Warren Stroebel and Jonathan Landay were two of the very few journalists who—when it came time for America to make a decision about war on Iraq—turned out to be right about the war and the deceptions coming from the White House.

In a 10-minute portion (youtube) of PBS’s “Democracy on Deadline“, Stroebel and Landay talk about the web of lies that caught both the Washington Post and the New York Times in 2002 and early 2003. Along with almost all of the mainstream media at that time, the WP and NYT highlighted the dubious information released by the Bush administration and side-lined questions about the sources of that information. On the other hand, Stroebel and Landay (of Knight Ridder) risked their credibility—and lost a few nights of sleep—trying to get the truth from a veiled and highly secretive group of coordinated public opinion setters (i.e. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice). Says Stroebel:

I… became aware that there was actually this group in the government, in the Pentagon, in the vice-president’s office and elsewhere, who was trying to make their own foreign policy separate and distinct from what we thought foreign policy was. It was almost like a shadow government.

And Landay:

I think that there was a failure on the part of the American press akin to the intelligence failure perpetrated by the American government when it came to Iraq. And that failure was, bottom line, that the mainstream press for the most part failed to do its job.

These guys definitely get a place on my credible news sources list.

Here’s a thoughtful article by Tzvetan Todorov on “Concern for Truth” and how democracy can not be sustained without it. Translated by truthout.org.

This abandonment of the duty of truth among opinion makers does not reflect some nefarious intention, but rather the fear that seized the country’s population following the September 11, 2001, attacks. The need to protect one’s own life, to assure the security of one’s loved ones, to eliminate threats judged to be imminent, made everyone forget habitual precautions. Verifying and evaluating the news, arguing and reasoning were perceived as signs of a lack of courage and sense of responsibility. Meanwhile, fear is a poor counselor, and we must be afraid of those who live in fear.

A good reminder for me that even when the world seems upside down, I need to think things through, paying no heed to the voice of fear.

By my best estimation, we are about to see a “hard landing” for the U.S. economy. I’ve been watching the signs for several months now, and in the last two weeks there have been some Big signs of imminent disaster. The stock market may be able to maintain its speculative climb in to insanity for a month or two, but sooner or later things are going to come down.

The possibility of economic uncertainty first reached my awareness earlier this year through articles written in international publications such as the UK’s Indymedia— “Why the Dollar Bubble is about to Burst” —and Canada’s Maclean’s magazine— “Is America Going Broke?”

A little while later, I heard about the trillion-dollar housing bubble. Low interest rates in the early 2000s gave rise to an investor buying frenzy, along with ARM and other exotic loans to higher-risk individuals. In the first quarter of this year, the residential housing bubble burst and has been “falling off the cliff” ever since. If the “commercial construction trails residential construction” trend holds as it always has, then we are now about to see the commercial real estate bubble burst as well. According to CalculatedRisk, this translates in to a loss of half a million jobs over the next 6 months.

Then I heard about the dismal auto sales. General Motors and Ford announced they would each slash 30,000 jobs at the end of last year. Ford hired a new CEO to try to pull the company out of its slump. According to the New York Times, significant drops in auto sales have predicted recessions 5 out of the 6 times America has undergone a recession, and concludes, “[a significant drop in auto sales] has never warned of a recession that did not occur.” Auto sales are definitely falling.

Now, in the festive Christmas season when nobody is watching, the Treasury/OMB released the Financial Report of the United States Government in which the Comptroller states (p. 152):

Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the U.S. government’s total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation’s total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000.

As this long-term fiscal imbalance continues to grow, the retirement of the “baby boom� generation is closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement under Social Security in 2008.

Given these and other factors, it seems clear that the nation’s current fiscal path is unsustainable and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the nation’s large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance.

4 times the GDP! Can you imagine a sane bank manager offering a loan to someone whose “fiscal imbalance continues to grow”? Foreign lenders, like banks, will very soon be calling the same stops on the U.S. government. As the risk of investment increases, so will their demands on interest rates. (See also the commentary by Chris Martenson, “The United States is Insolvent“.)

As if this news weren’t foreboding enough, some shady things are also going on. The measure of how much cash is available in the world economy, a statistic published by the Fed as “M3“, was discontinued in March of this year. From what I understand, it’s possible to put M3 together using the still-published M0, M1 and M2 statistics (plus some other pieces, I presume), and someone has done just that. According to this calculated M3 stat, the real inflation rate of the U.S. dollar is closer to 8 or 9 percent.

My last observation, and the one that convinces me that we’re really in for a big dip here, is that everyone is starting to catch on. There’s an elephant in the room, and we know it. And people are talking about it all over the ‘net. It’s on Digg and Reddit. It’s in blogs. The international papers have long ago covered the topic, and are continuing to do so. And, cautiously, our U.S. news outlets are making mention of it too.

What should you do? Get out of debt. Invest in gold. Invest in silver. Diversify your currency in to the Euro, Swiss Franc or some other foreign currency that isn’t heavily tied to the U.S. dollar. And scoop up some stocks in mining companies or indexes such as NYSE:GLX. I’m also invested in some smaller startups like American Creek Resources in Canada.

If the U.S. dollar collapses and is replaced by something like the Amero, you don’t want to trade dollars for Ameros. You will get a very bad deal.

So I’ve been keeping this under wraps for a few days, hoping that a slight advantage could turn in to some profit, but I’ve decided to let everyone in on it (you’d've found out anyway): LibyanSpider.com, the official registrar for the .LY top-level domain, has re-opened for registrations to the general public after a 2-year hiaitus. I found out early because I had previously tried to register the domain Fami.ly (already taken, as it turned out) and got on the mailing list.

My experience so far has been that it takes them 5 days to actual.ly processs your order and get the domain registered for you. (I received a note from Hadi Naser, one of the guys making it all happen, and he said that he has received a big list of requests for .LY domains, so they are obviously stretched to capacity). With such cool names as quick.ly, emi.ly and dead.ly, though, isn’t the wait worth it?

Oh yeah, guess what? As of this writing, all of the .LY domains I’ve mentioned are still open, and more. I have a small budget for experimenting with domain sales, so I’ve left a ton of great names unregistered. They are, after all, $149.95 U.S. each. I’m sure some people will argue that’s way too much, while others will think it’s way too low. Anyway, here are some domain name ideas I’ve had:

As of the time of this writing, all of the above are available.

So what did I grab? 5 domains:

• ous.ly,
• eternal.ly,
• saint.ly,
• like.ly, and
• ho.ly (now up for bid at ebay)

Navy seaman Jonathan Hutto has initiated an Appeal for Redress^[1], a letter that has gained support from more than 1000 military personel, many in active duty.

The Nation reports:

Not since 1969, when some 1,300 active-duty military personnel signed an open letter in the New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam, has there been such a dramatic barometer of rising military dissent.

One of the signers, “Lisa”, wrote:

I joined up two weeks after I turned 17 because I wanted to save American lives. I wanted to be a hero like any American child.

I supported the war when I joined because I thought it was justified. Only after my own research and the truth coming out did I learn how wrong I was, how–for lack of a better word–how brainwashed I was.

Now I know the war is illegal, unjustified and that our troops have no reason for being there.

Lisa is probably refering to the fabricated evidence that led us to war, among other things. Kudos to the many brave soldiers who’ve risked physical loss and who now risk other losses in order to stand for what they know to be right.

Update: Another article was recently published at truthout which verifies Tony Blair’s foreknowledge.

1. www.appealforredress.org did not respond at the time of this writing

SWFUpload is an open-source Flash 8 embedded application that lets users upload multiple files in a web application. It looked like an easy answer to all of our single-file-uploading woes until we discovered that we couldn’t maintain session state with it.

The problem is that Flash 8 has no way of sending meta data with the uploaded file–for example, who the file belongs to! This is extremely important for us in our iMemoryBook application, since we want uploaded files to be associated with the user’s account–not just a public file repository.

So the culprit (inasmuch as we can’t fix Flash 8 ) appears to be in Ruby’s CGI::Session class: no matter what we tried, it would not pick up the _session_id in the query string when the HTTP request was a POST.

Normally the work-around is quite simple. In a POST-type request, a form is submitted to the server (e.g. a Rails application). In this scenario, we could simply send the _session_id as a hidden field and all would be well.

With Flash 8, however, there is no way to add a ‘hidden field’ to the multi-part form data, thus Rails will fail to recognize the _session_id in the query string portion of our request.

Tracking things down was the hard part. The hackish work-around wasn’t so bad:

# The following code is a work-around for the
# Flash 8 bug that prevents our multiple file uploader
# from sending the _session_id.  Here, we hack the
# Session#initialize method and force the session_id
# to load from the query string via the request uri.
# (Tested on Lighttpd)

class CGI::Session
  alias original_initialize initialize
  def initialize(request, option = {})
    session_key = option['session_key'] || ‘_session_id’
    option['session_id'] =
      request.env_table["REQUEST_URI"][0..-1].
      scan(/#{session_key}=(.*?)(&.*?)*$/).
      flatten.first
    original_initialize(request, option)
  end
end

Put the above code in your environment.rb file, or separate it out as a file in your lib directory and include it.

This code is also available at my favorite snippet place, BigBold’s snippets directory.

Update: The above code doesn’t work on Mongrel/Apache, so I’ve modified it and uploaded the new code here.

A friend of mine, Brad Fish, recently wrote a response to my article “From President Ahmadinejad.” He had some strong feelings and honest concerns that I’d like to address here. It seems like a good place and time to bring some of these points up.

1. The nuclear program

Brad: “He doesn’t seem to want to discuss or negotiate his nuclear program very much”

And for good reason, although I do hope an opportunity opens up soon.

First, we can’t really be certain of what Iran’s intentions are with its nuclear program. On the face of it, Iran claims its program is a civilian energy program. So far, we have good reason to believe them. The CIA claims there is no evidence to date that Iran’s program is anything but what they says it is.

So, Iran claims they have every right to a nuclear energy program. This seems reasonable. The US, on the other hand, claims they have no right to a nuclear anything. This position seems to be based on fear. Both sides seem unrelenting—thus it’s not just President Ahmadinejad who is an instigator of the negotiation stalemate. Neither the US nor Iran seems to “want to discuss or negotiate…very much.”

But “what if” I’m wrong? What if Iran’s intentions are deceptive after all, and they have a clandestine nuclear enrichment program in full production right now? That’s the question that gets all of us worried. That’s why we’re willing to suspend reason and follow our leaders faithfully. But, as with the reasons for war in Iraq, it’s a ridiculous argument if you turn the tables around. What if Kim Jong Il is making bombs for the purpose of nuking America? Should we engage his country in another pre-emptive war? What if America is planning to go to war with Iran? Shouldn’t they prepare to defend themselves by bombing America? What if Israel intends to use its nuclear bombs on Lebanon? Where does “what if” end?

Brad: “And I’m sure he agrees that the United Nations and every nation in it is corrupt as well?”

I realize you’re asking this tongue-in-cheek, but I’ll answer directly anyway: I doubt it. The fact that the United States started an illegal war with Iraq based on doctored evidence would scare me silly if I were Iranian. There’s simply no reason for them to believe that we, the United States, won’t cook up some new “evidence” with which to justify a new war with Iran. But in spite of this, it appears that there is some evidence of good will in the letter from President Ahmadinejad. I don’t know of any letter from President Bush to the Iranians, assuring them that there exists a great deal of common ground on which we can all try to work. I think we should work with the evidence—then add to that a dash of hope in a peaceful future—and try to suppress our natural fight-or-flight instincts.

2. Iran’s position of responsibility

Duane: “Iran, more than any other nation will—like the mother of an illegitimate child—bear the responsibility of the political chaos and social upheaval we started in Iraq.”

Brad: “Can you explain how this is the case?”

My point here is that Iran has *no choice* but to be politically and financially responsible for the mess in Iraq. They are neighbors. Thousands of people are fleeing Iraq, moving to adjoining nations, including Iran. The US, on the other hand, has no such material obligation. Morally, of course, we are obligated—just like the father who conceives a baby is morally obligated to pay child support. But how many divorced fathers actually do that? The United States does not *have to* help in the same way as Iran does.

Brad: “How are they helping to rebuild?”

To my knowledge, they are not doing anything at the moment. But if Iran’s close ties to Hizballah is any indication of how Iran will treat the poor and the weary, the battered and orphaned, the hungry and the homeless, then the way that Hizballah has helped to rebuild southern Lebanon is quite a testimony.

Hezbollah has promised to provide housing and furniture for the next year to each of the tens of thousands of families whose homes were destroyed by the month-long Israeli bombing campaign. Hezbollah spokesmen say the funding will come from foreign donors, including Iran, and it will be disbursed directly, not through the Lebanese government. (NPR)

Of course, Iran is also funding Hizballah’s military restocking as well, and there’s little doubt that this stream of support is also going to new arms and new defense options. I know it’s not all peaches and cream with selfless interest here. But there are thousands of people in Lebanon who are willing to covertly help Hizballah. Why? Are they all terrorists? I think it’s a tribute to the security and hope that the people feel that Hizballah has grass-roots support.

3. We never intended to stay

Brad: “First we criticize the government for staying in Iraq, and then we criticize the government for NOT planning to stay in Iraq? The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.”

I can understand the confusion. Perhaps I can recycle my “illegitimate child” analogy to shed light on this apparent hypocrisy.

The question, I believe, is almost irrelevant. Neither his staying nor his leaving will reprieve him of his first crime.

As a nation, we didn’t know at first what was going on. We didn’t know we were being lied to. We went to war on a sacred trust that the cause was legitimate. I believed President Bush was the best thing that could have happened to America in such a time of need. But then things became a bit murky. Osama Bin Laden slipped out of sight. The connection between Iraq and 9/11 began to unravel faster. Doubts crept in. But most of us still followed President Bush’s “stay the course” resolution.

Now, however, we are beginning to see that the first act—9/11— was perhaps not just incompetence on the part of our leaders, but actually criminal. In that case, the Bush administration is and ought to be “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” with regard to Iraq. And if it is criminal, then whether we stay the course or cut and run, we, as a nation, were absolutely in the wrong.

Brad: “We have stayed in Iraq, and we are trying to rebuild it.”

At the moment, we are trying to keep the number of deaths down. I’m not sure I would consider that “rebuilding”. Maybe it’s fair to say we’re trying.

4. Lenses

Brad: “Perhaps you should reassess some of your own hardened opinions and views towards those you criticize?”

Something I am willing to do. I just can’t get around 9/11 without believing there was gross criminal negligence or criminal intent on the part of the Bush administration. Given the strong evidence, the lens through which I see our world has refocused.

5. Iran is the instigator?

Brad: “[Iran] disrupted peace between Lebanon and Israel by kidnapping Israeli soldiers in their neighbor’s backyard and thus incited the Israelis to violence.”

While I am no authority on the Middle East and its cycles of bloodshed and hatred, I am surprised that you think there is such a clear “bad guy” that instigated the war this summer. This is a war that has gone on for decades. There is terrible pain and suffering that has been felt by families on both sides. But if you want to find a “first cause” for this particular bout, then from what I understand, it was more the Israeli’s fault for kidnapping two *civilians* on June 24th (several days prior to the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit). This is according to Noam Chomsky, someone far more qualified than I am to tell who started it.

6. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism

Brad: “Iran has a proven track record of terrorism.”

And so does nearly every other country in the world, including this one. What bothers me most about our culture here is that we believe we are so enlightened that we ought to go and beat others in to submission so that they can be “enlightened” like we are. We accuse everyone else of being deceitful but we are skeptical when we hear people attest to our own country’s corruption. We think that “cooperating with the international community” is synonymous with “cooperating with the United States”.

If President Ahmadinejad wrote a letter of contempt, would you interpret it as something other than contempt? Let’s get off the high horse and take a letter of good will for what it is—a letter of good will.