Did Duqu fix the bug that revealed Stuxnet?

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Count DookuDuqu isn’t Christopher Lee in Attack of the Clones, but it is the newest computer malware to hit mainstream consciousness. It’s attracting attention mainly because it is based on the same software source code base as the Windows portion of Stuxnet. If you haven’t heard about Duqu, check out the Wired article that first alerted me to its existence. If you are interested in the technical details, you need to read the excellent write-up by Symantec (pdf link).
Unfortunately, the twitterverse, blogosphere, and the computer security profession all seem to be caught up in a hype/debunking/speculation cycle that is spreading more heat than light. The primary significance of Duqu is what it tells us about the operation behind Stuxnet and Duqu, i.e. that it is an on-going enterprise conducting computer espionage and sabotage around the world. The fact that it is rather obviously (though not publicly) run by the U.S. intelligence community should concern everyone.
I’ll put up a more extensive post later (including a timeline!) detailing what the Duqu phase of the Stuxnet operation tells us about the cyberwarfare strategy of the U.S. and how it is endangering the safety and security of the U.S. and the whole industrialized world. But first, I want to remind everyone how Stuxnet was originally discovered:

… the VirusBlokAda security firm in Minsk, received what seemed to be a relatively mundane email on June 17, 2010. An Iranian firm was complaining that its computers were behaving strangely, shutting themselves down and then rebooting. Ulasen and a colleague spent a week examining the machines. Then they found Stuxnet. VirusBlokAda notified other companies in the industry, including Symantec.
 
 

This incident became curiouser and curiouser as Symantec, Langner, and others took apart Stuxnet. There wasn’t any obvious reason that Stuxnet would have caused that sort of behavior on an infected computer. I even wondered at the time whether or not Stuxnet’s cover was blown intentionally since the perpetrators moved quickly to call further attention to themselves. But, thanks to the good work of the Symantec team, we can surmise something quite revealing about the initial discovery of Stuxnet.
 
The rootkit component of Duqu is quite similar to, but not exactly the same as, the one in Stuxnet. In both cases, if the infected computer gets rebooted while it is infected, the rootkit wants to make sure that it is running before the operating system is fully loaded. That’s why this rootkit (both flavors, Stuxnet and Duqu) is packaged as a hardware device driver. Here’s a feature of Duqu’s driver that wasn’t present in Stuxnet (as described by Symantec on page 4 of the pdf linked above):

The driver then registers a DriverReinitializationRoutine and calls itself (up to 200 times) until it is able to detect the presence of the HAL.DLL file. This ensures the system has been initialized to a point where it can begin injecting the main DLL.

The bolded portion is the new functionality that wasn’t present in Stuxnet. As a software developer, this detail tells me a lot. The driver is checking to make sure that the hardware abstraction layer (HAL.DLL) of Windows is loaded before it proceeds with the re-infection routine. The HAL is a portion of the Windows OS that really needs to be loaded before device drivers can function properly. Between the time that Stuxnet was deployed and this later version was compiled, the Stuxnet team identified a problem (a race condition) with their software being loaded before the HAL, probably only under the rarest of circumstances. So they modified their program to take this possible condition into account.
As I thought about this, I realized that the likely impact of the Stuxnet device driver being loaded before the HAL was properly initialized would almost certainly be that the machine would continuously crash and reboot. Look again at how Stuxnet was first discovered (remember it was in the wild for at least a full year before it was noticed by any anti-virus vendor):

… the VirusBlokAda security firm in Minsk, received what seemed to be a relatively mundane email on June 17, 2010. An Iranian firm was complaining that its computers were behaving strangely, shutting themselves down and then rebooting. Ulasen and a colleague spent a week examining the machines. Then they found Stuxnet. VirusBlokAda notified other companies in the industry, including Symantec.

By November 3, 2010 (the compile date of the Duqu component), the Stuxnet team had fixed the bug that led to the discovery of Stuxnet last year. And then went almost another full year without being discovered by the anti-virus vendors. It is likely to be a lot harder to reconstruct what the Stuxnet team has been up to this time around, but it is clear that the operation is on-going and we can assume (unless specific information turns up pointing in a different direction) that the primary target is still the Iranian nuclear program.

Scary Iran Plot: Follow the Money

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A number of people–from MadDog to the Administration–have claimed that the money trail in the Scary Iran Plot is what makes it credible.

I’d like to lay out what the Administration showed in the complaint–as opposed to in its predictable trail of anonymous leaks that the Administration apparently believes can replace actual evidence–regarding the money trail. I actually find their anonymous claims that the money trail shows more damning details to be more believable than some of the other things they’ve said about this. But the most solid evidence described in the complaint–as I described here–shows money being delivered with no explanation into the hands of a person, Individual #1, and from there being sent to the US. Yet Individual #1 doesn’t even appear to be Quds Force and was neither charged in the complaint nor sanctioned by Treasury.

Money was exchanged, but for what?

Before I lay out what the money details show, though, let’s lay out the many possible operations the money paid for. According to Manssor Arbabsiar’s confession, his cousin Abdul Reza Shahlai told him to go get drug traffickers to kidnap the Saudi Ambassador. Arbabsiar’s confession says it evolved into a capture or kill deal (though says it did so in conversations with Gholam Shakuri and Hamed Abdollahi, not Shahlai). The complaint also mentions plans of “attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia” (Narc’s account of the May 24 meeting with Arbabsiar), for “a number of violent missions” (Narc’s account of purportedly unrecorded June-July meetings), “the murder of the Ambassador” (Narc’s account of purportedly unrecorded June-July meetings), and targeting foreign government facilities located outside of the United States, associated with Saudi Arabia and with another country [reported to be Israel]” (footnote 6 describing what Narc reported from these earlier meetings). The quotes from July 14 are ambiguous whether they refer to kidnapping or assassination of al-Jubeir. The quotes from July 17 include clear reference to killing what is presumably (thought not specified as) al-Jubeir. And note what the complaint rather damningly doesn’t mention, though Administration leakers admit?

The plotters also discussed a side deal between the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Los Zetas to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East to Mexico, the official said.

In other words, several things were being negotiated: the kidnapping and/or assassination of al-Jubeir, hits on embassies in Argentina, possibly some other horrible things, and drug deals. So we need to be careful to tie any payments to specific ops.

The use of two different codes in the taped conversations doesn’t make tying payments to specific ops any easier–the complaint mentions “painting,” or “doing” a building (September 2, 20, and October 4), which the FBI Agent interprets without stated confirmation in Arbabsiar’s confession as the murder, as well as the “Chevrolet” (October 5 and 7), which Arbabsiar’s confession says also referred to the murder (syntactically, though, the Chevrolet sounds like a drug deal, while the building seems more closely connected to the murder).

Finally, a conversation on September 12 seems to suggest (though the FBI Agent doesn’t interpret it this way) that Arbabsiar had presented Narc several choices of operations, and the plotters just wanted them to pick one to carry out. After insisting the price would be “one point five,” Arbabsiar told Narc, for example, that he could “prepare for those too [two] … but we need at least one of them” [ellipsis original]. He went on to say that if Narc did “at least one … I’ll send the balance for you” [ellipsis original]. Particularly given the two different codes–building and Chevrolet–it seems possible there were still at least two different operations (both Arbabsiar and Shakuri offer up the building, not the Chevrolet, when they are not being coached as the operation they’re most anxious about). At the very least, this means that two months after the two meetings supposedly finalizing the plan for the assassination, both the price and the objective remained unclear.

No quoted passage ties the $100,000, the $1.5 million, and the assassination

Those two meetings–which do tie money to an attack on the Saudis–took place on July 14 and July 17. Before those meetings even started, however, the $100,000 that was purportedly the down-payment for the al-Jubeir assassination had already been transferred to a middleman; Arbabsiar tells Narc that Individual #1 (who is not described in the same way the Quds officers are, and appears not to have been sanctioned with everyone else) got the “money at nine in the morning.” The quoted passages definitely tie what appears to be the $1.5 million to doing something with Saudi Arabia. “Take the one point five for the Saudi Arabia.” That might be doing something with the Saudi embassy, though later in the same conversation Arbabsiar does confirm Narc’s question that “you just want the main guy.” Given the number of plots they were discussing, that’s not definitive that the $100,000 was tied to the al-Jubeir plot at all, nor is it definitive that the “one point five” was the agreed upon payment for assassinating–as opposed to kidnapping–al-Jubeir. There is no quote that ties all these things together; but assuming the FBI Agent’s interpretation is not really wacko, it does seem this conversation ties the money to some kind of attack on al-Jubeir.

The July 17 conversation–which with the July 14 conversation, includes one of two discussions of bank account numbers for the transfer–makes the focus on assassination much more clear. Narc pretends his guys are in Washington (meaning there’s no doubt the attack in discussion was al-Jubeir rather than the Saudi Embasy in Argentina). And–in the sole quotations in the entire complaint that make it clear Arbabsiar was talking about assassination–in response to Narc’s cue, “I don’t know what exactly your cousin wants me to do,” Arbabsiar says his cousin “wants you to kill this guy” and goes on to say that if necessary, collateral damage of citizens is acceptable.

Consider how laughable this deal-making is. On July 14, Narc gives his price for the job. Then on July 17, he’s still looking for clarification about what the task really is! Read more →

Thanks For The Memory Banks

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All Sides Agree There Is Excessive Secrecy Surrounding Targeting Of US Citizens

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The targeted execution of Anwar al-Awlaki struck different people along the political spectrum in the United States in many different ways, but it has been heartening most all have recognized it as a seminal moment worthy of dissection and contemplation. Despite all the discussion afforded the execution of Awlaki in the last few days, it cannot be emphasized enough how impossible it is to have a completely meaningful discussion on the topic due to the relentless blanket of secrecy imposed by the United States government. Before I get into the substantive policy and legal issues surrounding the targeting and assassination of American citizens, which I will come back to in a separate post, a few words about said secrecy are in order.

The first to note, and complain of, the strange secrecy surrounding not just the kill listing of Awlaki, but the entire drone assassination program, was Marcy right here in Emptywheel. Within a couple of hours of the news of the Awlaki strike, she called for the release of the evidence and information serving as the Administration’s foundation for the extrajudicial execution of an American citizen and within a couple of hours of that, noted the ironic inanity of the pattern and practice of the one hand of the Obama Administration, through such officials as Bob Gates, James Clapper and Panetta trotting out “state secrets” to claim drone actions cannot even be mentioned while the other hand, through mouthpieces such as John Brennan are out blabbing all kinds of details in order to buck up Administration policy.

Now, you would expect us here at Emptywheel to vociferously complain about the rampant secrecy and hypocritical application of it by the Executive Branch, what has been refreshing, however, is how broad the spectrum of commentators voicing the same concerns has been. Glenn Greenwald was, as expected, on the cause from the start, but so too have voices on the other side of the traditional spectrum such as the Brookings Institute’s Benjamin Wittes, to former Gang of Eight member and noted hawk Jane Harman, and current Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin and Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First.

But if there were any doubt that it was just left leaning voices calling for release of targeting and legal foundation information, or only sources such as Emptywheel or the New York Times pointing out the hypocrisy and duplicity with which the Administration handles their precious “state secret”, then take a gander at what former Bush OLC chief Jack Goldsmith had to say Monday, after a weekend of contemplation of the issues surrounding the take out of Awlaki:

I agree that the administration should release a redacted version of the opinion, or should extract the legal analysis and place it in another document that can be released consistent with restrictions on classified information.

I have no doubt that Obama administration lawyers did a thorough and careful job of analyzing the legal issues surrounding the al-Aulaqi killing. The case for disclosing the analysis is easy. The killing of a U.S. citizen in this context is unusual and in some quarters controversial. A thorough public explanation of the legal basis for the killing (and for targeted killings generally) would allow experts in the press, the academy, and Congress to scrutinize and criticize it, and would, as Harman says, permit a much more informed public debate. Such public scrutiny is especially appropriate since, as Judge Bates’s ruling last year shows, courts are unlikely to review executive action in this context. In a real sense, legal accountability for the practice of targeted killings depends on a thorough public legal explanation by the administration.

Jack has hit the nail precisely on the head here, the courts to date have found no avenue of interjection, and even should they in the future, the matter is almost surely to be one of political nature. And accountability of our politicians depends on the public havin sufficient knowledge and information with which to make at least the basic fundamental decisions on propriety and scope. But Mr. Goldsmith, admirably, did not stop there and continued on to note the very hypocrisy and duplicity Marcy did last Friday:

We know the government can provide a public legal analysis of this sort because presidential counterterrorism advisor John Brennan and State Department Legal Advisor Harold Koh have given such legal explanations in speeches, albeit in limited and conclusory terms. These speeches show that there is no bar in principle to a public disclosure of a more robust legal analysis of targeted killings like al-Aulaqi’s. So too do the administration’s many leaks of legal conclusions (and operational details) about the al-Aulaqi killing.

A full legal analysis, as opposed to conclusory explanations in government speeches and leaks, would permit a robust debate about targeted killings – especially of U.S. citizens – that is troubling to many people. Such an analysis could explain, for example, whether the government believed that al-Aulaqi possessed constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth or other amendments, and (assuming the government concluded that he possessed some such rights) why the rights were not implicated by the strike. It could also describe the limits of presidential power in this context.

The Obama administration frequently trumpets its commitment to transparency and the rule of law. The President and many of his subordinates were critical of what they deemed to be unnecessarily secretive Bush administration legal opinions, and they disclosed an unprecedented number of them, including many classified ones. Now is the time for the administration to apply to itself a principle that it applied to its predecessor.

Again, exactly right. From Marcy Wheeler, to Gang of Eight members, to Jack Goldsmith, the voice is both clear and consistent: The Obama Administration needs to come clean with as much of the legal and factual underpinnings as humanly possible short of compromising “means and methods” that truly are still secret. That would be, by almost any account, a lot of information and law with which the American public, indeed the world, could not only know and understand, but use to gauge their votes and opinions on. Doing so would make the United States, and its actions, stronger and more sound.

In the second part of this series, which I should have done by tomorrow morning sometime, I will discuss what we know, and what we don’t know, about the legal and factual underpinnings for targeted killing of US citizens, and sort through possible protocols that may be appropriate for placement of a citizen target and subsequent killing.

UPDATE: As MadDog noted in comments, Jack Goldsmith has penned a followup piece at Lawfare expounding on the need for release of the foundational underpinnings of how an American citizen such as Alawki came to be so targeted. Once again, it is spot on:

First, it is wrong, as Ben notes, for the government to maintain technical covertness but then engage in continuous leaks, attributed to government officials, of many (self-serving) details about the covert operations and their legal justifications. It is wrong because it is illegal. It is wrong because it damages (though perhaps not destroys) the diplomatic and related goals of covertness. And it is wrong because the Executive branch seems to be trying to have its cake (not talking about the program openly in order to serve diplomatic interests and perhaps deflect scrutiny) and eat it too (leaking promiscuously to get credit for the operation and to portray it as lawful). I do not know if the leaks are authorized in some sense or not, or where in the executive branch they come from, or what if anything the government might be doing to try to stop them. But of course the president is ultimately responsible for the leaks. One might think – I am not there yet, but I understand why someone might be – that the double standard on discussing covert actions disqualifies the government from invoking technical covertness to avoid scrutiny.

Second, there is no bar grounded in technical covertness, or in concerns about revealing means and methods of intelligence gathering, to revealing (either in a redacted opinion or in a separate document) the legal reasoning supporting a deadly strike on a U.S. citizen. John Brennan and Harold Koh have already talked about the legality of strikes outside Afghanistan in abstract terms, mostly focusing on international law. I don’t think much more detail on the international law basis is necessary; nor do I think that more disclosure on international law would do much to change the minds of critics who believe the strikes violate international law. But there has been practically nothing said officially (as opposed through leaks and gestures and what is revealed in between the lines in briefs) about the executive branch processes that lie behind a strike on a U.S. citizen, or about what constitutional rights the U.S. citizen target possesses, or about the limitations and conditions on the president’s power to target and kill a U.S. citizen. This information would, I think, matter to American audiences that generally support the president on the al-Aulaqi strike but want to be assured that it was done lawfully and with care. The government could easily reveal this more detailed legal basis for a strike on a U.S. citizen without reference to particular operations, or targets, or means of fire, or countries.

Listen, we may not always agree with Jack here, and both Marcy and I have laid into him plenty over the years where appropriate; but credit should be given where and when due. It is here. And, while I am at it, I would like to recommend people read the Lawfare blog. All three principals there, Ben Wittes, Goldsmith and Bobby Chesney write intelligent and thoughtful pieces on national security and law of war issues. No, you will not always agree with them, nor they with you necessarily; that is okay, it is still informative and educational. If nothing else, you always want to know what the smart people on the other side are saying.

[Incredibly awesome graphic by the one and only Darkblack. If you are not familiar with his work, or have not seen it lately, please go peruse the masterpieces at his homebase. Seriously good artwork and incredible music there.]

Mark Warner’s SuperDuperCongress

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I find it amusing that two guys who are on the Senate Intelligence Committee–Mark Warner and Saxby Chambliss–hosted a “secret meeting” that got reported just two days later.

The private gathering this week, held Wednesday in a Capitol meeting room, included about 25 centrists from both parties. It was organized by Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), two members of the “Gang of Six,” which tried unsuccessfully to engineer a grand deal patterned loosely after the plan laid out by the deficit commission headed by former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson.

Though perhaps they should blame Bob Corker and Holy Joe Lieberman, who both blabbed about the meeting on the record.

When I first read about this secret cabal of 25 Senators meeting to cut! cut! cut!–what I’ll call SuperDuperCongress to highlight how stupid our Senators are and to emphasize their apparent self-importance–I didn’t pay much attention.

But then I realized (having not read closely to the bottom the first time) that this was an effort of Mark Warner, who lobbied vocally, but unsuccessfully, to get named to SuperCongress. And I recalled a look to kill that Jack Reed sent Mark Warner’s way in the pre-speech pomp last night.

Which got me thinking about what Warner’s SuperDuperCongress is trying to do–aside from put the interests of the banksters even further ahead of real people.

While the article notes that, like Warner’s SuperDuperCongress, Obama wants SuperCongress to cut more than they’ve been tasked to do, several of the comments from the article send a clear message that at least some SuperDuperCongress members think their efforts matter a lot more than Obama’s pitch for jobs.

“I don’t think I’m speaking out of school that it was a unanimous feeling among a large group of senators from both sides of the aisle,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), one of the meeting participants. “Most people are far more focused on this supercommittee than any speech the president’s going to give.

[snip]

Several people familiar with the discussions said the lawmakers felt that, after the pomp and ceremony of Obama’s joint-session speech fades, the center of political and policy gravity on Capitol Hill will be the work of the special committee, chaired by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.).

[snip]

One senior Democratic aide called Obama’s jobs plan largely “dead on arrival” because its expected price tag would roughly cancel out the one year’s worth of savings many lawmakers hope the supercommittee will find.

So while there’s every reason to believe Obama would be sympathetic to this effort (and it’s likely that Obama ally Dick Durbin, another member of the Gang of Six, is among the 25), at least some of the participants in Mark Warner’s SuperDuperCongress are basically saying, “Fuck Obama and the jobs bill he needs to pass to get reelected, we’re more interested in cutting.”

This also seems like an attack on Harry Reid’s authority. He, after all, picked Patty Murray, Max Baucus, and John Kerry for SuperCongress. Not only did he shun the Democratic Gang of Six members (along with Warner and Durbin, Kent Conrad), but he happened to pick Max Baucus, who voted against the Catfood Commission because it did things like cut social security (which the Gang of Six aimed to cut using chained COLA, among other means). And while I think John Kerry is the weak link among SuperCongress Democrats, on paper at least the three Senators seem likely to be able to meet the demands of House Democrats, who want programs for the poor protected in a way the Gang of Six and Catfood Commission weren’t much interested in.

Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of SuperDuperCongress. It seems like a bunch of Democrats have decided to pre-empt Obama’s push for jobs, but also try an end-run around those Democrats in the House who still believe in the New Deal and the Democratic Party’s legacy.

Rizzo’s Brief with Nancy Pelosi: Bush Didn’t Include Torture in the Finding Authorizing Torture

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I’m going to deal with John Rizzo’s purported “mea culpa” in three posts, one each for each of his regrets.

Rizzo’s first regret is that the CIA did not push the White House to allow it to brief the entire intelligence committees so they could, as Rizzo said, “allow the committees—compel them, really—to take a stand on the merits to either endorse the program or stop it in its tracks.”

It’s an argument I totally agree with. But to make his argument, Rizzo mobilizes some of the same lies about the CIA’s briefing of the torture program, notably about Nancy Pelosi. He does so, however, with a really spooky move.

Shortly thereafter, almost seven years after CIA first informed her about its employment of waterboarding and the other EITs, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, stood before the cameras and claimed that all CIA ever told her was that waterboarding was being “considered” as an interrogation tactic, not that it would be ever employed. Confronted with evidence to the contrary, the Speaker subsequently conceded that she had been informed about EITs from the outset but insisted she was always opposed to them but powerless to do anything to stop them. None of which was true, but in hindsight the Speaker’s moonwalk was hardly unforeseeable.

It’s the same old story turning the question of whether Pelosi was briefed prospectively or historically into a claim that “she had been informed about EITs from the outset” without mentioning that even Porter Goss’ version of the briefing is consistent with Pelosi’s claim that CIA didn’t tell them in September 2002 that they had already started using torture. Rizzo’s use of this tired tactic is all the worse considering that 1) it appears that he was not at the briefing in question, and 2) the CIA changed its record of the briefing after the fact.

In other words, Rizzo’s attack on Pelosi is total bullshit. Furthermore, the attack falsely suggests that CIA briefed Congress before torture started.

But his use of Pelosi to make this point is rather intriguing. Rizzo makes no mention of Bob Graham’s attempt to exercise oversight over the torture program, which was discouraged by the CIA and thwarted by Pat Roberts.

More significantly, Rizzo makes no mention of Jane Harman, who did object to the program but proved unable to “stop it in its tracks.”

Rizzo’s silence about CIA’s briefing to Harman–and her objection to the torture program–is more significant given something else he asserts in this piece.

A few days after the attacks, President Bush signed a top-secret directive to CIA authorizing an unprecedented array of covert actions against Al Qaeda and its leadership. Like almost every such authorization issued by presidents over the previous quarter-century, this one was provided to the intelligence committees of the House and Senate as well as the defense subcommittees of the House and Senate appropriations committees. However, the White House directed that details about the most ambitious, sensitive and potentially explosive new program authorized by the President—the capture, incommunicado detention and aggressive interrogation of senior Al Qaeda operatives—could only be shared with the leaders of the House and Senate, plus the chair and ranking member of the two intelligence committees.

Rizzo starts by invoking the September 17, 2001 Presidential Finding that authorized the CIA to capture and detain al Qaeda members. He tells us–this may be news, actually–that that Finding was briefed to the entire intelligence committees and to appropriations committees. But then he says that the torture part of that program “could only be shared” with the Gang of Eight.

The detail is interesting, by itself, for the way it contradicts Rizzo’s later (false) claim that “every other member of Congress” “would be kept in the dark” about the torture program. After all, the Leaders are also members of Congress, but if the CIA’s own error-ridden briefing list is to be believed, the only Leader who ever got briefed in that role was Bill Frist (while Appropriations Subcommittee Republicans Duncan Hunter, Ted Stevens, and Thad Cochran also got briefings, as well as John McCain).

The comment is more interesting for what it says about the Finding itself. The CIA has long suggested (and reporting has repeated) that that Finding authorized the torture program. But Rizzo is making it clear here that that Finding did not include authorization for the torture program. The oral briefings the Gang of Four got were the only way the way the President informed Congress about the torture program.

While it’s significant that Rizzo is here admitting that fact, we already knew it. We knew it because Jane Harman twice asked about a Finding on torture, once implicitly in 2003 when she asked “Have enhanced techniques been authorized and approved by the President?” and once in the briefing CIA gave her on July 13, 2004, when she,”noted that the [redacted–almost certainly the Finding] did not specify interrogations and only authorized capture and detention.”

In other words, Rizzo basically admits that the point Jane Harman appears to have made repeatedly was correct: the torture program had not been formally included in a Finding briefed to Congress.

Rizzo’s lies about briefing Congress don’t appear to be the issue here. Rather, the problem is that the Administration did not issue the legally required Finding to Congress.

The Next Target in the War on Voting: Hoffa and the Unions

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Last week, Ari Berman chronicled what he termed a war on voting.

All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.

Taken together, such measures could significantly dampen the Democratic turnout next year – perhaps enough to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP.

The war got a lot more explicit when a right winger argued that poor people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Fox and the right wing’s bloggers just added another front to the attack. On Labor Day, they doctored a Jimmy Hoffa Jr. speech to suggest his call for union members to vote amounted to a call for violence against the Tea Party.

Right-wing bloggers misled by dishonest Fox News video editing are attacking Teamsters President James Hoffa, Jr. for supposedly urging violence against Tea Party activists during a Labor Day speech. Conservatives are also attacking President Obama, who appeared at the event, for “sanctioning violence against fellow Americans” by failing to denounce Hoffa. But fuller context included in other Fox segments makes clear that Hoffa wasn’t calling for violence but was actually urging the crowd to vote out Republican members of Congress.

During the segment that the bloggers have latched onto, Fox edited out the bolded portion of Hoffa’s comments:

HOFFA: Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!

In an initial report on Hoffa’s speech at 1 p.m. on Fox News, Ed Henry reported that Hoffa said that “we’ll remember in November who’s with the working people” and “said of the Tea Party and of Republicans, ‘let’s take these sons of bitches out.'”

Henry made clear during that segment that Hoffa’s comments were references to voting out Republican members of Congress, not to violence. And roughly 20 minutes later, he explained on Twitter that the “full quote” of the “take these son of a bitches out” comment is “Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back & keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these sons of bitches out”:

Ed Henry tweet

I guess these folks have decided to use their weekend–which they have courtesy of unions–to spend inventing another attack on an organization serving working people. I’m just holding my breath for the line of Democrats who will–as they did with ACORN–condemn that organization based on a doctored video.

Trash Talk: Belgian Grand Prix A Trip To The Spa

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Well, as Rosalind helpfully pointed out on the Gone Fishing thread, I am a bit of a late tease with the Trash Talk thread this weekend. Sorry about that,things got a bit catawampus yesterday. Today is my daughter Jenna’s sweet sixteen birthday (scary!!), but somehow the big party got shifted to Saturday. This entailed taking her and a pack of friends to the waterpark. Couple of things notable here: The place is HUGE; it is like Disneyland with water. Second, and here is part of the rub on trash timing, it is literally like halfway to Flagstaff.

Anyway, once back from dropping them off, which was almost an hour drive each way, there were party preparations cake pickups etc. and then my wife picked the girls up and we had a pack of screaming 16 year olds. All very distressing and tiring. But, having survived all that and fallen asleep,I am now up for the Belgian Grand Prix and ready to trash.

This weekend is the Belgian and it is at the historic Spa, simply maybe the most kicks ass track on the Circus tour, featuring the famous Eau Rouge turn. Read about Eau Rouge and the history of Spa at the wiki entry, it is a good read, and you will be glad you did.

AS the Belgian was a key contest in 1961, we will take the customary look back in this the 50th anniversary of Phil Hill’s Yankee Championship year. We have a killer video clip on the 1961 Belgian, just superb. 1961 found the Ferraris dominant in qualifying at Spa. Phil took pole in qualifying, with Von Tripps in P2, Olivier Gendedien P3 and fellow American Ritchie Ginther in P5 in the fourth Ferrari. The race was hotly contested with numerous lead changes, but at the end of the day it was still the Ferraris leading the pack with Phil winning the race, followed closely by Von Tripps, Ginther and Gendebien.

This year, the Red Bulls have again led the way in qualifying with points leader Sebastian Vettel claiming pole and Mark Webber in P3 split by Lewis Hamilton in P2. It weas one of the most electrifying qualifying sessions in recent memory, and certainly the best this year by far. Wow, just wow. There was both wet early and dry late, which caused all the teams to have cars on track every second they could. It literally came down to the last seconds and was influenced by a fairly questionable move on the Williams of Pedro Maldonado by the ever more dickish driving of Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton is really not aging well from the humble and nice young man when he first joined the tour.

There is, of course also football in the air, even if it is still preseason. Last night the Cardinals looked pretty good, but then their scrubs let the Bolts’ scrubs score a TD in the last five seconds to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The other notable game saw the resurgent Lions really do a number on the Patriots. Man, you can just see the confidence growing in the Kitties, this is truly a team to be reckoned with now, and I think it will carry over into the regular season.

So, trash it up folks!

Trash Talk: I’m Still Mad In Memphis West Edition

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For any that carelessly stumble in here without having read the earlier Emptywheel blog ice pick into the temple of southern comfort regarding the West Memphis Three and the obliteration of fundamental fairness occurring in an American court right down the stinking street, go back to go. Do not collect jack squat on the way. Seriously.

What happened today in Jonesboro Arkansas was just not right. And the addled morons in the citizenry and wooden bobbleheads in the media are pitching it as some triumph of justice. Get. The. Fuck. Out.

The West Memphis Three were railroaded into a guilty finding today – AGAIN – and, yes, it was far worse than the original lynch mob mentality religious paranoid bullshit because everybody, the entire world, knows the score this time. This is how US society dies and American Rule of Law dies. Take a good look people, because you are seeing it live like it was WWE Live!

Ooops, wait, I guess this was supposed to be Trash Talk huh? I musta got lost. Somewhere down the line of absurdity. First off tonight looks like the Hot’Lanta Dirty Bird are fouling some Jacksonville Jaguars on the old time broadcast TeeVee channel owned by Fox TV. Long as they ain’t tape delaying Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Formula One, that is all good. Hmm, seems the Falcons are up 3-0 as I write these words. I really like the Falcons. Matt Ryan has been better and more consistent than people give him credit for. Tony Gonzales is not what he once was maybe, but is still damn good. And Julio Jones paired with Roddy White as bookend receivers? Are you kidding me? Crikey. The Jags, on the other hand, have some growing issues. David Garrard has had some moments, but at this point, he is just a lead in for Blaine Gabbert and the future. MoJo Drew and a middlin defense is not enough to carry the franchise. The Dirty Birds are a force right here and now; the Jags, not so much.

But the game I am watching is the Cardinals at the hallowed tundra of Lambeau Field to visit the Pack. So far, Cards are holding their own, even are ahead 3-0; but the Pack and Rodgers are on the move. I will have to say, Darnell Dockett and the Cards defense is looking better than advertised.

It would appear that, although they have been pretty quiet, the Packers are going to be just fine. Give a quality talent and personality like Aaron Rodgers the confidence of a champion, which he sure has now, and the consistency of coaching and awesomeness of fan support of Green Bay, and that is a potent mix. They are never going to be like the Pats and be vying for an undefeated season, but they will be a force to be reckoned with when the fall turns to winter and the games count extra.

Back to the Cards. As most of you know, I am uhhhhh usually rather skeptical of the Cards. Still am. But they have some pieces; some real good pieces. This Pat Peterson rookie they have is going to be a defensive Larry Fitzgerald; he has those kind of skills and intangibles. They have a shot. We shall see.

One last thing. My friend, our friend, Jim White is going to visit some doctors on Monday. That kind of thing happens as you get older, and I guess you just have to move with no fear. But my thoughts, and those of this blog, are with him every inch of the way. Hang tough bubba; we got a lot of football and sports in general to trash over.

Links, 7/28/11

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here’s Melissa Harris-Perry talking about the Pew study on net worth from the other day.

Our Dying Economy

Nicholas Shaxson (the author of Treasure Islands) has a post on a probably-doomed attempt by developing countries to have more of a say over international tax policy.

According to Jay Rockefeller, the Republicans shut down the FAA primarily to help Delta ensure its workers never unionize.

A few days ago I linked to an article arguing that Microsoft’s profits largely stemmed from tax avoidance–facilitated in part by their purchase of Skype. Here’s a longer article laying out MS’ tax dodging. It seems like it’d be a useful strategy to lay out how all the companies engaged in the worst kind of tax cheating are doing it because they’re not really doing much as companies anymore.

Our National Security State

Ron Wyden and Mark Udall are basically trying to force Eric Holder and James Clapper to admit that it’s a bad thing to interpret laws–notably, the PATRIOT Act–in ways that the public doesn’t understand. I suspect this won’t make it out of the Intelligence Committee. So I wonder whether Harry Reid will make good on his promise to let them raise it in the full Senate. Me, I think the bill would be more effective if Holder and Clapper each had to write “I will not use smart phones to track innocent Americans’ locations” once for each time they have done so.

ACLU has a new report on secrecy out I plan to return to. In the meantime, Steven Aftergood has some interesting things to say about it.

The Treasury Department says Iran is funneling money to Al Qaeda. I’m more interested in the questions Blake Hounshell raises in reporting the issue, though, than actually convinced Treasury isn’t just making shit up.

Justice and Injustice

A judge just ruled that Shirley Sherrod’s lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart can proceed.

Your Daily Murdoch

Now why do you suppose James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks were getting briefed by Britain’s Defense Secretary? And does anyone actually believe Murdoch’s top execs haven’t gotten similar treatment here?

It’s not so much that Piers Morgan doth protest too much. It’s that the traditional media is bending over backwards to accept his version of the claim that he never authorized anyone to hack a phone. Not to mention they’re accepting a very carefully parsed answer–Morgan’s “I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone” leaves a whole lot of knowledge of hacking on the table.

Apparently, the plan for the cover-up in the UK consists of generalizing the inquiry into journalists’ conduct generally, with a series of seminars about the ethics of journalism, which I presume will ensure that public opinion magically starts to side with Murdoch, not his victims or rule of law.

The Guardian reports that NotW is suspected of hacking the phone of the mother of the girl for whom “Sarah’s Law”–a sex predator transparency law–was named after. It also says Rebeka Brooks gave her the phone! If you saw Brooks’ testimony before Parliament, she used NotW’s championship of Sarah’s Law as PR spin.

Free for All 

Marion Nestle assesses McDonald’s new Happier Meals and finds them unimpressive, largely because they still offer soda. Interestingly, though, it appears Happy Meals aren’t selling like they used to partly because kids are snobbier about toys and partly because the dollar items on McDonald’s menu ends up being a cheaper way to feed kids.