Our Wasteful, Ridiculous and Hypocritical Secret Foreign Policy Skulduggery

The US intelligence community has metastasized into a giant, self-perpetuating, money-wasting world-wide mischief maker.  How much money are we spending every year to destabilize the governments of other countries?  How much money have we spent destabilizing Ukraine, Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran etc. etc. etc.?  This "Cuban Twitter" is a silly example - but it's just a hint of the other activities that your tax dollars are paying for.

Between 2009 and 2012, the United States Agency for International Development created and ran ZunZuneo, a text-message-based social media platform intended to encourage an uprising against the government in Cuba, where there is virtually no internet access, the Associated Press reports. Described as a "bare-bones" version of Twitter, the plan involved attracting a user base with innocuous "news messages on soccer, music, and hurricane updates." Once a couple hundred thousand Cubans had signed up, "operators" would begin sending political messages in the hopes of triggering "a Cuban Spring," where citizens would "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society." Obviously, that didn't happen, but ZunZuneo did have 40,000 users by the time it shut down. 

The origins of the network, which was funded with American money earmarked for a project in Pakistan, were kept secret. From the AP: "There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement," according to a 2010 memo from Mobile Accord, one of the project's contractors. "This is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of the service and to ensure the success of the Mission." This was accomplished by having the Denver-based Mobile Accord and another contractor, the D.C.-based Creative Associates International, run ZunZuneo through front companies based in Spain and the Cayman Islands while other employees worked out of several cities in Central America. A website, complete with "mock banner ads," was set up to help ZunZuneo look more like a real business. 

And we can't have an intelligent debate about any of this ridiculous nonsense, because it's "secret".  All of this secrecy and skulduggery is anathema to a free and democratic society.  We have an army of ideologues and misanthropes playing at cloak and dagger on our dime, and we can't have a debate about it.

Bad Corporate Texting Policy

Of course, they sent me another text.

Nobody wants to get a single text from your business that is not an emergency alert or otherwise vital information, let alone a series of them. Stop it.

The woman I spoke to yesterday was helpful and accomplished what I asked.  But now I'm annoyed, AT&T.

PANYNJ Needs A Major Shakeup, But Not A Split-up

UPDATED: Fixed a broken link to the NYT article.

The Port Authority is a tremendous vehicle for infrastructure planning and execution in the New York harbor region, which has been arbitrarily split by a political border for centuries. 

We still haven't accomplished what the PANYNJ was originally created to do: build a freight rail tunnel between NY and NJ. But we should. In the meantime the PA has gotten away from its core mission and spent freely on non-core projects.  This is where the reform is needed: 

The report, released on Tuesday from the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University, says the agency spent more than $800 million from 2002 to 2012 on “regional projects” chosen by the governors’ offices. In the coming years, the pace of spending on zero-return state projects is expected to accelerate. As a result, the most powerful testaments to the agency’s peril, according to former agency officials and transportation experts, are not found amid the bridge access lanes of Fort Lee, N.J. They can be traced to the grounds of industrial parks built in the Bronx and in Yonkers, with little obvious transportation purpose, or along the Pulaski Skyway, which the agency agreed to rehabilitate after Mr. Christie canceled the construction of a rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River in 2010 and claimed billions in planned spending to be New Jersey’s money.

Good idea:  Get the PA focused back on its core mission: the infrastructure for moving people and goods around the region.
Atrocious idea:  Christie's suggestion of splitting the authority up along that same artificial political boundary that already divides America's foremost metropolitan area is ludicrously bad. 

If A Republican Senator Can Call It Torture ...

When will the New York Times and the Washington Post stop their evasive, cowardly and ultimately dishonest treatment of the Bush administrations institutionalization of illegal torture?

They have been able to get away with it for so long because of the depraved cowardice of the American news media.

In Announcing Support for Declassifying Report, Susan Collins Uses Word "Torture"

"Two of the last weathervanes of right-centrism have deemed it acceptable to use the word "torture" to describe what the CIA did, a word most of the nation's press still refuses to use for fear it will affect their claim to objectivity. If Susan Collins can use the word torture, then can the other institutions that aspire to be such measures of centrism also do so?"

I don't know how these editors, publishers and producers sleep at night, knowing what they've enabled.

Overturned Tractor-trailer on Eastbound BQE Explains Flock of Helicopters

I knew something was up when I could hear helicopters when I woke up, could still hear helicopters when I left the house, and counted at least four of them hovering in place on my walk to the Borough Hall subway station.  Would prefer not to imagine the traffic involved.

Tractor-trailer Overturned on Eastbound BQE

A tractor-trailer overturned near the Atlantic Avenue exit on the eastbound BQE this morning around 4:30. According to News 12 , “Authorities say another vehicle was involved in the accident, and one …

Speaking of BQE traffic nightmares: it is only a matter of time before we have an ongoing one since state DOT abandoned plans to repair/modernize the Brooklyn Heights cantilever section of this major freight corridor.  I only hope that no one is killed when it happens. 

Libertarian Police!

"And a small picture of Ron Paul".  Priceless.

I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

Do Not Release Jonathan Pollard

The same administration that aggressively prosecutes whistleblowers is considering releasing an actual traitorous spy.  Please tell me this is an extremely poor taste April Fool's prank and not seriously being considered.

Good Grief, Idiots!

Let me just say it: No, no, no, no! We're hearing this morning - intentionally hearing, since these reports are clearly trial balloons of some sort - that the US is again considering releasing convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. To review, if you don't know the backstory: Pollard was a civilian working for US Navy intelligence who was arrested and convicted for passing copious classified information to Israel. The fact that Pollard was a Jew spying for Israel made the case extremely charged, for good reasons and bad. Not surprisingly, the Israeli government has been lobbying for decades to get him released. No big surprise there. We try to get our spies released too. But if the White House is seriously considering using Pollard as a bargaining chip at this stage of the negotiations they've totally lost their minds.