A private group, SITE, has been infiltrating jihadist chat rooms for years. They got an advance copy of a bin Laden video, put it on their servers, and told the White House where it was, asking them to keep it quiet so their cover wouldn’t be blown.

Within the next several hours, the video was downloaded dozens of times from .gov and .mil sites plus the transcript they provided the White House was been leaked to Fox News. The al Qaeda site then promptly shut down and vanished.

“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said SITE.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, at core the Bushies are deeply and desperately incompetent.

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A Congressional committee votes tomorrow on whether to recognize the Armenian genocide. Adam Schiff (D-CA) from the heavily Armenian area of Glendale / Pasadena is a primary sponsor of the bill. Meanwhile Jane Harman (DINO-CA) has done another of her usual flip-flops to the conservative side by now opposing the bill she once supported.

Turkey is an ally of Israel and the US, which explain much of the opposition to the bill. Let’s hope it passes.

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The Oxford Research Group said that US/British strategy since 9/11 had backfired badly, making the threat of Islamist extremism more, rather than less, probable.

Further, they warned that military action against Iran would simply make things worse, something which is blindingly obvious to everyone but D.C. policy makers.

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But it’s been a bit unclear just which direction former House member Cynthia McKinney is running towards.

On 9/11/07 Political Wire reported McKinney was interested in a Green Party presidential run in 2008. Two days later, after a California meeting, she backed away from a run.

Currently. RunCynthiaRun is encouraging her to run. She’s attending fundraisers in California and just changed her party registration to Green.

I hope she does run for president as a Green. She’s high visibility, committed, articulate, antiwar, progressive, and would get national attention.

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Let’s practice saying it now, in advance of the event - “Madame President.” There, I knew you could say it.

Hey, maybe by the time Hillary leaves office in 2017, Chelsea will be old enough to run for Senate, thus continuing the dynasty. Or Chelsea could marry a Bush, thus merging the dynasties (ok, I’m scaring myself now.)

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This Sunday Oct 14 1-6pm
The Bistro East, Litchfield Inn
432 Bantam Rd.
Litchfield CT

Live music, poets, writers, speakers.

Fundraiser for legal fees for high school student Avery Doninger, who has a civil rights appeal pending in the US Second Court of Appeals after absurd anti-free speech actions by her school administrators.

Cool Justice Report has the schedule of events, and are helping organize it.

Details of the actions of the school.

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The Arctic sea ice is disintegrating “100 years ahead of schedule“, having dropped 22% this year below the previous minimum low, and it may completely disappear as early as the northern summer of 2013. This is far beyond the predictions of the International Panel on Climate Change and is an example of global warming impacts happening at lower temperature increases and more quickly than projected.

Have we already arrived at the tipping point?

The much-discussed “solutions” of carbon cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and the like seem destined to be ineffective at best, as After Gutenberg explains.

Bottom Line: Carbon cap-and-trade is predicated upon a false assumption: that the Planet can withstand continued production of green house gas emissions at levels that previously have seem acceptable. Handing out huge blocks of emissions rights for trading by polluters seemingly allows them to continue to profit from business as usual.

Also, such plans need to be universal, enforceable, and verifiable, something which isn’t even close to happening.

Will massive government investment help develop new sources of low-cost non-polluting power? Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger think so.

Today we launch a new campaign called “American Power,” one aimed at persuading Congress to generate the $30 billion annual investment we need to make clean energy as cheap as possible, as quickly as possible. American Power will provide a vital peacetime role for the military. Just as the Department of Defense guaranteed the nascent market for silicon microchips in the 1960s, bringing the price down from $1,000 to $20 per chip in just a few years, the Pentagon must today do the same with silicon solar panels.

Their plan has met with furious opposition from some enviros who say we can do everything with existing technology and energy reduction. But hey, why not at least try to find better, cheaper, cleaner energy and also work to reduce consumption. The approaches are not mutually exclusive.

As the melting Arctic shows, time is not on our side. We need massive action on multiple levels now.

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