in a novel it would be laughed at.

Feb 9, 2009 - 2:50 pm 37. Tcobb:

Yes – socialism “is” patronage; it’s just a new aristocracy.
You’re exactly right–when you really get down to it a lot of the leftist ideology is really grounded in the realities of 19th century life in Europe. Despite the talk of equality, the real dynamic was not that aristocracy was bad, it was that the wrong people were aristocrats. Marx’s notion of the “dictatorship of the Proletariat” really distilled the functional essence of what the movement was about. The fact that it attracted a large number of “useful idiots” who were attracted to the bright ribbons draped around the putrid core helped such an ideology prosper. You too, can be an aristocrat, and all you need do is to recite the proper mantra when you are called upon to do so.

As for myself, and I think it is a fairly common attitude for those of us in “flyover” country, the very idea of aristocrats is an oxymoron; by the very idea of believing in your own inherent superiority you have demonstrated that you have intrinsic flaws that render you unfit to be in any position of authority. It’s similar to an old Sufi story, the moral of which is “there are some questions, which if asked, demonstrate that the one asking the question is incapable of understanding the answer.” People who think that they are intelligent enough to to dabble with complex and chaotic systems like economies and cultures and end up with predictable results are not just fools, they are dangerous fools if they are given the power to tamper in any significant way.

Feb 9, 2009 - 3:29 pm 38. RWE:

Buddy:

Before Richardson took over the Energy Dept in the Clinton Admin I believe it was run by Hazel O’Leary. She was so sensitive to people’s “feelings” that she ordered all security badges should look alike and not openly display the person’s level of clearance. It might make some of the people with lower level clearances feel bad to see that they were not as “good” as some others, you know.

I say again, the same kind of thinking in Northern Virginia that requires that if one side in a kid’s soccer match gets too far ahead of the other, then the winning side has to stop playing long enough to let the losers catch up has come to be reflected in government policies.

Feb 9, 2009 - 3:49 pm 39. Mongoose:

Whiskey: we would get a Peron before we would get a Perot.

Feb 9, 2009 - 4:32 pm 40. buddy larsen:

richardson. if a brain was a black hole, it would be in his head –and he’d be the last to suspect it.

Feb 9, 2009 - 5:07 pm 41. buddy larsen:

o’leary’s sense of reality reminds me of Patricia Schroeder’s, when she set out to reform the military along a more parlor-ready line. did it ever occur to her what the military was for? of course not. had she listened to anyone trying to ask her to think, her reply would have been:

“why should i have to think? MEN don’t have to think.”

you answer “because it’s the military.”

and she says “oh, puh-lease. that’s what EVERYbody says.”

Feb 9, 2009 - 5:19 pm 42. Mongoose:

The problem is that this aristocracy is not based in any merit or meaningful talent, other than winning elections.

Aristocracies of the past were countenanced for their militray and administrative abilities, which they handled with some excellence, at least in their initial ascendancies. They could be tolerated for the peace and order that they brought out of chaos and dissolution. These clown will not last that long. They cannot, apparently, even get on and off of helicopters without incident. The fact that the “Lords” that might replace them could well be foreign does not hep us much, though.

And you are right Tcobb, they are mimicking older aristocratic and pseudo-aristocratic orders. In the EU they ape the Ancien Regime or their Middle European counterparts, In America, the Left hope to dressup as the old and long gone WASP ascendacny.

Liberal democrats are obsessed with imitating WASPS, even after vanquishing them so long ago. Even their class rhetoric is still a hold over from the 1930’s They telegraph this fascination with almost all they do: Fashion, schools, language, “the Arts”, the obsession with the minutia of status, all the awards, the prickliness, etc. It is one of the reasons they are so obsessed with Ivy Leagues degrees. It is one of the reasons they tolerated Buckley and hated Bush.

This has some richly comic aspects to this: Pudgy Jewish stock brokers sauntering through Central Park in Ralph Lauren togs lookingfor all the world like they are headed out to a rugby game or a regatta; “Cultural critics” at the NYT that that act like they about to sit down to a round table at the Algonquin Club when it is really just the Union Square Barnes and Noble coffee bar. Weirdly overdressed at the Opera or Philharmonic (and I mean weirdly). I often see this where I live, and get much amusement from it.

Children dressing up like adults. dull souls with dreams of culture.

Not the same thing at all.

Who knows, maybe the nation will get so sick of the lot of them sooner than we think. We may yet get our Republic back.

That is what we all want, just give us our Republic back, and hold the New Deal.

We want Ronald Reagan to be president, Harry Truman to be vice president, Jon Wayne at the movies and to never hear or think about the democrat party ever again.

Sort of like Orange County.

Feb 9, 2009 - 5:19 pm 43. Mongoose:

So the whole lot is sort of the political equivalent of poltergeists?

That’s what I am thinking.

Feb 9, 2009 - 5:34 pm 44. JFSanders:

@34 MNTY, That would be “Dave Gaubatz” See “the Spectator” Former USAF special agent

Jim

Feb 9, 2009 - 6:11 pm 45. JFSanders:

See also;Paul”David”Gaubatz

Jim

Feb 9, 2009 - 6:22 pm 46. Morenuancedthanyou:

Thanks, JFSanders.

Feb 9, 2009 - 6:33 pm 47. sigintel:

The Japanese corporations have been transferring vital scientific and manufacturing technology to the Chinese for more than two decades. Almost all Japanese manufacturing is in China. In the end the Chinese will be the contractors for all US manufacturing (low and high tech) and the Indians will do all software and engineering planning and development. The US is now resembling a hollowed out pumpkin, with the Dem’s stuffing it with cotton to slow the decomposition. I have never been more worried in my 61 years about the future of the US. Guys like Sully, the US Airways pilot and his air crew give me hope that we still have men and women of fortitude and exceedingly good judgment…but then I watch Pelosi, Reed, Biden and Obama, and their hoards of jabbering minions, and feel a forlorn fear in the pit of my stomach recognizing that “they won” …not just the last election but they have succeeded in capturing the hearts and minds of the Gen X, Y generations who have been fed liberal pablum for the last 40 years, and a large portion of the feminized, politically correct 40, 50 and 60 somethings who got on board “Change We Can Believe In”…Looks like a one way path to nowhere with the US “de facto” surrendering to Russia( 80% reduction in US nuclear force), China (allowing open corporate and government espionage), and radical Islam (AQ build-up in Yemen and Taliban in Pakistan, Iran with the Bomb) without even waving a “white flag” or firing a shot.

Feb 9, 2009 - 7:01 pm 48. pst314:

“There may even be those who would argue that it is more important to ‘keep America open’ than it is to find the traitors…”

I’ve lost track of the number of “liberals” who have criticized “an excessive fear of communism”.

Feb 9, 2009 - 7:42 pm 49. Mark Maps:

The one ironic thought that gives me hope in all this doom and gloom, which I share, is that the Russians, Chinese and especially Muslims are even less competent than we. So, in the end, we might just muddle through the coming terrible times.

Feb 9, 2009 - 8:02 pm 50. buddy larsen:

well it’s perversly comforting to know there’s others out there as gloomy as oneself. tough to talk this stuff with freiends and family –it’s really pretty damn grim –& pointless to scare and depress them –for now, anyway. better to keep up the good cheer and treat this break as a bump in the road.

Feb 9, 2009 - 9:04 pm 51. buddy larsen:

Sorry –no need to be THAT gloomy. It…it…it’s just that i…i’ve been…oh hell i’ve been eating Cheerios.

Feb 9, 2009 - 10:17 pm 52. buddy larsen:

Ancestor of Jimmy Carter’s Killer Rabbit (hey, where IS that rabbit?)

Feb 9, 2009 - 11:40 pm 53. Unsk:

Jf Sanders: Thanks, I screwed up his name.

Feb 9, 2009 - 11:50 pm 54. Jay:

Mongoose, Your post about the NY City “aristocrats” is wonderful. I have seen such a transformation on Long Island. If I had time I would tell you the story about how Jacque Lifshitz was honored by the people of Hasting on Hudson in 1967 for his donation of a statue he made as a model for a bigger one.
We met in the high school. We heard and saw some of the best NYC artists present poems, music and dance. NO change. The audience were not showing wealth. Many were wealthy but no show.
Now the non wealthy try to show off.

Feb 10, 2009 - 7:11 am 55. Jay:

I meant NO charge for attending the event.

Feb 10, 2009 - 7:11 am 56. Mongoose:

Yea Jay, I live in NYC, so I could go on and on with this.

Feb 10, 2009 - 7:27 am 57. dan:

Mark Maps – yes, that is the hope. the dark lining around the hope radiates from two facts: (1) this *is* russian statecraft; it is what they do. we build, tinker, discover, wonder, write great little tunes, occasionally revolt, etc., they conspire and oppress. true story. (2) they can tolerate a mass degree of abject servility and penury that we, by definition, cannot. these are two profound advantages that our oblivion only renders more lethal.

the dragons are in flight.

Feb 10, 2009 - 7:41 am 58. buddy larsen:

the dragons are in flight

There’s not that many of them, the nomenklatura, but they have some powerful assets –starting with, no elections every two years to throw projects and personnel into flux. An intelligent youngster can get tapped, and go into the Kremlin knowing he can operate his assignment long term. Putin didn’t rise on his ability to perform in an entertainment celebrity limelight; Putin’s career project is Germany, he speaks perfect German and spent his early career in East Germany. He was promoted by the St Petersburg faction, but succeeded no doubt on the strength of Kremlin consensus that removing Germany from the “enemy camp” is atop the priority list. The west should have risen in fury over his grab of Gazprom, at the time he was mucxh weaker, analogous to Hitler re annexing the Alsace-Lorraine or Sudetenland (with Austria and Czechoslovakia yet far away). That we paid no attention –busy processing our info overload re whatever the MSM had chosen for us at the time) spoke volumes to the Kremlin.

Gazprom is now the front of a lever, with energy the fulcrum and the Russian ICBM force the weight on the working end. It’s prying Europe loose from NATO, or USA.

Feb 10, 2009 - 9:08 am 59. veracious:

Awesome insights; however, arrogance are US. Probably can’t get any bites on the amount of money controlling the spying, the news, the political cover and corruption.

Add to that the general arrogance that we are so much richer and more powerful that any other player; I read it more than once above. Blinded by the might. We can barely manufacture the military components ourselves and our _entire_ economy is based on foreign ownership of our debt.

By _any_ reasonable measure USA was bankrupt before the stimuation and todays TARP II added trillions more:

The fact of the matter is that the US is bankrupt. David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the US and head of the Government Accountability Office, in his December 17, 2007, report to the US Congress on the financial statements of the US government noted that “the federal government did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting (including safeguarding assets) and compliance with significant laws and regulations as of September 30, 2007.” In everyday language, the US government cannot pass an audit.

Feb 10, 2009 - 1:18 pm 60. veracious:

Russia was just briefly a friend, likely really never. The statements in the Kremlin have pointed to hiding out, infiltrating and such for a very long time.

Much discussion above tries to keep primary risks in separate camps: the Russians, the Muslims, the Chinese. This is the way the world _used_ to work: supposing the Shia and Shittes don’t work together, Iran and Saudi Arabia are at odds. Blah, blah, blah… All old and non-actionable news. They _do_ work together when it comes to opposing USA. Same phenomena _internally_: the previously disjoint subverses, working together to bend USA.

There is a pattern here, that being the most important goal of most anti-American elements, inside and out, is shredding USA. Like a pack of wolves, they sense a kill. Each relying on the others to distract and together find openings.

Feb 10, 2009 - 1:34 pm 61. dan:

Buddy – yes, the recent comment by Gates or another high DoD official that there was “growing daylight between us and our European allies” is worrying. There is something wrong in Europe; whether purely sentimental or more malevolent is becoming increasingly irrelevant. If Obama can’t at least deliver Europe, public Europe, then things are not good.

Feb 10, 2009 - 2:13 pm 62. fred:

Reading this thread has been a depressing experience, but I realize that the truth has to be debated and discussed. I am in the midst of Robert Chandler’s book, “Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, the Global Left, and Radical Islam.” We are in big trouble. Very deep trouble. We stand to lose ALL.

These forces are a big wolf pack circling the dying prey, and are moving in for the kill. They will then turn on each other.

But throughout it all our worst enemy is the enemy within: the new class of intellectuals and policy wonks who come out of our best universities. They have killed our intelligence capabilities. Among them, I am sure, are people who are quite consciously working for our external enemies. They plan on working on a very up tempo timetable these next four years.

Feb 11, 2009 - 8:43 pm

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