Saturday Night in Police State Amerika

Posted: November 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 26 Comments

I know most of you have seen this video or one like it from UC Davis yesterday. This is the most shocking version I’ve seen so far:

For the past couple of months, we’ve been watching Occupy Wall Street grow from a few thousand protesters in New York City to hundreds of thousands of protesters in cities and towns all over this country. One interesting side effect of the Occupy movement is that the militarization of police forces since 9/11 has been put on full display. Police departments have reacted to peaceful protesters as if they were dangerous terrorists. All those billions poured into “homeland security” have created a monster. And now we can see it plainly. We live in a police state.

Earlier this week, Digby wrote an excellent piece on how this happened: Militarizing the Police: How the Drug War and 9/11 Led to Battle-Dressed Cops Cracking Down on Peaceful Protests. Basically, she wrote, if you build it…it will be used.

The US has actually been militarising much of its police agencies for the better part of three decades, mostly in the name of the drug war. But 9/11 put that programme on steroids.

Recall that six short weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US congress passed the PATRIOT Act, a sweeping expansion of domestic and foreign intelligence-gathering capabilities. This

legislation gave the government the ability to easily search all forms of communication, eased restrictions on foreign intelligence-gathering at home, gave itself greater power to monitor financial transactions and created entirely new categories of domestic terrorism to which the PATRIOT Act’s expanded powers to police could be applied.

It was one of the greatest expansions of government police power in history, an expansion which, after some tweaking, has been mostly validated by the congress and reaffirmed by the courts.

I already linked to her article in one of my morning posts, but if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, please do.

The American ruling class has become more and more powerful and less and less accountable to the rest of us. For a long time I’ve thought that our best hope is that they will become so arrogant and drunk with power that they overreach and reveal the truth–we are no longer free and the goal is to turn us all into cowering serfs.

So far the iron fist has mostly been concealed under a velvet glove, but now we are seeing the price we’ll pay if we demand our rights and freedoms back. I salute the protesters–young, old, and in-between for the courage they are showing in putting their bodies on the line.

As our President blithely gallivants around the world and our “representatives” fight over the spoils in Washington, we are beginning to see clearly the structure that Bush built and Obama has accepted–a domestic military force to protect the elites from the people whose homes and jobs and retirement savings they have stolen. A police state.

I fear if the push for austerity and the inaction on jobs continues, we are going to see riots in the streets that will make 1968 look tame in comparison. There a so many of us in the 99%. They can’t jail or kill all of us. Fortunately they are making the stupid mistake of showing us what is going to happen to anyone who resists. The more violence and cruelty they display, the angrier many Americans will get and the more backlash there will be.

Americans don’t like to be pushed around. Somewhere deep inside of each of us is a burning desire for freedom and the willingness to fight for it. In the end we will win, but it won’t be easy. We need to stick together.

Saturday Morning Cartoons (with a little news thrown in)

Posted: November 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Super Committee, Surreality, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 30 Comments

Good Morning!!

Herman Cain made another wacky comment about Libya yesterday. First up, he tried to “clarify” his recent brain freeze on Libya at a press conference in Florida. Think Progress has the transcript.

Do I agree with siding with the opposition? Do I agree with saying that Qadhafi should go? Do I agree that they now have a country where you’ve got Taliban and Al Qaeda that’s going to be part of the government? … Do I agree with not knowing the government was going to — which part was he asking me about? I was trying to get him to be specific and he wouldn’t be specific.

And then there’s this from the same Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel interview in which Cain appeared not to know anything about Libya, also from Think Progress:

JOURNAL SENTINEL: Would you favor a military strike against Iran to stop that country from developing a nuclear capability?

CAIN: That is not a practical, top-tier alternative and here’s why. If you look at the topography of Iran. Where are you going to strike? It’s very mountainous. That’s what makes it very difficult. Secondly, that would be a decision that would need to be coordinated and discussed with our friends in that part of the world like Israel. But for the United States to unilaterally go in and attack Iran to try and stop them, I would want to consult with the intelligence community, the commanders on the ground in that part of the world, which I have stated before. But we should — I don’t have all the information necessary to make that decision.

Mountains? As Think Progress explains,

But yes, Iran does have mountains. However, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta noted the other day, the principle reason that an attack on Iran would be a bad idea is not because it is mountainous, but because it won’t achieve the objective of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In addition to that, a strike would all but end the reform movement in Iran, spark a wider regional war and incentivize the regime to weaponize its nuclear program.

As everyone knows by now, Cain has been provided with Secret Service protection, and he’s been telling audiences that he got it because of his high poll ratings and because he’s being “hounded” by the press. From the NY Daily News:

The media horde hounding Herman Cain was not the reason the U.S. Secret Service gave him a security detail, a federal official said Friday.

“Media coverage or the number of media covering is not a factor in the decision of whether or not a candidate needs USSS protection,” a Department of Homeland Security official told the Daily News.

The GOP presidential hopeful — who has been a walking headline in recent weeks due largely to claims he sexually harassed at least four women — has faced threats and racially-fueled rhetoric, The Associated Press reported.

Cain refused to answer questions about the threats.

“The thing about Secret Service is ‘secret,’ so it would not be appropriate to discuss anything about it,” Cain said. “We wanted to move to that next level because of my ranking in the polls and the additional scrutiny I’ve been getting.”

“We’re not scared of you guys…and gals,” an exuberant Cain told reporters.

Is it just me, or are other people beginning to feel like they’ve gone down the rabbit hole and smoked some of whatever that caterpillar was smoking?

There was that recent recent remark from Cain, “We need a leader, not a reader.” It turns out that was a quote from The Simpsons movie. And what about the quote he used at the end of a debate in August:

“A poet once said, ‘Life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, but it’s never easy when there’s so much on the line.'” (Aug. 11 Republican debate)

That was a direct quote from the Pokemon theme song, sung by Donna Summer!

And the 999 plan came from Sim City IV?

Well, I guess I’m going to have to start watching more TV, because apparently Rachel Maddow explained the whole thing to her audience about a week ago. She says it’s performance art.

Is is possible that Cain could really be scamming the Republicans just to show how stupid they are? Exactly what’s going on here anyway? Actually even some Republicans are getting confused by Cain’s antics. (Warning: link goes to Hot Air)

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not, which is a recurring theme lately in some of his pronouncements about foreign policy. He was joking, I think, when he said he’d offered to make Kissinger secretary of state again. He wasn’t joking, I thought, when he answered a question about whether his grasp of foreign policy is too slight with “9-9-9,” although the Standard’s John McCormack theorized last night on Twitter that maybe he was actually saying, “Nein, nein, nein,” in which case he was joking. The fact that we’ve reached the point where no answer is too goofy to be instantly ruled out as non-serious seems … problematic.

Cain brought up the GOP debate on foreign policy two days earlier.

“That’s a tough subject. You don’t want to get your facts mixed up,” he said.

He defended his view that presidents and presidential candidates don’t need to be immersed in the fine print of world affairs – they simply need to be leaders who can surround themselves with the right people and sift through their advice.

“I’m not supposed to know anything about foreign policy. Just thought I’d throw that out,” he said, a dig at his critics.

“I want to talk to commanders on the ground. Because you run for president (people say) you need to have the answer. No, you don’t! No, you don’t! That’s not good decision-making,” said Cain.

Mitt Romney isn’t as practiced a joker as Herman Cain, but some very weird stuff has been coming out about him. The Boston Globe had an article that I’m not allowed to read, because they’ve locked everything behind a pay wall worse that the one at the NYT. Luckily, some other sites did get access to the article, so I’ll link to them. From Alternet:

On their way out of the governor’s office and onto the presidential campaign trail, aides to Mitt Romney almost completely obliterated their electronic records, deleting emails, purchasing hard drives, and replacing computers, a investigation by the Boston Globe found. “The governor’s office has found no e-mails from 2002-2006 in our possession,’’ an aide to the current governor, Deval Patrick, told the Globe. Meanwhile, 11 Romney aides — many of whom went on to work on Romney’s 2008 campaign — purchased their state-issued computer hard drives as they left state employment.

Like other states and the federal government, Massachusetts has a law that requires such files be preserved for the state archives. Moreover, Secretary of State William Galvin, who oversees the state Public Records Law, “said it appeared odd” that aides could purchases state property. “I don’t sell things to people who work for me,’’ Galvin said.

WTF?! Okay, my guess is they didn’t want the citizens of Massachusetts to find out that they did nothing while Romney was Governor except work on their boss’s future presidential campaign. Plenty of people are trying to find out what they’re covering up though. Romney and his aides claim everything they did was legal–although they haven’t provided any evidence that’s true.


Next to these two nutcases, Newt Gingrich just looks like a normal corrupt politician.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A confident and at times defiant Newt Gingrich defended himself Friday against growing questions about his lucrative consulting career, and he acknowledged that how he handles the vetting process will determine whether he can be “a legitimate front-runner” for the Republican presidential nomination.

Calling his recent surge toward the top of the polls “almost disorienting,” Gingrich fielded questions at a news conference here about his myriad money-making ventures in the decade since his tenure as House speaker ended. They include consulting contracts with Freddie Mac, the quasi-public mortgage company, and millions of dollars from health-care corporations seeking access to him.

“Somebody who’s a front-runner for the presidency of the United States should get a full vetting,” Gingrich said. “It’s the nature of the process. If I’m able to answer them [questions] in a way that the American people feel comfortable, then I’ll be a legitimate front-runner.”

Enjoy it while you can, Newt. It won’t last. But for now, the other four crazies in the clown car–Bachmann, Perry, Paul, Santorum–have been virtually eclipsed, and of course Huntsman was never even in the car.

And then there are those jokers on the so-called Super Committee. According to The New York Times, they’re still at a “deep impasse.”

Just 72 hours before a deadline to present Congress with a plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the nation’s deficit, members of a joint Congressional committee remained at a deep impasse on Friday after Democrats rejected a new Republican proposal devised with the help of Speaker John A. Boehner.

Pessimism mounted among members of the committee about their ability to strike a deal by Monday and avert a high-profile failure that would demonstrate anew the inability of the two parties on Capitol Hill to reach consensus about how to attack the nation’s mounting public debt. The partisan divide was also showcased Friday by a vote in the House to reject a Republican-backed constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget.

Despite time running out on the committee created by the summer agreement to raise the federal debt limit, negotiations were in disarray, with Republicans and Democrats even disputing what precisely divided them. One panel member said that he still had slim hope for a deal but that it would take an extraordinary development to end the stalemate and avoid a series of automatic cuts in 2013 that would reduce federal services and make substantial reductions in Pentagon spending.

Whatever. I hope they fail and have to explain to the American people why they’re drastically cutting Medicare and Medicaid.

And now for some real earthshaking news. I don’t have the ability to explain it to you, but even I know it’s big. From the Journal Nature:

At the heart of the weirdness for which the field of quantum mechanics is famous is the wavefunction, a powerful but mysterious entity that is used to determine the probabilities that quantum particles will have certain properties. Now, a preprint posted online on 14 November1 reopens the question of what the wavefunction represents — with an answer that could rock quantum theory to its core. Whereas many physicists have generally interpreted the wavefunction as a statistical tool that reflects our ignorance of the particles being measured, the authors of the latest paper argue that, instead, it is physically real.

“I don’t like to sound hyperbolic, but I think the word ‘seismic’ is likely to apply to this paper,” says Antony Valentini, a theoretical physicist specializing in quantum foundations at Clemson University in South Carolina.

Go read it. I’m sure we’ll be hearing much much more about this once the paper is published. That’s it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?

“Occupy Congress?” Now You’re Talking!

Posted: November 18, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, Congress, corruption, jobs, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment | Tags: , , , , , | 13 Comments

According to Greg Sargent, labor and progressive organizations are forming a coalition to “Occupy Congress.”

The coalition — which includes unions like SEIU and CWA and groups like the Center for Community Change — is currently working on a plan to bus thousands of protesters from across the country to Washington, where they will congregate around the Capitol from December 5-9, SEIU president Mary Kay Henry tells me in an interview.

“Thousands of people have signed up to come to Capitol Hill during the first week in December,” Henry says, adding that protesters are invited to make their way to Washington on their own, too. “We’re figuring out buses and transportation now.”

One idea under consideration — pending various permitting and other logistical issues — is to have a series of tents set up on the lawn outside the Capitol, each representing a state, with the number of unemployed in each state prominently displayed. But the optics are still being worked out.

The demands they are talking about aren’t very radical though. They’re planning to pressure Republicans to go along with Obama’s jobs proposal. As Sargent points out, that doesn’t really jibe with the nature of the Occupy movement, which rejects both corporate political parties. But Henry argues that

Occupy Wall Street had created a “framework” — which she described as “we are the 99 percent” — within which such activities would fit comfortably.

“The reason we’re targeting Republicans is because this is about jobs,” she said. “The Republicans’ insistence that no revenue can be put on the table is the reason we’re not creating jobs in this country. We want to draw a stark contrast between a party that wants to scapegoat immigrants, attack public workers, and protect the rich, versus a president who has been saying he wants America to get back to work and that everybody should pay their fair share.”

It’s a start, and the SEIU may not be able to control the message if lots of people with more creative ideas show up to the protests.

In line with the influence of the Occupy actions on the mainstream types, I clicked on a Google news link to the conservative Washington Times that read “Occupy Wall Street: What should be done with the protesters?” I expected to find a screed encouraging law enforcement to crush the protesters. Imagine my surprise when I read this instead:

As irritating or disruptive as some may find the Occupiers, they are the conscience of America, like it or not. Their very physical presence is a reminder that the decline of America happened not because they didn’t believe in the American dream, but because the greed of Wall Street and the banks stole that dream.

Yet our government continues to reward the top 1% with corporate welfare and the lowest taxes in more than 50 years. And Congress, which made that largesse to the wealthy possible, is in the pockets of those very same people and their lobbyists.

Yes, the protesters are predominately young, unemployed, maybe even scruffy, and, yes, the homeless have found a haven and free meals with them, and, yes, the Occupiers’ persistence after more than two months is like a mote in our eye, reminding us all that we can no longer do business as usual.

The fact that OWS sites have sprung up across the country and now the world has prompted us to face ourselves. We can no longer ignore the joblessness and poverty that scars our great country. It is not an abstract concept, some numbers on a bean counters’ balance sheet. It’s real. It’s people. It’s your kids and mine. It’s returning vets who find themselves on the scrap heap of our economy.

Holy sh&t! Can you believe it? Could it be that change is really happening?

The Marvel of Coincidence, Part Deux

Posted: November 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, Banksters, corruption, cyber security, Economy, financial institutions, Media, net-neutrality, Regulation, the internet | Tags: , , , | 15 Comments

My, oh my!  There is a deluge of coincidence, enough to turn tinfoil hats into swanky silk toppers. 

First we had the mind-boggling convergence of right-thinking PD departments from cities across the country, all deciding within the last 4 days to crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street protests.  At least that was the ‘official’ story until Oakland’s Mayor, the rather infamous Jean Quan blurted out during a BBC interview that she had been on a conference call with 18 American city mayors, discussing the ongoing Occupy Movement.

Not to be outdone by Mayor Quan, a Homeland Security official had his own ‘blurt/burp’ moment, disclosing that the FBI and the Homeland Security Department had been discussing how to ‘handle’ OWS.

And just so US citizens can truly marvel at the strange alignment of the stars, we have this extraordinary comment made by Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group.

“It was completely spontaneous.”

The ‘it’ in that statement would be riot police sweeping the encampments in Portland, Denver, Oakland and NYC, etc. for health and security reasons.  I suppose we can assume that the ‘middle of the night/early morning’ phalanx strategy of surround and secure was also a spontaneous, creative leap by law enforcement or perhaps a coast-to-coast mind-reading experiment.

However, Mayor Bloomberg in NYC must be credited with additional points for creativity.  After all his passionate I-Love-the–First-Amendment declarations and as a media mogul himself [12th richest person in the country], he coincidentally declared a media blackout.  Meaning? There would no [or very few] unattractive images of protestors being rousted, cell phones confiscated and/or reports of a CBS helicopter prevented from taking aerial  film footage.   According the Washington Post Partisan blog:

Most disturbingly, the NYPD sought to block any and all press from covering this eviction. On the ground, reporters were stopped at the barricades and refused entrance. Numerous journalists reported that cops refused to let then in, even pushing reporters away; reporters even Tweeted about getting arrested. In the air, NYPD helicopters refused to allow CBS News helicopters to film the eviction from above. As for the camera already in the park–OWS’s livestream–the police simply blocked it with a pile of torn-up tents.

But Keith Olbermann in his inimitable fashion had a few choice words for Mayor Bloomberg. If you haven’t seen this, sit back and enjoy. It’s entertaining.

But there’s more!  Even with the blackout, even with reporters rounded and roughed up, the New York Times managed to describe the events in startling detail and had photos of the NYPD grouping at the South Street Seaport.  Which has led some to ask:  What’s the deal between the Mayor, the NYPD and the Gray Lady?  Another coincidence?  May the stars fall from the sky.

Finally, not to be repetitious but . . . the Internet Protection Bill and the evolving, expanding piece of legislation [HR 3261] Stop Online Piracy [SOPA] is chugging along brilliantly.  Think of the ramifications.  A copyright bill that would place wide, blunt controls on the Internet, our remaining set of eyes on the world, quietly wends its way through Congress at the precise moment that media blackouts are sanctioned for reasons of security.  Turns out I’m not the only one who finds this legislative creation and its Senate counterpart [S.968] more than a little suspicious.

Trojan Horse, anyone?  Or Coincidence Heaven?

Barnum was born way before his time.

Thursday Reads

Posted: November 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, China, Foreign Affairs, Global Financial Crisis, morning reads, Psychopaths in charge, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning!

You know the Occupy Movement is having an effect when the propaganda patrol starts trying to pin the “TERRORIST” label on them. From Politico:

If confirmed, this will likely be a much, much bigger image problem than the reports of crime in Occupy encampments:

Authorities suspect [Oscar Ramiro] Ortega-Hernandez] had been in the area for weeks, coming back and forth to the Washington Mall. Before the shooting, he was detained by local police at an abandoned house. U.S. Park Police say Ortega-Hernandez may have spent time with Occupy D.C. protesters.

Ooops! In an update, Politico has to take it back–it turns out authorities couldn’t find a connection. But you just know they’re going to keep trying. And ABC News reported it. Lots of people will take that as gospel and never hear that it wasn’t true.

However a GOP campus leader at the University of Texas Austin responded on Twitter to the news of shots fired at the White House.

Hours after Pennsylvania State Police arrested a 21-year-old Idaho man for allegedly firing a semi-automatic rifle at the White House, the top student official for the College Republicans at the University of Texas tweeted that the idea of assassinating President Obama was “tempting.”

At 2:29 p.m. ET, UT’s Lauren E. Pierce wrote: “Y’all as tempting as it may be, don’t shoot Obama. We need him to go down in history as the WORST president we’ve EVER had! .”

Pierce, the president of the College Republicans at UT Austin, told ABC News the comment was a “joke” and that the “whole [shooting incident] was stupid.” Giggling, she said that an attempted assassination would “only make the situation worse.”

Tee hee hee… this is the future of the GOP?

Maxine Waters is still number one voice of reason in Washington DC. When the propaganda merchants tried to get her to say something disparaging about OWS, here’s how she handled it.

When asked to comment Wednesday about the deaths and crimes that have occurred around Occupy protests being held across the country, Rep. Maxine Waters said “that’s life and it happens.”

“That’s a distraction from the goals of the protesters,” Waters, who says she supports the Occupy movement, told CNSNews.com after an event at the Capitol sponsored by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

I love that woman!

“Let me just say this: Anytime you have a gathering, homeless people are going to show up,” said Waters. “They will find some comfort in having some other people out on the streets with them. They’re looking for food. Often times, the criminal element will invade. That’s life and it happens, whether it’s with protesters or other efforts that go on in this country.

“So I’m not deterred in my support for them because of these negative kinds of things,” said Waters. “I just want them to work at doing the best job that they can do to bring attention to this economic crisis and the unfairness of the system at this time.”

Way to go, Maxine!

In contrast, Republican ratf^^ker Karl Rove isn’t quite so mature. He really lost his cool on Tuesday night when he was targeted by Occupy protesters and ended up acting pretty childish.

Former Bush political adviser Karl Rove seemed a bit flustered Tuesday night after his speech to Johns Hopkins University was interrupted by a group of about 15 protesters connected to “Occupy Baltimore,” who got under his skin enough to get him cursing.

As he spoke about public debt and attempted to pin America’s economic pain on the Obama administration, a woman shouted out, “Mic check?”

A chorus of voices replied, “Mic check!”

“Karl Rove! Is the architect!” they shouted. “The architect of Occupy Iraq! The architect of Occupy Afghanistan!”

“Here’s the deal,” he replied. “If you believe in free speech then you had a chance to show it.”

“If you believe in right of the First Amendment to free speech then you demonstrate it by shutting up and waiting until the Q & A session right after,” Rove trailed off as supporters applauded.

“You can go ahead and stand in line and have the courage to ask any damn question you want, or you can continue to show that you are a buffoon…” he said, as the group of protesters descended into random shouting. One woman called him a “murderer, ” while others chanted, “We are the 99 percent!”

“No you’re not!” Rove replied, chanting it back at them. “No you’re not! No you’re not! No you’re not!”

Gee, that was fun to watch.

Not that any of the European elites will listen, but Brad Plummer at Wonkbook talked to a number of experts and came to the conclusion that the whole story about it not being legal for the ECB to rescue the European financial system is a bunch of hooey.

European officials keep insisting that the ECB isn’t legally allowed to play savior. On Tuesday, the head of Germany’s Bundesbank called it a violation of European law. The Wall Street Journal argued Wednesday that the European Union’s founding treaty would need to be revamped before the ECB could act as a lender of last resort to countries like Italy. So is this true? Could Europe really melt down because of a few legal niceties?

Not really, say experts. It’s true that the Treaty of Lisbon expressly forbids the European Central Bank from buying up debt instruments directly from countries like Italy and Spain. But, says Richard Portes of the London Business School, there’s nothing to prevent the central bank from buying up Italian and Spanish bonds on the secondary market from other investors.

“If that’s illegal, then officials should already be in jail,” says Portes. “Because they’ve been doing it sporadically since May of 2010.” The problem is that the bank’s current erratic purchases only seem to be creating more uncertainty in the market. “Right now,” says Portes, “nobody’s buying in that market except the ECB.”

Instead, what many experts want the European Central Bank to do is to pledge, loudly and clearly, that it will buy up bonds on the secondary market until, say, Italy’s borrowing costs come down to manageable levels. In theory, says Portes, the central bank wouldn’t even have to make many purchases after that, because expectations would shift and become self-fulfilling. In the near term, investors would stop worrying about whether they’d be repaid for loaning money to countries like Italy, and Italy’s borrowing costs would drop — giving it room to figure out its debt woes. (Granted, that latter step is a daunting task.)

But as Dakinikat wrote a couple of days ago, we’ll probably just have to wait and see what happens when the psychopaths in charge do exactly the opposite of what they should do.

The New York Times has a story this morning about Obama’s commitment of troops to Australia: U.S. Expands Military Ties to Australia, Irritating China.

CANBERRA, Australia — President Obama announced Wednesday that the United States planned to deploy 2,500 Marines in Australia to shore up alliances in Asia, but the move prompted a sharp response from Beijing, which accused Mr. Obama of escalating military tensions in the region.

The agreement with Australia amounts to the first long-term expansion of the American military’s presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War. It comes despite budget cuts facing the Pentagon and an increasingly worried reaction from Chinese leaders, who have argued that the United States is seeking to encircle China militarily and economically.

“It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region,” Liu Weimin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in response to the announcement by Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia.

Attention Nobel committee: Isn’t it about time to rescind that Peace Prize?

OK, that’s it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?

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