Now that Dick Cheney has been hamstrung in his fairly overt plans to attack Iran, the risks of a Gulf of Tonkin type false flag operation must have increased significantly. I’m sure Cheney is spitting bricks today.

In a blog entry in September, Council of Foreign Relations member, and erstwhile US Senator, Gary Hart wrote some “Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran,” saying, “Presuming that you are not actually ignorant enough to desire war with the United States, you might be well advised to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.

“Having done so, you will surely recognize that Americans are reluctant to go to war unless attacked. Until Pearl Harbor, we were even reluctant to get involved in World War II. For historians of American wars the question is whether we provoke provocations.”

And there lies the danger. 3 US carrier groups are currently stationed within anti-ship missile range of the Iranian coast. A single incident, appearing to have come from Iran, would be enough to scupper the good intentions of the US intelligence community, who, no doubt, are still smarting from the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq.

As Gary Hart pointed out, the Gulf of Tonkin episode is only one example that demonstrates past US willingness to dupe its own people into an action they otherwise would not support.

Evoking memories of the Great Depression, the spectre of thousands of people applying for a few jobs has returned to the USA.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that over 6000 people turned up at a new Wal-Mart branch in Cleveland’s Steelyard Commons, with only 300 jobs on offer.

Mia Masten, Wal-Mart’s director of corporate affairs, Midwest division, went on to tell the Plain Dealer that in Chicago recently, 25,000 and 15,000 people applied for a few hundred jobs at two Wal-Mart stores there!

Wal-Mart isn’t exactly the kind of place people willingly seek jobs if there’s somewhere better to work. Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, a policy research organisation based in Cleveland, said these ratios are reminiscent of bread lines in times of great poverty. “That’s Depression-era kind of imagery,” she told the Plain Dealer.

“You can’t have an economy that works that way,” Hanauer said. “It speaks to the need to generate a different kind of employment in Cleveland.” She noted that Ohio has a legacy of manufacturing. “The question is, how can we reinvigorate that?”

I … can’t … imagine.

Yesterday, as promised, Dennis Kucinich introduced a privileged resolution to the floor of the House of Representatives to impeach Dick Cheney. Kucinich has explained that he decided to bring the resolution now because the danger that Cheney would lie to justify a preemptive war against Iran is high. He read the full text of the resolution on the House floor. The resolution is similar to HR333, which he introduced in April, but has languished in the Judiciary Committee ever since. HR333 has 22 cosponsors now, the latest being Democratic Representative Danny Davis.

The resolution introduced yesterday indicts Cheney for having lied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that the Iraq government had worked closely with al-Qaeda. The resolution also accuses Cheney of violating the US Constitution by threatening to use force against Iran, when Iran poses no threat to the US.

Although Nancy Pelosi was not visibly present on the floor of the House during the entire procedure, once the resolution was introduced, House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md) made a motion at her behest to table, i.e., kill the resolution. Echoing Pelosi, who has repeatedly said that impeachment is “off the table” Hoyer told Fox News: “Impeachment is not on our agenda, We have some major priorities. We need to focus on those.”

Initially it looked as if the motion to table would easily succeed. At one point in the voting it had 290 votes. However, a decision was made by the Republican leadership to instruct party members to change their votes and vote against tabling the measure. The final vote was 251 against tabling to 162 in favor of tabling. 165 Republicans voted against tabling, as did 86 Democrats, with at least 17 Democrats also changing their votes at the very end to also vote against tabling the motion in clear defiance of Pelosi.

With this vote, the impeachment of Dick Cheney is clearly no longer “off the table” as Nancy Pelosi has insisted. Her protection of Cheney’s war policy has been thoroughly unmasked.

Next, Hoyer moved to refer the resolution to the Judiciary Committee. The procedural vote as to whether to vote on the motion to refer to committee succeeded by a margin of 218 to 194, with the Republicans once again voting against Hoyer in order to force a quick one-hour debate on the house floor.

The actual motion to refer to committee won by the same margin 218 to 194.

Dennis Kucinich, Demotratic Congressman for Ohio, announced yesterday that he will be offering a privileged resolution in the House of Representatives next week, probably on the 6th of November. The resolution will bring articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, contrary to the wishes of Kucinich’s boss in the House, Nancy Pelosi.

Kucinich said in his press release, “The momentum is building for impeachment. Millions of citizens across the nation are demanding Congress rein in the Vice President’s abuse of power. Despite this groundswell of opposition to the unconstitutinal conduct of office, Vice President Cheney continues to violate the U.S. Constitution by insisting the power of the Executive Branch is supreme. The Congress must hold the Vice President accountable. The American people need to let Members of Congress known how they feel about this. The Vice President continues to use his office to advocate for a continued occupation of Iraq and prod our nation into a belligerent stance against Iran. If the Vice President is successful, his actions will ensure decades of disastrous consequences.”

The press release reports that the privileged resolution has priority status for consideration on the House floor. Once introduced, the resolution has to be brought to the floor within two legislative days, although the House could act on it immediately. Kucinich is expected to bring it to the House floor on Tuesday, 6th November.

H. Res. 333, Articles of Impeachment against the Vice President, sponsored by Kucinich, has 21 cosponsors.

Contrary to the BBC news reports yesterday that the California wildfires have been brought under control, only Malibu, the area inhabited by the Hollywood “greats,” is actually being contained. In the meantime, the majority of fires which have so far consumed  650 square miles, 1600 homes and 6 lives, continue to rage.

Yesterday, Arnie held a press conference to slap the backs of the firefighters for doing a great job. I’m certain they are doing the best they can, with the limited resources they have left, after the looting of California’s fire fighting and prevention infrastructure by Arnie on the advice of his puppetmaster, George Schultz. That darned budget deficit.

On the 12th of October, a few days before the fires were started, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, laid-off all of their 1,400 seasonal firefighters. The layoffs were ordered because the State of California had declared the official end to the fire season. After the firestorms began, the State rescinded the fire season declaration, allowing CalFire to hire back the seasonal firefighters. Patti Roberts, spokeswoman for the Governor’s office of Emergency Services, told MSNBC on Tuesday afternoon, “I can’t say that they have all been rehired, but they can be rehired.”

The Governator obviously enjoys watching the fires. Maybe he’s invited his friends round for a barbecue.

The Miami Herald reports that Blackwater is to be “phased out” of “diplomatic duty” in Iraq. First time I’ve heard it called that …

They are to be replaced by those bast … ions of diplomatic relations, either Dyncorp or Triple Canopy.

For those that don’t know, Sourcewatch has this to say about Dyncorp:

“Kathryn Bolkovac, a United Nations International Police Force monitor, filed a lawsuit in Britain in 2001 against DynCorp for firing her after she reported that Dyncorp police trainers in Bosnia were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex trafficking. Many of the Dyncorp employees were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity. But none were (sic) prosecuted, since they enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia.”

…

“In January 2007, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., reported that ‘he had identified tens of millions of dollars worth of accounting discrepancies, missing weapons and unauthorized billings’ by DynCorp. Bowen accused DynCorp of ‘lax accounting and monitoring procedures.’”

And they say this about Triple Canopy:

“Triple Canopy is currently the defendent in a lawsuit filed by three former employees who worked for Triple Canopy under a contract for KBR. Former Army Ranger Shane Schmidt and former Marine Charles L. Sheppard III claim in the lawsuit that on July 8, 2004, while en route to the Baghdad airport, their shift leader declared he was ‘going to kill someone today’ and shortly afterwards stepped out of the vehicle and fired rounds of his M4 rifle through the windshield of a stopped truck.

The suit goes on to claim the shift leader said, ‘This didn’t happen, understand?’ Soon after, the shift leader stated he had ‘never shot anyone with my handgun before” and then fired his handgun through the windshield of a parked taxi, killing the driver.’”

I’m sure these guys will do a much better job than Blackwater did.

The United States has entered a recession, according to “highly-regarded” investor Jim Rogers.

No shit, Sherlock?

He went on to tell the Telegraph that he was switching out of the dollar and into yen, the yuan and the Swiss franc.

That’ll help.

Vice President Dick Cheney was caught on tape and caught off guard during a meeting with President Bush today.

A news crew was taping a cabinet meeting at the White House as the president was giving a briefing on the California wildfires, when they caught Cheney as he appeared to be nodding off.

“Wake me up when they’ve blamed it on Iran,” he said.

On the 12th October, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors agreed to extend Federal Reserve contingency lines of credit to two British banks–$10 billion to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and $20 billion to Barclays, two of Britain’s Big 4 banks. The Federal Reserve would open these $30 billion facilities to the two banks, should the banks, in turn, need them to extend credit to their clients “in need of short-term liquidity to finance their holdings of securities and certain other assets,” the Federal Reserve said in a letter to the banks.

With respect to the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Fed said that the coverable assets could include “residential and commercial mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities, asset-backed securities, commercial paper and structured products.” At the same time, the Fed lifted the limit on how much credit the RBS and Barclays could extend to their “affiliated broker-dealers,” to $10 billion for RBS, and $20 billion for Barclays, matching the size of the contingency lines of credit that the Fed would extend to them. RBS’ and Barclays’ affiliated broker-dealers would be the vehicles, which would then extend the funds to the two banks’ collapsing clients.

Thus, the U.S. Federal Reserve is preparing to extend a hyper-inflationary $30 billion to bail out the British banking system, and the Cayman Island and London headquartered hedge funds.

With the Fed promising to backstop its actions, the Royal Bank of Scotland went into action: It announced on the 21st Oct, that it was deep in talks to take over the failed Cheyne Finance, a $6-7 billion Structured Investment Vehicle (SIV), which was set up and is controlled by the London-headquartered Cheyne Capital. This SIV was on the verge of a fire-sale of illiquid assets. Deloitte
Touche, Cheyne Finance’s accounting firm, received an extraordinary ruling by Britain’s High Court last week, which allowed Deloitte Touche to declare the Cheyne Finance SIV to be “insolvent.” Deloitte Touche, appointed as receiver, is now offering to sell Cheyne Finance to Royal Bank of Scotland.

Simultaneously, Barclays Bank is heavily involved with three deeply troubled SIVs, one of which, Solent, is headquartered in
the Cayman Islands.