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all art/music/culture links (including music biz/file sharing news), fiction I'm reading and what I'm listening to and watching

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ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

u = Progressive Review's Undernews

PUBLIC AFFAIRS/HISTORY READING:
(r) = re-reading

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The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers -- and What They Expect in Return

Arrogant Capital

Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual: How to Rebuild Our Country So the Politics Aren't Broken and Politicians Aren't Fixed

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush

Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism & Toxic Warfare

The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Decline of American Democracy

Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of the Free Press

Amazon Light

Just consider what current events will sound like two thousand years from now -- the greatest nation on Earth bombing some of the smallest and weakest for no clear reasons, people starving in parts of the world while farmers are paid not to plant crops in others, technophiles sitting at home playing electronic golf rahter than the real thing, and police forces ordered to arrest people who simply desire to ingest a psychoactive weed. People of that era will also likely laugh it all off as fantastic myths...

It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves -- to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity.

This does not have to involve violence. It can be done in small, simple ways, like not financing that new Sport Utility Vehicle, cutting up all but one credit card, not opting for a second mortgage, turning off that TV sitcom for a good book, asking questions and speaking out in church or synagogue, attending school board and city council meetings, voting for the candidate who has the least money, learning about the Fully Informed Jury movement and using it when called -- in general, taking responsibility for one's own actions. Despite the omnipresent advertising for the Lotto -- legalized government gambling -- there is no free lunch. Giving up one's individual power for the hope of comfort and security has proven to lead only to tyranny.

from Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs

You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. . .It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

. . . Things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, The Louisiana air base had benn placed under siege.

The base's electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.

Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing an federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead the rogue Governor employed proxy guerrillas.

Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana's many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesticides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.

Proles cheerfully grouped in any locale where conventional authority had grown weak. Whenever the net-based proles were not constantly harassed by the authorities, they coalesced and grew ambitious. Though easily scattered by focused crackdowns, they regrouped as swiftly as a horde of gnats. With their reaping machines and bio-breweries, they could live off the land at the very base of the food chain. They had no stake in the established order, and they cherished a canny street-level knowledge of society's infrastructural weaknesses. They made expensive enemies. . .

Louisiana's ecologically blighted areas were ideal for proles. The disaster zones were also impromptu wildlife sanctuaries, since wild animals found chemical fouling much easier to survive than the presence of human beings. After decades of wild subtropical growth, Louisiana's toxic dumps were as impenetrable as Sherwood Forest.

from Distraction by Bruce Sterling

and s-integrator

Saturday, February 08, 2003

Petition to allow New Yorkers to protest the Iraq War [This Modern World]

7:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Death of Irony File:

Rumsfeld wants OK for chemwar [cursor]

7:32 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"A bit unfair. . . "

Darkly hilarious BBC grilling of poodleboy, with skeptical audience[transcript][RA video] [via Cursor]
TONY BLAIR: ...We still don't know, for example, what has happened to the thousands of litres of botulin and anthrax that were unaccounted for when the inspectors left in 1999. So, you know, the idea that -

JEREMY PAXMAN: And you believe American intelligence?

TONY BLAIR: Well I do actually believe this intelligence -

JEREMY PAXMAN: Because there are a lot of dead people in an aspirin factory in Sudan who don't.

[...]

(Male 2):I would say to you Prime Minister that the war is to get rid of a despotic dictator who has no real democratic mandate, who's very destabilising, who commits human rights violations. Is Mr. Bush next perhaps?

TONY BLAIR: Well, you think Saddam's the same as George Bush.

(Male 2) I'm saying Mr. Bush has a lot of comparisons.

TONY BLAIR: I think that's a bit unfair you know. I don't think George Bush has quite done that.
OK, most of it is just a depressing litany of stonewalling and denial.

7:26 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

David McGowan on what we don't know about 9/11 [questions, questions]
It has never been proven that Osama bin Laden masterminded the September 11 attacks. It has never been proven that the simultaneous hijacking of four commercial airliners was accomplished by nineteen Islamic fundamentalists wielding box-cutters. It has never been proven that the purported pilots had the training or the ability to perform complex aeronautic maneuvers in unwieldy passenger jets. It has never been proven that it was a passenger jet that struck the Pentagon. It has never been proven that the total collapse of the Twin Towers was due solely to the airplane crashes and resulting fires. It has never been proven that the failure to act on numerous warnings of the coming attacks was due simply to bureaucratic incompetence. It has never been proven that there is any innocent explanation for the stand-down of U.S. air defenses on that day. It has never been proven or revealed who exactly it was that placed heavy bets on Wall Street that United Airlines and American Airlines stocks were about to take a dump. It has never been proven that there is a perfectly benign explanation for why the commander-in-chief of U.S. armed forces chose to continue reading with schoolchildren well after live television coverage had informed the entire world that the U.S. was under attack. It has never been proven that there is any precedent for the actions taken by the Secret Service, who - tasked with protecting the president at all costs - allowed him to continue reading with schoolchildren at a known location that had been announced by the media in advance and that was entirely vulnerable to attack. It has never been proven that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan at any time during the (continuing) assault on that country. It has never been proven that Osama bin Laden is estranged from his family, which, of course, has longtime financial ties to the Bush family.
Part 2 and Part 3 of the article.

2:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Surprisingly harsh criticism of the DEA by the White House might signal a shift in policy on the pointless, criminal and (most important perhaps) expensive Drug War

2:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Charlie Rose is a stooge and a creep

Saw a little of Charlie Rose "interviewing" Hunter Thompson today

What a joke. They obviously deeply edited Thompson at certain points and Rose wouldn't let him finish a thought. Thompson didn't look very healthy, though the atmosphere was anything but friendly or even courteous and that didn't help.

Rose isn't always such a shit (he's usually a bit of a bootlicker actually), but he sure was today.

I definitely got the feeling that word came down to BigMedia from on high the day before the Bush SOTU speech to push The Agenda. This interview felt like some FoxNews/Likudnik flak from Perleland grilling and scoffing at a misguided peacenik.

2:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Speeding the tax revolt

States turn to data mining for obscure tax debts to boost budgets [u]

2:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I paid so little attention to the Powell report to the UN the other day that I missed some truly hilarious features, which Robert Fisk smartly fills in [u]
And when General Powell started blathering on about "decades" of contact between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, things went wrong for the Secretary of State. Al-Qa'ida only came into existence five years ago, since Bin Laden -- "decades" ago -- was working against the Russians for the CIA, whose present day director was sitting grave-faced behind General Powell.

[...]

The worst moment came when General Powell started talking about anthrax and the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington and New York, pathetically holding up a teaspoon of the imaginary spores and -- while not precisely saying so -- fraudulently suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 2001 anthrax scare.

[...]

From time to time, the words "Iraq: Failing To Disarm -- Denial and Deception" appeared on the giant video screen behind General Powell. Was this a CNN logo, some of us wondered? But no, it was CNN's sister channel, the US Department of State.
Much more on Powell at Undernews Feb 6.

2:05 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

PATRIOT Act II
The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence -- gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information.
Will Congress have time to read the bill this time? Will they roll over and play dead again?

Will the undertow of suspicion and mistrust among the public erupt sooner or later?

There's a link to the 12MB text in the second paragraph.

1:21 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, February 07, 2003

"Maybe some are just waiting to see if the rest of us survive. I'm kidding, kidding."

Widespread resistance among health care workers to smallpox vaccine

250,000 doses shipped, 687 administered.

2:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

None of your business, America

Cheney completes cover-up of energy summit, outflanks GAO

2:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Powell's Plutocratic Oath

Powell admits Iraq War just Good Business

2:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Online retailers starting to charge sales tax for all purchases

1:29 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

So shrubco knows and desires this

US officials predict 75% increase in chance of terrorist attacks if Iraq invaded

More terror means more money and more power for shrubco & friends, and force-fulfilling the prophecy of a clash of civilizations.

Until the money runs out and domestic protest becomes impossible to ignore.

2:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Secret society of rogue NJ State Troopers who routinely harass minority and female colleagues finally being investigated [u]

I grew up in Ocean County. I'll always remember my favorite history teacher, Mr Wright, reminding us that the NJST uniforms were based on the Nazi SS uniforms. They were pretty frightening, and this kind of abuse has been endemic for years.

1:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Parent-supported student-boycotting of standardized tests spreading [u]

1:30 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Los Alamos whistleblower on plutonium storage canned [u]

1:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Ed Rosenthal gets 5 years for growing medicinal pot and a juror angrily criticises the "barring of justice" from the trial [u]
There is no doubt that Rosenthal was growing marijuana. Though there was some dispute as to the number of plants, the defense never claimed that marijuana wasn't being grown.

But Rosenthal's attorneys were not allowed to tell us the critical facts: He grew marijuana for use by people suffering from cancer, AIDS and other horrible diseases whose physicians had recommended it. He acted with the knowledge and active encouragement of his local government, under a policy overwhelmingly endorsed by the citizens of his community, because city and county officials believed that patients who need medical marijuana should not have to buy it from street dealers.

But Judge Breyer barred us from considering why Rosenthal was growing the marijuana. "The purpose for which the marijuana was grown is not a defense and is irrelevant," he said.

This is insane. A person accused of shooting his neighbor is allowed to explain why he did it, and motivation is often central to guilt or innocence: Did he act out of cruelty and malice, or did he shoot in self-defense, or to protect others? No one would dream of preventing an accused killer from explaining why he killed.

All Ed Rosenthal did was grow some plants, but he wasn't allowed to tell us why.
Green Aid, the Medical Marijuana Legal Defense and Education Fund.

1:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

California water company trying to get customers to pay for military's perchlorate contamination of water table [u]

See past post here

Expect to see more of this, as Rumsfeld & co. are trying to get the military exempted from environmental accountability.

12:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, February 06, 2003

Also via AS, Aron's Israel Peace Weblog, an Israeli soldier promoting peace

Aron mentions this cogent piece on how Halliburton, Baker Hughes, and BigOil are "ready to hit the ground running" in Iraq.

To keep the oil "in trust" for the Iraqis, natch.

Wow, there's another one of those flying pigs. . .

11:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

I'll be following American Samizdat's example on the 15th, barring some problem with implementation

11:47 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

UK Intel dossier on Iraq largely copied (without attribution) from 3 different articles, including a 12 year-old, outdated student thesis
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell added: "This is the intelligence equivalent of being caught stealing the spoons.

"The dossier may not amount to much but this is a considerable embarrassment for a government trying still to make a case for war."

[...]

Dr Rangwala, lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, told the programme that the British Government's dossier was 19 pages long, but most of pages 6 to 16 were copied directly from the student's document word for word.

"Even the grammatical errors and typographical mistakes," he said.

[...]

The UK document received praise from US Secretary of State Colin Powell this week as he outlined his country's case against Iraq.

"I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities," Mr Powell told the UN security council.
Even if the material wasn't cribbed from other sources, it was used as part of the supposedly "new, damning evidence" by Powell yesterday.

What a joke.

11:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Omnivorous climbing snakes, beaver-sized rodents and German cockroaches

"Biblical" infestations of exotic species in Texas [skimble]

Then one night, it was suddenly very quiet. Just rustling in the dry grass. The next day species of all kinds, exotic and native, were seen crawling, zombie-like, hypnotized toward what puzzled scientists determined was a single destination -- Crawford. . .

6:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Washington Journal half hour with Rep Ron Paul today (Feb 6)

One of the few in Congress who tells it like it is on Iraq. He claimed that Saddam is anathema to fundamentalists like bin Laden, and attacking Iraq will only open the door for him and those like him to gain recruits. I was watching the rerun this PM and they cut away after 10 minutes for some (I'm sure vital) NASA briefing.

Norman Solomon will be on tomorrow (9AM ET, C-SPAN1; RA video archived at link above).

6:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Denver police just doing their job: spying on journos and running background checks for plutocrats

5:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Ah Pook is here

Anointed Lord Ashcroft wants more death here at home too

I can see him on the cliff edge, righteous and glistening with myrrh oil, grinning lizard ecstasy in the blood red twilight.

Whoops. Got a little carried away there.

There's no cliff, it's the top of a pyramid. And it might have been frankincense, not myrrh.

Let's get the facts straight here.

5:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Virtual government may not be real
In a move that raises questions about the security of governmental domains, the Bush administration has pulled the plug on a .gov Web site pending an investigation into the authenticity of the organization that controlled it.

Until recently, visitors to the AONN.gov Web site were treated to a smorgasbord of information about an agency calling itself the Access One Network Northwest (AONN), a self-described cyberwarfare unit claiming to employ more than 2,000 people and had the support of the U.S. Department of Defense.

No federal agency called AONN appears to exist, and no agency with that name is on the official list of organizations maintained by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Um, like they aren't sure?

11:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Jobless rate steady; disgruntlement growing
The American economy has fallen into its worst hiring slump in almost 20 years, and many business executives say they remain unsure when it will end.

With economic growth having slowed to less than 1 percent in recent months, about 1 million people appear to have dropped out of the labor force, neither working nor looking for a job, according to government figures. The surge in discouraged workers is the most significant since the months immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It suggests that the pain of joblessness is worsening even though the official unemployment rate, which counts only people looking for work, held steady at 6 percent in December.

11:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Jon Rappoport/Ellis Medavoy on shrub's strings [free registration required]
When Bush is forced to look "deep inside himself" and connect with his wellsprings of motivation -- when he has to go further than he usually does -- what does he find? He finds the usual sorts of sentiments that line up with a pretty simple and actually distorted idea of patriotism. That's what he finds. That's what "deep" means to George W Bush. And those behind him knew this. They had him all scoped out in advance. They were sure he was their man for this particular ride. They knew that he would find within himself a dovetailing patriotism connected with his own religious conversion, such as it was, that happened years ago. They knew that his religion would translate out into this kind of patriotism that would get him to go very hard in the direction of a war. In this respect, he is like Reagan.

3:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Selected referrals
best urogynecologist atlanta
gagged women sleuths
squat suit canvas phillips
2003 mail contact of chemical dealers syria
2003 email contact of big dealers inside saudi arabia
"saddam hussein" "arm pits"
bound, gagged, leather, kidnap
don rumsfeld and gilead science
woodstock+crows+residents' opinions
breast morphs
kubrick obelisk dimension 36
007 james bond fireball pics
2003 email guest book of kuwait citizens in exile
public control(win canvas){
satirical causes for obesity
picure judiciary act of picture of court
asexual+childfree
Vehicle Tracking, Car Tracking covert chases
rumsfeld morph lizard
christian apocaplyptic art
donnie darko fan art meat bag
the quiet american wallpapers

1:09 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New JFK assassination film: Bob Vernon (website) and alleged shooter James Files

1:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, February 05, 2003

Stratiawire mentioned in a post a few weeks ago (Jan 23) this CNN story which claims 160,000 Gulf War vets are receiving disability even though the Pentagon still doesn't admit GWS exists

The focus of the article centers on lawsuits by vets against suppliers of chemicals to Iraq, based on an unexpurgated version of the Iraq declaration made available to them by Scott Ritter, who has been conveniently smeared in the media lately.

5:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Impeach Bush action page

7:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

xymphora says Iraq's spearheading of the move to buy oil in euros is key to US aggression
If oil were sold in euros, countries would have to buy euros rather than dollars in order to buy their oil, and much of the financing that has propelled the U. S. economic hegemony would end almost immediately, plunging the U. S. into economic crisis and shifting economic power back to Europe (the engine of the U. S. economy is the high dollar strategy aided by the fact that people have to buy dollars to buy their oil, coupled with the dollar pipeline back into the U. S. economy from the Middle Eastern states of the dollar proceeds of the purchases of oil - this mechanism has enabled, indeed required, the United States to run huge trade deficits to soak up all the cash that has been coming in).

7:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New study links mobile phone use to Alzheimer's

7:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

German unemployment spikes to 11.1%

7:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Unprecedented but unbinding Australian Senate no-confidence vote against Prime Minister

Measure stops short of condemning any involvement (as Greens called for), citing UN mandate as key.

7:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Leaked UK intel report undercuts Iraq-al Qaeda link as Powell sets up his PowerPoint presentation

7:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Study: Office surfers aren't slackers
"The survey suggests companies should accept some personal use of the Internet at work as not only inevitable, but as positive to the organization," Roland Rust, director of the business school's Center for e-Service, said in a statement. "Totally segregating work from personal activities might result in a net decline in work performed, not to mention lower workplace morale."

6:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Ethnic tensions & legacy of colonial past haunt Ivory Coast
The night of September 18th 2002 a military insurrection in Cote d'Ivoire brings out the weakness of the political structures of the country, considered the most stable one in Western Africa. The Ivorian population is divided in four great ethnic groups (Akan in the Southeast, Krou in the Southwest, Mandes in the Northwest and Volta in the Northeast), composed as well by more than 60 tribes. The political elite, made up basically by the Akan (the majority ethnic group), developed from the beggining of the 90's the concept of "ivoirit�", on which has been based the Ivorian national identity in the last decade. Actually this concept hides a dominion of ethnicity as a determining factor of the political system, and as an instrument to exclude other rivals from competitive policy on the basis of ethnic criteria to consider them "foreigners".
Updates

Some history/background

Isn't "ivoirité" the perfect term for European-sanctioned hegemony in an African state?

6:29 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Liberal Swiss euthanasia laws draw short term tourists, dismaying some
Switzerland is not the only country to have legalized euthanasia for those certified by a doctor as terminally ill. The Netherlands and Belgium have similar laws, but have attracted fewer "death tourists" because their laws insist that doctor and patient have a close relationship. Germany has firm rules prohibiting euthanasia dating from the post-Nazi era. Minelli said he did not advertise, except through the Dignitas Web site, www.dignitas.ch. Crew heard about the group from a television program.

Most of Dignitas's members come from Germany, according to Minelli and the coroner's office. Fewer come from neighboring Austria and France. Others have traveled from as far as Israel, the United States, Britain and Lebanon, paying Dignitas a $70 registration fee and $30 yearly membership charge.

[...]

A congresswoman, Dorle Vallender, has proposed a bill that would regulate euthanasia groups and make the rules more cumbersome so that those wishing to die have more time to think about what they are doing.

"I'm not against assisted suicide," Vallender said. "But with Dignitas, it all happens too fast. They come here in the morning and are dead in the afternoon."

5:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

Pete Du Pont's vile legacy

CPAC Nazis gather, fume [requires watching 24 ad for a few seconds]
CPACers exemplify what historian Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style in American politics" in the 1964 essay of the same name. "Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated -- if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention," Hofstadter wrote. "Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes." And George W. Bush has harnessed their obsession and rage for his own political gain.

8:06 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Intelligence on Iraq: comedy of errors, contradictions

There's that Chalabi guy again.

7:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Not that they didn't know the North Koreans were going to play the nuclear card because of the US reneging on its 8 year-old energy deal, but the White House got a timely reminder that Pyongyang was moving to produce enriched uranium in November '01 [cicentre]

See, that's why we need such a big intelligence apparatus.

To stay ahead of the game.

Whatever failures US intel is responsible for (and they are legion), information that's being ignored or suppressed by people at the top is more to blame for 9/11 et al., IMO.

7:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

NYC limiting peace demonstration on the 15th to 10,000 [Sassafrass]

7:29 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

A couple from skimble

Letters to SF Chronicle about Columbia incident skew to the bitter and cynical, readers complain at lack of letters honoring astronauts. Editor says they can only print what they get.

Call to action on Estrada judicial nomination.

7:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Neo-con/Likud puppet tapped

UPDATE: Forgot to insert the new link last night.

As Robert Dreyfuss predicted in November, Ahmed Chalabi looks to be Washington's man in Baghdad [drudge]

See previous post here.

7:04 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The CIA's Year of the Goat recruitment drive
The advert goes on to ask readers to help the CIA "stay true to our global focus" by joining the spy network.

"Why work for a company when you can serve the nation?" it asks.

"Just as the Year of the [Goat] is centred on a strong and clear motivation for peace, harmony and tranquillity during challenging times, we are equally intent on our mission to safeguard America and its people.

"You, too, can play a key role in this important responsibility."

[...]

"These people are the cutting edge of American intelligence, an elite corps gathering the vital information needed by our policy- makers to make critical foreign policy decisions," the ad says of CIA spies.

7:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Plutocrat standdown in Venezuela disintegrates

3:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Whew, what a relief!

Harry Potter, New Age/wicca mostly OK with Vatican

Earth "not divine," though.
In the unusually self-critical study, the Vatican admits that the "immense" popularity of the New Age movement suggests the Catholic Church does not always provide the answers to today's spiritual questions.
Here's the English version of the um encyclical or whatever. Other languages are available, though the site isn't Opera-friendly -- the English index page just stopped transmitting after a few seconds.

They want to be hip (actually quoting "Age of Aquarius" from Hair! no Fifth Dimension downloads though), but remind the reader that The Great Hierarchy Owns The Shit, when it comes to real spirituality.
John Paul II warns with regard to the "return of ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age: We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practising gnosticism -- that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words."
Just remember: They Own The Word, so get with Jesus when you're finished with this gnostic puttering, you natty pilgrim you.

2:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

US researchers' call for diet herb ephedra to be banned smells of BigPharma

I know to avoid products with ephedra because I have HBP. But to ban it when drugs like Paxil are hawked on TV is just spin. Regardless of whether prescriptions are involved or not.

2:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, February 03, 2003

Depleted uranium and spiralling birth defects in southern Iraq [u]
He guided me past pictures of children born without eyes, without brains. Another had arrived in the world with only half a head, nothing above the eyes. Then there was a head with legs, babies without genitalia, a little girl born with her brain outside her skull and the whatever-it-was whose eyes were below the level of its nose.

Then the chair-grabbing moment--a photograph of what I can only describe (inadequately) as a pair of buttocks with a face and two amphibian arms. Mercifully, none of these babies survived for long.

Depleted uranium has an incubation period in humans of five years. In the four years from 1991 (the end of the Gulf war) until 1994, the Basrah Maternity Hospital saw 11 congenital anomalies. Last year there were 221.

6:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Senator Hagel and the voting machine combine [u]
One underlying issue is whether Hagel properly disclosed his financial ties to Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a company that makes nearly half the voting machines used in the United States, including all those used in his native Nebraska.

ES&S is a subsidiary of McCarthy Group Inc., which is jointly held by the holding firm and the Omaha World-Herald Co., which publishes the state's largest newspaper. The voting machine company makes sophisticated optical scan and touch-screen vote-counting devices that many states have begun buying in recent years.

An official at Nebraska's Election Administration estimated that ES&S machines tallied 85 percent of the votes cast in Hagel's 2002 and 1996 election races.

6:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

New quake swarm along Calaveras fault near San Francisco

1:36 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New AT&T voice-cloning software shows how replicas of living and dead voices are nearly here

1:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Assessing the ground war in Iraq [og]
Some have suggested that Baghdad can be surrounded and starved into submission. That is a bad idea for several reasons. First, the Iraqis have spent months stockpiling food, water, and ammo in Baghdad. Second, friendly Arab governments will become more unstable each day this war continues, and the USA will look defeated if it sits outside the city for months. Third, leaving troops in the desert for months after a campaign will prove logistically difficult and demoralizing. However, the big disaster will occur when Hussein expels two million women and children from besieged Baghdad for humanitarian reasons. The US military will have trouble supporting its own troops, yet failing to feed and house two million homeless women and children shown on worldwide television will be a public relations disaster.

1:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

More on Computer Science's buyout of Dyncorp, and putting acts of war under the umbrella of corporate unaccountability
It's the expansion of private firms into core functions of the military that is, for many, an alarming trend. A State Department spokesperson told me that DynCorp, with its "wide range of capabilities and experience," is now crucial to many security functions. Some of these are basic, like piloting planes. But when the government hires DynCorp to oversee the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo or guard the Afghan president or spray crops in Colombia, critics say the motivation is less a need for technical expertise than a desire to conduct operations Congress won't let the military do, and to keep potentially messy foreign entanglements at arm's length. In other words, DynCorp and its brethren exist to do Washington's dirty work.

Private contractors and subcontractors operating abroad are subject to neither US law nor the military code of conduct. They don't count under congressional limits on troop commitments, and they aren't obliged to talk to the media. The government needn't even discuss the details of the agreements: The Pentagon and State Department aren't required to reveal to Congress contracts that are smaller than $50 million, and many of DynCorp's are. All of which raises troubling questions of accountability.

[...]

DynCorp's operations hit a bump when a group of Ecuadoran peasants filed a class action against the company in September 2001. The suit alleges that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, withering legitimate crops, causing human and livestock illness, and, in several cases, killing children. Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers quickly stepped up, telling the judge the lawsuit posed "a grave risk to US national security and foreign policy objectives." His 11-page filing implied the Ecuadorans had been "co-opted" by "drug traffickers and international terrorists." He alleged (and later retracted) that the rebels in Colombia were trained by al Qaeda and the spraying was crucial to the war on terrorism. US District Judge Richard Roberts has yet to decide whether to let the suit go forward, but in any case, it shows how DynCorp is protected by friends in high places - and how the government is protected by handing off controversial jobs to a third party.
And soon it will just be the plutocrats fighting each other, as Gibson predicted.

12:41 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Is shrubco going to co-opt Iraq to make room for Palestinians (on top of the other obvious reasons)?

Has that been part of the US/Israeli New Mideast Order plan all along?

12:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, February 02, 2003

Another virus-swept cruise ship

11:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Essential Greg Palast on the way the IMF drives debtor nations to unrest and collapse so their assets can be bought for a song by the plutocrats

This is an old interview (March '02) that I've seen referred to in a couple places this week. I don't think I've posted about it before, but I might've. He also talks on Enron and the water grab.
In the IMF explosions like in Argentina, in Brazil and in Indonesia where there are riots in the streets. He calls them the IMF riots. They're virtually written into the plan. In fact I have been able to obtain inside documents from the IMF and World Bank which go through the steps. You actually see it in there where their squeezing and squeezing a country until the point where they know it will create an explosion as in Ecuador.

[...]

Now [this] is their plan, [s]o they sit down and say well what we're going to do, we're going to squeeze these people until they torch the capital and then we can seize all their assets. I don't know if they think it out that carefully but it happens again and again and again. And what's interesting about Stiglitz is he said "I see a pattern here and I'm beginning to question it" and then they said "your not going to question it and work with us" and he was fired.

4:10 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Once again

Europeans chase al Qaeda trail to Algeria

MI5 has been spying on the Finsbury mosque for awhile, and xymphora has a long post on the history of US/UK/Pakistani intel operations in Yemen -- including the training camps for what became al Qaeda. The web connecting Islamic terrorists and UK/US intel is way too cozy for the latter to be complaining about how 9/11 was some big surprise.

The question for me is, exactly what was -- and is -- the connection between the agencies, Saudi money (and of course DynastyBush) and these operatives? The UK, Germany, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are where all the trails lead to, as well as the US. So why did we bomb Afhganistan and what does Iraq have to do with any of this, is the upshot.

This is why I'm dismayed to find out from Gerard Colby's agent that his book on just this subject won't be published til 2004 (see post). Hopefully it'll be early in the year -- and the '04 campaign.

2:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Funny Doonesbury

2:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Technical problems last night, so no posts

12:06 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

charging the canvas

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