High-stakes Hilarity (the ongoing progression of)

NYT says PAK Taliban in talks with gov.

WaPo says PAK Taliban not in talks with gov.

While we are dealing with the region, Crocker articulates the tailored narrative regarding last week's attack against Shiites in Kabul.  Says we have no idea who did it.  But it wasn't the group claiming responsibility.  And that the attack won't spawn sectarian violence.  Ambassador psychic?  Wishful thinking?  Something else?

PS Scuttlebutt months ago was that a RQ-170 (equipped with science modules) was flown over Fukushima from a base in S. Korea.

Loved the ZH quip re the Iran flap: "The good news is we will all be able to buy a personal drone at Wal Mart in 6-9 months."

Where's the River of Snot?

A senior US law enforcement official asked me if I noticed anything strange about the video footage of the UC Davis incident.

I told him that I had only seen the famous still photo in the press.  I hadn't seen any video.

"You've been exposed to pepper spray before haven't you?", he asked.  I recounted for him the time that I was responsible for a minimal AD from a large canister of the stuff inside a moving vehicle. 

He reached for his IPad and clicked on the first YouTube video he could find.  "What isn't right about this scene?", he asked.  I answered, "the protesters aren't hauling ass out of there. They aren't acting like they have been pepper sprayed."

"Where is the River of Snot?" He continued, "Before riot cops use pepper spray they mask-up.  Do you see any of the cops standing there wearing gas masks?  The stuff that they are spraying is marker.  They are identifying the protesters that they are intending to arrest.  Look right there, that other cop is standing in the mist with no effect."

He got no argument from me there.  That wasn't pepper spray.

"Then why aren't the cops coming to their own defense?," I asked.

Timing is everything.

Tokenism Revisited.-- Rice, Powell, and Economic Warfare

Fascinating all week long to witness the media framing the prospect of a Greek referendum as beyond the pale.  Nobody even faking a preference for democracy. (of course Papandreou is playin' pussy's brinkmanship)

Also, international relations-wise , moments like this can be really instructive.  A keen eye will often - by monitoring course changes by political actors - get a good idea of who is buttering who's bread.

Also, on another topic, funny this: intelligence officials underscored that the United States does not conduct economic espionage as a matter of national policy.  Times have changed?  (Methinks not.)  They probably could have worded it better, i.e. to indicate that we don't spy to help our corporate interests.  (But that would have been pushing it too.)

And from this weekend's NYT Book Review:

Brent Scowcroft, Gerald Ford’s and George H. W. Bush’s national security adviser, said about the man he had worked with in two previous administrations: “Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore.” What had turned this capable, pragmatic, respected figure into the harsh and belligerent man who seemed toward the end to believe that only he understood the world of his time? Part of it was that he had become “really conservative,” as he told President Bush when he was invited to join the ticket in 2000. Certainly, he was convinced that 9/11 had dramatically changed the world and had radically transformed America’s role in it. And he was disturbed that so many people did not share his views. He also had serious heart problems through much of his life, which intensified during his tenure as vice president, and though he courageously fought to keep going, his poor health may have contributed to what Scowcroft considered his change.

The angry responses to Cheney’s book are evidence of how embattled the Bush White House became in its last years, and how central Cheney’s role was. Colin Powell has accused Cheney of taking “cheap shots” in his book. He has challenged Cheney’s claim that he had forced Powell out of the State Department. Powell himself had long made clear that he would serve only four years, and he charged Cheney with lying. Powell also called Cheney’s statements in the book “the kind of headline I would expect to come out of a gossip columnist.” He added, “I think Dick overshot the runway.” Rice responded to Cheney by describing his book as “utterly misleading” and an “attack on my integrity.” 

PS  A best friend -- Kodiak -- remains adamant on insisting Dick's a real nice guy (neighbors or energy biz-buddies, or something along those lines). Such claim remains a gnawing notion -- not unlike gravity -- I can't quite shake despite ambitious velocity vectoring asymptotically (alas) towards terminal. Dissonance.