Gimp of the Perverse II: Will the real Jack Burkman please stand up?

Ed.--I got an interesting comment from someone purporting to be a former girlfriend of Mr. Burkman. This one's juicier than the rest, but it corresponds to other communications I've received about him from others sources who I am certain did date him at one point. This comment--from October as OWS was gestating--went unmoderated for some time, I wasn't paying attention with the editing/revising work on the DC Madam account.

All the breaks are original, no edits, as with the others:

October 2011 comment: http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=32294008&postID=6232334077798997076

I dated Jack for a considerable amount of time, and can say without a doubt, the man has SEVERE issues when it comes to women.

With respect to his dearly departed Mommie Dearest, Jack sure loves to have a daily chat with her in his mirror. At first, I thought it was a joke before recognizing that he considers it a "real" discussion. Thankfully, Mother gave her blessing for our relationship *shudder*

He believes that ALL women are whores and out to "get his money", yet he likes to buy his way into your life. And thus, Jack attends church in Tyson's Corner almost every weekend, in a laughable attempt to cleanse himself of his sins.

What would those be?!

Oh gosh golly gee, Jack likes to think of himself as a VERY dirty birdy.

Forget the DC Madam scandal---I'm astonished that no one has posted about his frequent trips to the Spearmint Rhino or the Red Rooster in Las Vegas!

Essentially, Jack must feel in complete control of his romantic relationships:

1) He needs a woman who will stimulate him intellectually. Bonus points if she can banter about about the declining moral fiber of America, and constantly praise his efforts to educate people about strong family values.

2) He insists "his" woman act as arm candy at the many DC hotel bars he frequents BUT you're forbidden from directly speaking to any other men... including bartenders, bellmen OR cab drivers.

3) He will withhold sex because he loves you (Madonna), yet he'll ask if it would be okay if he can satisfy his needs elsewhere (Whore). And you're possessed by the Devil himself if you even think about masturbating! haha

He has many great attributes, which is why I accepted most of the flaws. It was only after he threatened me physically that I called it quits, and severed all contact.

Oddly enough, Jack's brother is normal. Last I heard, he was a physician in Seattle.

A note to the lady in question: I would like to discuss more of this with you. Feel free to contact me at the email address on my profile. I will honor your wishes for confidentiality.

You ever noticed (FEMA)?

You ever notice that all those rednecks and meth-heads (often inhabiting the same body!) who are yammering about "We're all going to be dragged kicking and screaming to FEMA camps man, any day now!" are all white? Did you ever notice that none of them gave a shit about all those African-Americans languishing in FEMA trailers for roughly two years except when they thought they were getting a "free ride"? Yeah, me too, but really: where was the outrage over many of these same people having to inhale formaldehyde for months? No conspiracy there, agreed, just not for the same reason they might unthink it was so.

Imagine had these refugees been white, middle-class. Imagine that they had been taken there, sometimes against their wills like in 1927 when another storm ravaged the place, to be held for a a very long time with few rights to speak of in toxic surroundings. The Libertarians, the rednecks, the red-headed stepchildren of the American Left who have smoked too much dope for decades with predictable results, have an erection (nipples too) over FEMA this, FEMA that, but the slant is always the same: an anti-government agenda that's arch-conservative, almost certainly baseless in the terms their putting them in and basically racist at heart.

Seriously, where was the alarm over these poor black families being forcibly relocated, permanently in many cases, away from New Orleans? Wasn't this your legendary FEMA camp theory based on your own criteria? No, these were only a gaggle of dirty niggers (to you), so it didn't matter. It didn't matter when a naturalized Middle Eastern businessman was detained by private security in a bus station...that was OK and then repainted by assholes on the right like Alex Jones as a purely government move. The message must always be that it's the big, bad Boogeyman "gubmint," never the most serious threat to liberty across the globe, multinational corporations.

This shit is a ploy, conscious or not, it is code. We know you have an agenda. We know you're afraid of black people, of minorities. We know you're ignorant, that you're the boring crank at a party that everyone ignores for good reason. Now shut up about FEMA camps you racist, yammering retards.

James Dobson, Jack Burkman & the DC Madam

The Rev. James Dobson, former founder of Focus on the Family, former human being, has been telling evangelicals that if they don't vote to the right that God's going to be angry at them, some such bullshit flowing from his sewer-shaped orifice. Normal people don't take to this swill, but then, there's Republicans, evangelicals, the Aryan Nations crowd, the Tea Party demographic (a very tiny one comprised mostly of middle-aged small business owners), and the Klan. In the backdrop of all this are the lobbyists, war profiteers, criminal banks, criminal management subcultures, speculators, lawyers--the criminals who have hijacked the system--doing their do while the rubes think they're accomplishing something. OK, they are: the dismemberment of their own rights, so there.

I've written on Jack Burkman more than I cared to. He's a good argument for sterilization. What I have concluded is that as a golden tiered lobbyist, media pundit for the right, and whatever hat he's wearing this week attached to his utility-belt, this guy is no good for America or the world. He's not just typical folks, he's up there at the summit, part of the problem, a threat to the Republic. We're all entitled to freedom of association, but these fuckers take it to the breaking point into organized crime. I don't really give a shit if it gets a free pass from all the other criminals in office, it's a subversion of the rule of law. Dobson is telling his flock and anyone foolish enough to listen to him seriously that if they don't vote Republican, forget it, God's going to be angry, watch out, eek, oh, aw. Does this shit ever get tired for these jackapes? Do they think with the primeval part of the brain underneath the cerebellum more often than not? Hey, were it not affecting the rest of the world, fuck if I care, but it is. Burkman is just one more cheerleader on the runaway train called Western capitalism. These clowns have taken us to the edge of the cliff now, whatever's coming is coming sooner rather than later, and it will be big, nothing will ever be the same again. Their reaction? To try to clamp down on the rest of us because they know intuitively that they're the problem, a source of dysfunction, and that this dysfunction is going to wash them out of power soon. They send out the usual clods like Burkamn to distract, divide, to demoralize.

Nothing he or they have to say is going to wash with the majority, however, so they wrap it in religion and patriotism, nationalist iconography, so the rank tasting pill will go down for the slack-jawed crowd. Rawstory had a recent blurb on Dobson, his recent utterances on how we're all supposed to be voting. I posted a comment relating to the cynicism of the Burkman/Dobson relationship since the former has spoken as a representative to the phony preacher man, the founder of Focus on the Family, which in turn created the Family Research Council. It's more right wing attacks on the separation of church and state, but also to get evangelicals to vote stupidly, to vote Republican.

Burkman is a well-known pussyhound who loves fucking almost anything in sight. He's not exactly the model of behavior that Dobson's advocating either. Why would he care? Burkman has promoted him and his agenda, a mutually beneficial one with the GOP, he gets results. Caring about the behavior of others is for the flock--with exceptions like these. Dobson has never come out criticizing Burkman for this behavior.

To believe in nothing is nihilism:

Dobson only cares about temporal power, he's ashen inside. His mouthpiece Jack Burkman was found by multiple researchers in the DC Madam's phone bills--he did a callback to her escort service, so it wasn't a mistake, especially with each instance years apart.

Burkman was given incredible cover by the mainstream press, it was extraordinary, suggesting a media campaign to contain the scandal generally, to contain the damage to the GOP. They couldn't keep a lid on Larry Flynt with Senator Vitter, but they could with Jack. Burkman goes out spouting the same family values garbage as Dobson--for Dobsons in fact. Vitter got an award from the FRC for his work in promoting family values in the Senate, in hotels, with hookers, you know...

Bill Maher had him on his shows so often I question whether they might be friends, something over two dozen. He's not just spouting GOP swill on Fox, hardly. He's all over the place as a "voice of the right." He was a high level campaign adviser to the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign. The media ignored his presence in the phone records because of his other job, a pattern you will find in the phone records: lots of lobbying related entities, individuals, most in defense/intelligence or related contracting, like SAIC or Qualcomm. SAIC is all over the phone records. I think the whole scandal was about influence peddling being uncovered in Hookergate with investigations turning up a lot of stones with the escort services in DC., finally accelerating the investigation in Palfrey. It didn't help that the November 2006 midterms were coming, so someone interim appointed (for other reasons too) Jeffrey Taylor...now at Ernst & Young, who have a revolving door relationship with their executives and those at Qualcomm. There's something major there with Burkman for almost all of the press to uniformly go silent on it. That's because they could with him, not Vitter, not Tobias, etc.

There are more phone records out there, she didn't release all of them. It's possible I have everything, however, as I was a member of the defense as a general researcher, hired at Palfrey's request. I've seen Dan Moldea's findings. There are quite a few more names in them of significance, but patterns are what matter most. That doesn't really fit Flynt's format, he wants hypocritical office holders, they're the ones in his sights. Burkman isn't an elected official, he wouldn't stand up to the scrutiny--probably wouldn't know he was doing something wrong, heh. Word in the Beltway is that he's chasing women all of the time. Then there was the anecdote about him walking around DC (he's a gimp) coming to a Gay Pride parade and propositioning a lesbian couple for sex. The girl put story up on her Myspace page with a scan of his business card, but it was yanked. Wonkette's story on it was also taken down, or at least one or two of them, and so on.

I've communicated with a few of the girls that Jack has...well, fucked. He's not remotely in the Dobson mold in his real life, a very sexual one at that, and he has purchased birth control for at least one of them, the morning after pill. Does James Dobson give a shit? Of course not, Burkman is his hire, his media mercenary, his spokesman, his lobbyist. Burkman cut his teeth working as a congressional staffer during the GOP's endless assault on the also corrupt Bill Clinton, another political operative. Now he's a golden tiered lobbyist. Results. Those are what Dobson wants, gets, and so, he would never admit Burkman was this way unless he had no choice. These people are the lowest form of life on the planet, below the amoeba, lethal mutations. There's a presidency on the cancer...

Expect more on Mr. Burkman in my upcoming account on the DC Madam.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/08/dobson-we-are-in-serious-trouble-with-god-if-we-vote-wrong-in-2012/

Zuccotti Park (Wall Street occupation) images from October 7, 2011

All images the intellectual property of Matt Janovic and Isabel Martins. Copyright 2011.

Some visits to Zuccotti Park (the Wall Street occupation)

New York City--Me and my girlfriend paid a couple of visits to the Wall Street occupation over the last couple of weeks (on September 30th and October 7th), two days with marked contrasts for the site. September 30 was brimming with occupiers--as many as between 700 to 1,000 core individuals from New York were present (exact numbers are difficult to come by since how one defines an occupier can slippery at best), it was literally standing room only with "visitors" like myself.




It's my opinion that as this is a mostly symbolic action, "visitors" are just as worthy of being counted among the occupiers since we all share the same views about Wall Street and the bailout of the biggest American banks. We have come from all over the nation, from all walks of life and from a variety of age groups, a variety of demographics. What all of us share is that we're working class and that we're getting screwed by the economic sector and the political class. We know that working within the political process isn't going to bring about reform.




This occupation could go on record as the most photographed and recorded political event in American history to date, not even the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.



Contrary to the contentions of early mainstream coverage, the occupiers aren't all twenty-somethings and they have a solid focus on why they're there and what their demands are: radical reform of the financial sector.

Also on that September 30 came some of the first representatives of American labor--the Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100--and we were present, recording the event...along with an NYPD surveillance pod on a crane and nearly everyone else there. The TWU has sued the City of New York for commandeering five MTA buses to arrest Wall Street occupiers crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and lost, the cops can arrest them if they refuse to allow the action. Interestingly, police on the curbside began enforcing pedestrian codes, as if on cue once the TWU showed, but I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusion. Had the cops not rioted again two nights earlier, beating and pepper-spraying occupiers once again, I wouldn't be so suspicious of their motives.

A number of plainclothes detectives were on hand as well as select NYPD who were photographing and videotaping everyone in the crowd. But many of the cops I've encountered were simply doing their jobs. An "us vs. them" mentality should be applied when brutality and extralegal behavior are present, but not as a default, my opinion.

There have also been unsubstantiated rumors that police planted among the occupiers were arresting individuals on the 5th of October--they have yet to be proven out. It's not the first of such rumors either that has been making the rounds. My own conclusion from both visits is that the core of the occupiers is well organized and know what they're doing. They're resourceful and could be ready for the long haul when the occupation itself ends and the real work of organizing begins, and a beginning is what this is. Right now, the police shenanigans at the Brooklyn Bridge and the resumption of extralegal brutality on the 5th of this month have seemingly thinned the ranks. That's if you only count them and leave out us visitors...

From September 30th:

Above: The TWU arrives on site, Sept. 30.

Above: Speeches by occupiers, not leaders. As no bullhorns are allowed by NYPD, every few words are relayed across the crowd by selected individuals, spaced-apart, so as to reach the farthest boundaries of Zuccotti Park.

All images the intellectual property of Matt Janovic and Isabel Martins. Copyright 2011.

Where's Waldo? Fuck if I know...

Ossining, NY--I've been visiting a dear friend for over a month now and have (don't laugh) contracted an unknown ailment that has been rending my body for two weeks running now. With principal work on the DC Madam account basically finished, it's time to find another direction. I'm not sure what's that going to be, so I'm still in the spirit of the times since no one in government does either. Welcome to America.

It's possible that I will never write a non-fiction work ever again unless there's a damned good reason, meaning taxable income.

On the ailment: we first thought this was the measles. It was not. First, it was a very sore throat and a fever, aches, pains, and not simply the kind my rapidly decaying body is used to. For all you armchair physicians out there, the spots spread first from around my throat (never reaching my face) and looked both like the spots from scarlet fever and measles. None of the doctors who saw me has any idea what it was except that it could have been "viral."

Like measles, it spread down my body until it reached my feet, yes my feet. Now, they're fading and I'm spent, no energy, zip, nada, zilcho. Who knows where I got this shit.

So, since I've been in NY State, I have endured:

--An unprecedented earthquake that originated in Virginia.

--A hurricane (Irene) and flooding (it missed us, but still...).

--An undisclosed medical diagnosis unrelated to the "spots" that I don't want to go into, but life-changing nonetheless.

--The spots, whatever the fuck it was.

--A slew of existential crises that, yes, have to do partly with the current economic crisis and getting older.

And so, there it is, more fodder for the writing mill. Yes, there will be short stories coming eventually. I'll be changing my name to "Job" for every reason you think.

1921-2011

In a bold move towards transparency, the Chinese Communist Party has changed its named to Howard Johnson's™. Have a great day.

A very tiny except from my impending DC Madam account

Ed.--I've posted some of this before, but it bears repeating.

This is taken directly from the text of my account and can also be taken as an assertion of intellectual property (the bracketing text and the edit of the transcript). You do not own it. Any copying requires a request as well as citation, no exceptions, and I will come after major offenders in a court of law, bank on it. This applies to everything I have ever generated on this site as well as outside of it.

This exchange was never reported by the mainstream press for doctrinal purposes.

"From day three (April 9, 2008) in the racketeering trial of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, an exchange for the ages that would serve as a fine example for law school students in the Anglo-American sphere, and which came towards the end of a long day of endlessly banal testimony:

 Q [AUSA Daniel P. Butler]. And did you compare the tax returns to the bank records for Ms. Palfrey?

A. Yes.

Q. And what did that show?

A. The comparison of the bank records for this year, 2002, show that there was a greater amount of gross receipts than was reported on this line.

MR. BURTON: Can we approach, Your Honor?

THE COURT: Yes.

(BENCH CONFERENCE ON THE RECORD.)

MR. BURTON: I don't know where this is going.

MR. BUTLER: I'm not going to any tax discrepancy, or anything to that effect.

THE COURT: You just saddled her with basically what is false reporting.

MR. BUTLER: Well, I don't think it's gone that far [Page break] yet, Your Honor. I'm not going any further with this line of inquiry.

THE COURT: Well, now you've put the defense in the position where they have to respond to this. How are they going to do that?

MR. BUTLER: Well, Your Honor, that was not the intent of my question, but I appreciate what the Court is saying.

THE COURT: What was the intent of the question?

MR. BUTLER: My intent of the question, Your Honor, was directed at the gross receipts that were deposited into this and comparing it with the bank records that we have. It was a poorly phrased question. That's all I can say about it. I don't know anything more than that.

THE COURT: Well, where are you going next?

MR. BUTLER: Your Honor, I'm going next with -- can I just have a moment, Your Honor? Your Honor, there's another chart in terms of -- I just need to grab it, just to answer the question more explicitly, if I can have a moment.

THE COURT: How much more do you have with this guy?

MR. BUTLER: Not very much at all, Your Honor.

MS. CONNELLY: I think there's a bunch more documents.

MR. BUTLER: Well, there's other documents we need to admit through him, yes.

THE COURT: Can he come back in the morning? [Page break]

MR. BUTLER: We can do that, Your Honor.

THE COURT: I think I want to instruct the jury that there was no tax charge, no tax claim in this case.

MR. BUTLER: That's fine, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Maybe I'll even instruct them they are to disregard that last answer because it's not relevant to your case.

MR. BUTLER: What I would ask is -- I'll defer to the Court on that, but I think there's no -- that the answer did not say that she has cheated on her taxes. [Even though it actually did say that, but...]

MR. BURTON: I think I have to move for a mistrial because of it, because she's not charged with tax evasion.

THE COURT: I know you have to file that motion, and the motion is denied. But I will give a corrective instruction right now.

MS. CONNELLY: Your Honor, in terms of scheduling, we do have some more civilian witnesses. He may not come back on until tomorrow afternoon, but he'll be available all day tomorrow. We just might put the other witnesses on first.

THE COURT: You've made satisfactory progress today.

(END BENCH CONFERENCE.) ...

I was expecting “Robertson pats AUSA” in brackets in the transcript next. ..."

It's a Guy Thing: A Visit from Football Dumbo/Legend Daryl Sanders...at Facebook

WWW--I'm on Facebook a lot (no shit Sherlock), one of many reasons I rarely post on here anymore, besides the fact that...oh, never mind.

Any reader of this blog will know that I'm adamantly iconoclastic, that I hold no sacred cows and that slaughtering them is something I excel at. Football (not the EU version, the real deal) is an American obsession to the point of being nauseating. Like baseball, it very openly wraps itself in "Old Glory," and doing so is the last refuge of scoundrels. Yes, Hunter S. Thompson was just as obsessed and it was something I could never relate to with him. I see it as a failing on his part and that of many Americans, it is a drug, literally, to socialize as well as to anesthetize the public.

Like a lot of self-destructive American institutions, I hope to live to watch it also bite the dust, and it's a roundly corporate one. People having fun is one thing. This shit isn't fun, it's a pathology.

It would hardly be the first time were I to observe that American football is equivalent to the "bread and circuses" of the Roman empire, it's literally a cliche at this point and obvious, something to take for granted. It is a distraction, one-of-many, but it's served a very central part in shaping the public mind since the 1920s, and is an adjunct to jingoism with its over-emphasis on competition, machismo, and a Manichean (us vs. them, black & white, etc.) worldview. What's more, and has many others have observed, George Carlin being a noteworthy example, football pushes a military mentality and is a cultural avatar of militarization. Anyone watching the coverage of the first Gulf War on CNN will know what I'm writing about here, but that scoreboard mentality could just as easily be applied to the current conflicts America's now mired down in. It's all part of the same moronic, wrong-headed Americanism that got us into Vietnam.

I have never, for one moment, entertained the bullshit surrounding the sport and find it unbelievably boring, as much as going to church, and that's what it really amounts to (or doesn't). This is literally institutionalized nationalist barbarism. The rest of the world fears us over how pathologically feral we are as a nation thanks to these cultural roots, never mind our entertainment output, enough to scare any normal human being into paralysis. But we're not a normal culture at all, we're a sick one, a degenerated settler state like many others. It's no surprise, then, that a sport like football is so popular here, even supported over our museums and cultural centers that are actually frequented more often.

And so, into this mix came me...and some asshole I only heard of over the years: Daryl Sanders, professional flag waver. Amazingly, he can walk upright and read and write, but his trainers had to use negative reinforcement therapy for all of that. Somehow, some way, some retard on Facebook got his ire up and thought he'd tap the "champ" (chump, chimp) to confront me over my opinions of the recent deaths of a helicopter filled with professionally trained assassins in Afghanistan. I apparently wasn't showing enough "respect" to these Einsatzgruppen-clones and he posted a comment on my wall, which was nice of him.

Next week I'll ask him to get groceries, mow the lawn, he's a rock and apparently does widow, a rarity these days. A hero isn't some oddly-shaped lummox who chases a ball around a field, little FYI. A hero is someone like Pat Tillman, a real man who wanted to protect his country, but also a dedicated leftist who wanted to go to Afghanistan to bear witness. He knew where America had been and wasn't a little child like Sanders, he was a real hero who was probably slaughtered by his fellow soldiers for seeing too much, like the fellow who recently reported the "kill team," another real hero. Heroes don't follow illegal orders. The resist, from inside of the military, putting their lives on the line in the truest sense, for the common good and the good of humanity.

That was Patrick Tillman. I don't even know or care if dumbo ever served, but members of my family did, so don't even go there, sunshine patriots.

Some of this bullshit goes back to John Wayne, a Californian (the genocide state, look at their constitution) college athlete in the 1920s who excelled at football, so much so that he landed a movie contract since if there's anything Americans value, it's the sport. That's called having your priorities out of order. "Wayne" (not his real name) became a wrong-headed icon of American manhood, machismo, just like Daryl Sanders, a little boy who I have to assume still thinks the Vietnam War "was a good idea." He also supports the illegal and genocidal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our point of entry. Sanders told me that I "have an odd sense of right and wrong." Oh really? Someone should really air-drop this piece of shit there and see if his over-sized ass could even make it out alive.

The fact is, those assassins who were killed weren't heroes, they were mindless killers who are paid to murder human beings in the service of private power, something Tillman grasped, making him that rarest of things, an intelligent and reflective American football player. Perhaps that's why he's dead and Sanders is still alive and will die at a ripe, old age. Heroes--real ones--don't live to old age, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The system here finds some way to eliminate them or to wreck their lives. Daryl's an obedient lapdog, and so his taking-up-space ass will probably continue on, contributing more sickness to our culture. He's a disgusting little man, a joke, a fraud, but then, so are most football players and phony patriots.

Someone's creating false memes: "Obama putting 20,000 troops on streets in case of civil unrest"

The far right have truly lost their minds this time: do a Google search of the keywords "Obama" and "20,000 troops" right now. Good.

Now, you can see the same endlessly replicated articles and the resurrection of old clips from wacko-demagogues suggesting that President Obama is placing 20,000 military personnel in the streets of America, implying at a very fragile moment here when Congress is flirting with a debt default and economic disaster that they're for an expected uprising, "civil unrest."

Why, even the neo-Nazis at StormFront have cut-n'-pasted this misrepresentation of fact, a blatantly conscious re-framing of a contingency plan for those very troops to train state law enforcement how to deal with unrest in the incidence of an attack by weapons-of-mass- destruction, otherwise known as WMDs during the run-up to the war in Iraq. They're at it again.

One of the links went to a states rights group, so in looking at all the rest, it was obvious that this was a fixation of the right, the lunatic fringe. Indeed, FEMA is once again being invoked with their stunning array of concentration camps--never mind that they couldn't find their asses during Katrina--they're cunning and evil, quite competent, that lot. Actually, they're as dumb as the paranoids further to the right of them.

Here's the problem with the claims of many of these kooks: it's not a new story. The program, while troubling to be sure, was begun under George W. Bush in his last month in office. Barack Obama had won the 2008 elections, he was a president-elect, not president. But look at the articles and the links in your Google search, and you will find that it's all framed under Obama placing 20,000 federal troops on the streets of America in case of civil disorder coming from a debt default, one created, mind you, by these very same wackos on the right and the candidates they voted into office recently.

Is this denial of one's responsibility in creating a total mess of things or what? Instead of logical compromise, they want it so many ways that they've lost it, all of it. "Troops will patrol the streets," says one of the slavering, semi-literate authors of a caption that emanates from a December 1, 2008 Washington Post article titled, "Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security," since all of these moronic captions spreading this meme were born from it, consciously, by a pack of hysterical idiots who cannot cope emotionally with a black president...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002217_pf.html/

More recent "breakthroughs" in the DC Madam account

Things are proceeding nicely, if not endlessly, with the text and the interested should know that a release date within the year is a strong possibility, no later than early 2012. Hey, let's wish us all luck with that one, we're going to need it in the coming months, and that ain't hay, brother--we're in the thick of it.

I told Jeane's former counselor, Montgomery Blair Sibely, back in late 2008 that she should have stayed alive since things were going to collapse anyway--she might have been able to walk right out of her cell. This was at the onset of the economic crisis, or rather, when it began affecting the American middle class, the only time it's "important."

There have been some "new" developments during the writing, revising, and editing process: most writers and researchers know that sometimes you can go back and look at the information with new eyes, a different context, more information, and so on, and notice something you might have missed the first time around. This wasn't a case of that entirely, since I had some terrifying suspicions during my time doing research for Jeane's defense. They point right back to the CIA and defense-intelligence contractors. Some of it relates to Brent R. Wilkes and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, former-and-convicted Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and what I consider to be an elephant in the room: their involvement in air operations with the Agency's SAD (Special Activities Division), yes, the section that does what you think they do.

They also run the drone program in AFPAK, killing maybe thousands (who's counting?) of people who were never in their sights. Why didn't all of this get more play? You tell me, they must have a Red Bat Phone to all the editors.

Frequently, the SAD illegally assassinates human targets that they originally set out to, remarkable, I know. They also sometimes grab people, throw them into business jets they've hired-out (contracted would be a more accurate term, but what the hell), and have them interrogated on dubious grounds in some other nation, more often to manufacture false intelligence to justify reckless foreign policy with molding public opinion in mind. Wilkes's ADCS (Automatic Document Conversion Service) was acting as a front company for SAD, as found in the 2009 "sentencing memorandum appendix" for Foggo. Direct knowledge of the rendition program was some of the "graymail" during his legal proceedings, that he would tell all about it if he got hit with too stiff a sentence.

It goes without saying that I believe, and have believed all along, that her case was about Hookergate, that it wasn't separate from it at all. Motions by the prosecution during the proceedings make this patently clear, and The Smoking Gun's Bill Bastone did more than a little tipping-off on the connection between Palfrey and the "Poway Mob," convicted former California Rep. Randy Cunningham, Brent R. Wilkes, Mitchell Wade, and Kyle Foggo, all involved in bribery, influence peddling, abuse of office, corruption, etc., to bilk the public under the banner of national security and the war on terror. Call it what you want, but it's really war profiteering, outright corruption.

I believe that Jeane was correct and sincere when she said to me and others that Brent R. Wilkes had called her "frequently" and had "used his own name." I believe he was calling from the Westin Grand, the Watergate Hotel, or from someone else's residence, someone who might come off as innocuous in her phone records. There's something very, very dark here that I believe leads to the rendition program, it wasn't just about Wilkes ferrying Cunningham and Tom Delay around for free, literally on the public's dime. That's illegal too. Now Wilkes is out on appeal and Palfrey's long dead, perhaps safely so in their eyes. This does not mean that I believe she was murdered or that he's ever going to admit to an association with her.

The other player in procuring prostitutes to acquire appropriations was Mitchell Wade--he was handling a lot of the procuring for Wilkes, per his testimony in the record, and he was going through Christopher D. Baker's Shirlington Limo who still runs his firm out of a hangar at Ronald Reagan National Airport, Hangar 7, another convenient place--at least before all of the attention--to run a front company and SAD air operations out of. There was a lot of "ferrying" going on, apparently, to the point that Wilkes was handling many of the calls, lining things up himself. And that's when I believe he fucked up and used his own name on the phone when he spoke with Jeane, all due to his exaggerated sense of self-importance at the time. Hey, he was rubbing elbows with the CIA's brass, he was in the big time.

Wilkes probably thought that he was impervious, so he walked around with his dick out, just like the Republican lobbyists, former and current GOP incumbents (people like Cunningham), and bureaucratic CIA hacks (like Foggo) he was greasing, greasing to feed on public monies, did. They were all laughing at that very same public with their hooker-and-cigar parties at those two hotels, possibly even at some private homes, playing poker, but really mixing business and pleasure, the hallmark of every fuck up. Wilkes had no prior experience providing aviation services, to anyone, but who really cared? Subordinates who could report it.

In 2003, Foggo wrangled Wilkes a bottled water contract for a CIA field station; some accounts state that the water was headed for Iraq, the record steers clear of exactly where, but it appears that it was Germany. Why would they need bottled water exactly? What was wrong with the local fare? Perhaps it was a case of repeated dysentery, but it's a peculiar contract, that "bottled water" one. Again, no prior experience, and the water was simply purchased off-the-shelf, maybe even from a Wal-Mart, then marked-up 60%, as the court's record states in Foggo's case.

Consider all of the above the next time the Republicans start yammering about the deficit and the national debt.

I've written on some of this before, but there's something here beyond mere profiteering, it's worse, far worse, and the narrowing of the DC Madam scandal to "big names" (everyone but Cunningham, Wade, Foggo and Wilkes) by the mainstream press was both cunning and another pathetic example of their loyalty to established power. They were hiding something very ugly here, it might have had something to do with the rendition program, but it most certainly had to do with defense-intelligence (mis)appropriations, the corrupt contractors who were gaming the system, major league DC lobbyists, political operatives and the seeding of the bureaucracy, and what the decline of an empire looks like.

This text will be a testament to these times, at a threshold moment in world history when above and below temporarily change places.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/foggo_139_2.pdf

http://www.city-data.com/businesses/639735166-shirlington-limousine-washington-dc.html

Lulz Security and Arizona's new race laws

I love these kids, and I am certain they're sincere. Unlike most of my own generally worthless generation, enough of them give a shit not to cancel them out like us generation x-ers have done to ourselves, in our pathetic, jaded narcissism.

But enough about people I used to hang out with in college (not you, Chris!)...

Polls show that most Americans are taking the reactionary route with online activism--groups like LulzSec and Wikileaks. They don't get that--like it or not--there aren't going to be too many secrets in the future among the powerful. Scoundrels of every stripe are running scared right now and doing the predictable overreacting, going so far as to pass laws that enact police state policies. These are the dumbest reactions imaginable since it's not going to work, technology is Pandora's Box, you can't close it.

That's what bullies do. The problem they face is that people are beginning to tire of their bullshit, their lies, and their secrecy (really an excuse to hide criminal activity a good portion of the time) at everyone's expense.

Now, people are beginning to push back, and that scares the crap out of the people with the power, the people who have been abusing it since day one. This is coming to a real watershed moment where people are going to get hurt, but that's how human history works, it never ends, and eventually there will be no sidelines to park one's ass on, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no rationalizations that are going to float anymore.

LulzSec have now hacked the main computers of the Arizona State Police in order to derail that state's obviously racist and unconstitutional anti-immigrant laws that will allow racial profiling. Arizona already has a bad reputation with race going back to its earliest settlement after the Mexican-American War and the law is political pandering and strategy by the Republican Party since most Hispanics (and blacks) don't vote for them historically.

Add to that a moronic segment of the population of the state that has played into their hands and pushed their agenda.

Businesses that employ "illegales" also stand to keep benefiting from a continuation of the status quo (with some ramping-up for show) where they can continue to blackmail illegal immigrants into working for even lower wages for what can only be described as the conditions of peonage. But really, the racist cops also get to take out their bad childhoods on Mexicans, they get a blank-check to profile and target them for legal harassment, no probable cause necessary.

So, today, and I really mean it, a little "fuck you" to Arizona law enforcement who have the same fixation they do in Maricopa County with brown people:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6490796/Chinga_La_Migra

What's been going on?

I'd write, "Not a lot," but it would be untrue.

Work continues on revising and editing on the DC Madam account--no rush jobs here, I'm hoping at the end of it all that what the reader will have is a fair and accurate accounting of my experiences in the DC Madam scandal. Right now, the manuscript is clocking in at 527 pages, but should be trimmed to one hundred less (plus and index, a rarity these days in non-fiction books).

There will be a hard-copy edition first. Plans on who will be publishing have yet to be decided, but this will be self-published regardless, my own imprint. I'm hoping to keep things down in size and length so that it's an affordable trade paper with a slick cover. A cover design has already been finalized and will relate directly to the case itself. There will be no other photographs beyond that.

Other news: I've recently had surgery for an inguinal hernia, a bad one. This has taken me off of my work on the book for a time, but it's recommenced. The hernia actually began one week after Jeane contacted me to cover her story, do research, and put up with her shit (I wouldn't do the final one) and has plagued me now for several years, but it's thankfully over. Don't let anybody kid you, they're awful...

Also, the hernia impacted any possibility of much posting on here, besides the usual lack of support that most bloggers know all too well. So, if you wonder why I don't post much it's because I'm not being given a reason to.

Release date for the DC Madam account: This is up in the air. All work is being done by the author, so it's time consuming to say the least. But expect a release of no later than early 2012, possibly sooner.

Publishers & Agents: I don't need you or want you, something I've made crystal clear in the past. There are things like Lulu now, they pay an 80/20-split (80% for the author, top that), get the books to buyers within a mere few days, and the quality is very good. I'm not some goggle-eyed kid who's naive enough to think I'm going to get a "good deal," an author needs a lawyer and a machine-gun to get paid by the big houses.

That's it.

An interesting analog in the age of digital hacking

Ed.--A recent spate of cyberattacks on Google's Gmail system (originating in China) reminded me of a some similar techniques employed against Deborah Jeane Palfrey (the DC Madam), perhaps by the United States Government or non-governmental actors--contractors of one variety or another. The Chinese attacks ensnared several hundred individuals, some of them high level American government officials, presumably some working for the State Department.

Some whose Gmail accounts were breached were American military personnel as well as a few Chinese dissidents, perhaps included as a diversion or as overlap from other hacking operations originating from the same actors. Whoever they were, they were looking for specific types of people doing specific types of work for the U.S. Government; specific individuals were targeted for hacking.

Do no evil?

Google routinely cooperates with the America national security state, so it's no surprise that they've been targeted by other nations using third party actors to provide a kind of plausible deniability. In the case of the recent attack on Google, it's safe to assume that the encouragement of non-governmental actors was formulated to prevent accountability being directed at the regime in Beijing, a fair assumption. Does the U.S. do this? Certainly--one could argue that we pioneered its use--and some of this echoes the very real world attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001, ushering in a newer form of mercenary where attacks by one state against another are done indirectly by proxy, "non-governmental" agents.

21st Century Brigands?

This is perhaps going to be the Golden Age of the mercenary, with further tech-enhancements.

Mercenary hackers aren't new, but the scale of their activities is growing rapidly. Information warfare itself is an old tactic of political entities, and nation states like the United States or even Turkey are engaged in it all of the time.

...Google said Wednesday that personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists, had been exposed. Google traced the origin of the attacks to Jinan, China, the home city of a military vocational school whose computers were linked to a more sophisticated assault 17 months ago on Google's systems." ... ("US says no... ," AP, June 2, 2011)

Most modern nation states are engaging in it at some stage, but like the use of drones in recent conflicts, it remains unofficial policy, often mislabeled as "conspiracy." Cyberwarfare isn't new, but the widening scope of its use by state and "rogue" (using the term without any value judgment) actors is.

The Palfrey defense was under surveillance, period, it's inarguable and I bore witness to it directly. Some will say that it was for legitimate purposes of the enforcement of the law, but how then would any defendant get a fair trial under such scrutiny? What's arguable is who it might have been which one could speculate on endlessly with such a muddied trail. That's how it goes with hacking and cyberattacks, but with enough persistence and even some luck the origins of a hit can sometimes be uncovered. The key is to erase as much of a trail leading to the originator of the attack as possible and it's not rocket science, but not so prevalent or as easy in the stone age days of the Internent back in the fall of 1998 when the madam's account was hacked.

Even at the time what they did wasn't especially sophisticated, but the average Internet user wouldn't have known how to do the breach and what followed from it.

Just shy of ten years later I had a productive exchange with a former attorney of the DC Madam's about the breaching of the her email account:

Jeane and I searched and searched and finally traced the insertion of a email forwarding address in her earthlink account to a Yahoo.uk email address. When I took it up with yahoo.uk, they had no answer how anyone had hacked into Jeane's account and could not identify the owner of the yahoo.uk email account as it was to a string of fictious email accounts. (Correspondence with the Editor, August 2008)

This was to be expected whether it was a state actor or not. It's a very good possibility that this was a former client of Pamela Martin & Associates, but that could just as well mean the arrow points to the state as well as contractors.

What raised a few flags this week for me came from this passage in an AP article on the recent breaches in Google's Gmail infrastructure that compromised some of the personal email accounts of a few high level American officials.

The modus operandi is similar if not identical to the breaches in the DC Madam's Sprynet email account back in 1998:

...While Google said last year's attack was aimed at its corporate infrastructure, the latest incident appears to have relied on tricking email users into revealing passwords, based on Google's description in its blog post.

It said the perpetrators changed the victims' email forwarding settings, presumably secretly sending the victims' personal emails to other recipients. ... ("Google reveals... ," Reuters, June 2, 2011 )

The final sentence is exactly what happened to the DC Madam's email account sometime in October 1998.

It's almost become a cliche that intelligence agencies (and similar institutions and groups) can and have used primitive forms of hacking as a cover for the activities against various actionable targets. Perhaps one day we'll find through declassifications that a government contractor created all of those phony email accounts when Palfrey began to become a "person of interest" to whoever hacked her account and changed her forwarding settings, intercepting all of her emails going in and out (I know from experience as I was receiving bouncebacks once the phony account had been closed). Most likely, she was beginning to become a liability to a privileged former client...but the truth of the case is elusive as ever.

"US says no official email hacked; FBI on case," AP, June 2, 2011): http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20110602/39b5ae26-4471-4ea8-b6c5-afbde96ef979

"Google reveals Gmail hacking, says likely from China," Reuters, June 2, 2011: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_google