Archive Search

ARCHIVES

03/14/04 - 03/20/04
02/29/04 - 03/06/04
02/22/04 - 02/28/04
02/15/04 - 02/21/04
02/08/04 - 02/14/04
02/01/04 - 02/07/04
01/25/04 - 01/31/04
01/18/04 - 01/24/04
01/11/04 - 01/17/04
01/04/04 - 01/10/04
12/28/03 - 01/03/04
12/21/03 - 12/27/03
12/14/03 - 12/20/03
12/07/03 - 12/13/03
11/30/03 - 12/06/03
11/23/03 - 11/29/03
11/16/03 - 11/22/03
11/09/03 - 11/15/03
11/02/03 - 11/08/03
10/26/03 - 11/01/03
10/19/03 - 10/25/03
10/12/03 - 10/18/03
10/05/03 - 10/11/03
09/28/03 - 10/04/03
09/21/03 - 09/27/03
09/14/03 - 09/20/03
09/07/03 - 09/13/03
08/31/03 - 09/06/03
08/24/03 - 08/30/03
08/17/03 - 08/23/03
08/10/03 - 08/16/03
08/03/03 - 08/09/03
07/27/03 - 08/02/03
07/20/03 - 07/26/03
07/13/03 - 07/19/03
07/06/03 - 07/12/03
06/29/03 - 07/05/03
06/22/03 - 06/28/03
06/15/03 - 06/21/03
06/08/03 - 06/14/03
06/01/03 - 06/07/03
05/25/03 - 05/31/03
05/18/03 - 05/24/03
05/11/03 - 05/17/03
05/04/03 - 05/10/03
04/27/03 - 05/03/03
04/20/03 - 04/26/03
04/13/03 - 04/19/03
04/06/03 - 04/12/03
03/30/03 - 04/05/03
03/23/03 - 03/29/03
03/16/03 - 03/22/03
03/09/03 - 03/15/03
03/02/03 - 03/08/03
02/23/03 - 03/01/03
02/16/03 - 02/22/03
02/09/03 - 02/15/03
02/02/03 - 02/08/03
01/26/03 - 02/01/03
01/19/03 - 01/25/03
01/12/03 - 01/18/03
01/05/03 - 01/11/03
12/29/02 - 01/04/03

Link to old site on blogger (with archive links)

Click "subscribe" for email notification when I publish (including text added)
Subscribe
UnSubscribe

CULTURE BLOG

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

planing lakes

Contact

REGISTRATION ALERT:

For New York Times access use:
Username: aflakete Password: europhilia

For LA Times access use:
Username: ridgewood Password: callow

NOW AVAILABLE AT ME-ZINE

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

u = Progressive Review's Undernews

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

amazon wish list

amazon.ca wish list

alibris wishlist

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 22, 2003

Antiwar demonstrators in Montreal closed the US consulate for several hours this morning

10:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Eastern European governments' "solidarity statement" was crafted by an American policy lobbyist [Joe Schram]

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

Pentagon now thinks maybe those directed energy weapons might not be such a great idea

This new link is 2 days older than my original post.

I don't generally worry too much about posting links that are a few days old, but things are moving so fast now, you have to be checking stuff several times a day -- particularly since there's so much disinfo and misinfo out there.

This will never be one of those blogs. For one thing, there are lots of bloggers doing that, and secondly, I try to post about what I don't see elsewhere. I assume the readers of this blog read several others of a similar bent, and don't need to see the same thing over and over (Though I do post some things simply because I think they should not be missed, whether I see them "serial-posted" or not).

If you want to comment on this, please do. I'd like to know if I'm on the right track.

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

Recent maps show that the KGB had surprisingly detailed maps of Sweden's military installations, mine fields and geography in case of a war with NATO in the 80s [cicentre]

This underlines what I have deduced from my readings so far -- the Russians had the best spies, but no money and lousy public morale.

6:56 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Lehman Bros bond trader claims company hired KGB vets to squeeze Russian debtors [cicentre]

6:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

GA Rep tries to get non-organic meat labeled organic for campaign donor

5:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sick & Creepy file:

New school testing requirements disguise implementation of military ethos in Mass. public schools [u]

5:10 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrubco plans complete break with nuclear policy & agreements that have defined the use of the weapons since Truman [u]
"To me it indicates there are plans proceeding and well under way ... to resume the development, testing and production of new nuclear weapons. It's very serious," said Stephen Schwartz, the publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who added that it opened the US to charges of hypocrisy when it is demanding the disarmament of Iraq and North Korea.

"How can we possibly go to the international community or to these countries and say 'How dare you develop these weapons', when it's exactly what we're doing?" Mr Schwartz said.

4:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Iraq's post-Saddam political vacuum

10:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Directed energy weapons the new thing [Sassafrass]

Which reminds me of HAARP, though that works in the HF range (MHz), not microwave (GHz).

A nasty business either way.

I still wonder about that flash around the shuttle before it exploded.

12:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Looks like the Brits need some help with their "anti-terrorist computer system," Hazmod

12:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, February 21, 2003

Good Boondocks today (Feb 21)

8:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

First the Chicago club, then Rhode Island, now a Staten Island refinery explodes -- coincidence or plan to keep people scared? By whom?

11:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Vermont bookseller purges files in answer to PATRIOT Act

11:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

US commits combat troops to the Philippines, despite Constitutional ban and popular unease with the American presence

11:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

GAO slams Justice Dept. for over-reporting terror convictions

10:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Blog Studio was down last night from about midnight - 5AM MST for an upgrade. Sorry if you couldn't access the sites.

10:51 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, February 20, 2003

Some states -- like Arizona, natch -- are considering dropping arts financing completely [skimble]

Apparently Arizona has a $5.1mil annual arts budget.

The Pentagon loses track of that much money in an afternoon.

9:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Asia embraces biotech
The three most populous countries in Asia - China, India and Indonesia - are already planting millions of acres of genetically modified cotton. Other large Asian countries, including Japan, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, are earmarking billions of dollars for private and government-sponsored research on biotech crops.

Because there are already 145 million acres (60 million hectares) planted with biotech crops worldwide, mostly in North and South America, these developments in Asia could pave the way for biotech crops to dominate the world's food production.

9:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Up to 90% of New York City's 9/11-related air-quality claims made to a federal reimbursement program are fraudulent

1:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Those wacky folks at the Larouche compound look like they've got the skinny on that funky dossier on Iraq Powell trotted out earlier this month [newsmakingnews]
a deeper probe into the scandal reveals that there was good reason that the spin-meisters at the Coalition Information Center -- the Washington-London civilian government propaganda unit that crafted both the Blair dossier and major portions of Secretary Powell's own lighter-than-air book of evidence -- did not reveal the sources of their information. The entire cooked intelligence picture was "Made in Israel." It was cooked up at a right-wing think-tank complex notorious as a hotbed of radical Likudnik propaganda, and with links to the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, via his Chief of Staff Lewis Libby and his former client, Marc Rich.

[...]

[Dr Barry] Rubin [sole proprietor of the Israeli journal from which the dossier was cribbed] is also the chief Middle East columnist for Conrad Black's Hollinger Corp.-owned Jerusalem Post, and a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the think-tank spawn of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the official Israel lobby in America. His writings frequently appear in Middle East Quarterly, the hyper-shrill propaganda journal of Daniel Pipes. Rubin and Pipes are both funded by the Bradley Foundation, one of the quartet of ultra-right-wing tax-exempt funds, along with the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and the Mellon Scaife Foundation.[My link insertion]
Alex Cockburn concurs, in case the name "Larouche" makes you skeptical -- which is smart response.

1:12 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Central Texas is covered with dead robins, and scientists can't figure out why [newsmakingnews]

12:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

2 from skimble

I just put out of my mind the fact last week that thousands of Americans were rushing out to buy duct tape because Daddy Told Them To.

Now, to have it pushed in my face. . .
Located right across from my department stands the paint department. This was the happening place to be today. ... Where all the plastic sheeting used for paint drop clothes is on display and in stock for. Not only was this a top demand but equally was the duck tape. Located in the same aisle. These people were all literally nuts.

They presumed I was the expert on the subject. As if I personally had a government connection and new what grade of sheeting was the best for a biological attack. I would tell them "They tell me you need at least 6mil grade to handle anthrax and 4mil to block out mustard gas. Nothing I have is good for radiation"
Perhaps irony is dead.

Also a long post on why shrubco is so desperate to hide the minutes of those Dick Cheney meetings with energy industry moguls that it told (through Sen Ted Stevens, chairman of the Appropriations Committee) the GAO to kill the lawsuit or face budget cuts.

12:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

Ron Rosenbaum on the phildickian paranoia of James Angleton, notorious CIA counterintelligence chief in the 60s and 70s, as revealed in Tom Powers's new overview of American intel, Intelligence Wars and the American Discovery of the CIA: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda

Not even a single review on amazon of this book by perhaps the most respected reporter on US intel. I didn't even know it was out.

Anyway, on Angleton:
Anyway, Angleton was promoted within the C.I.A. until he became chief of counterintelligence, in charge of discovering moles and traitors within the agency. Golitsyn, meanwhile, was a K.G.B. defector who came over to the West in 1961 with some valuable information about real Soviet moles in Western intelligence agencies. At first. But Golitsyn finally brought forth-and Angleton bought, hook, line and sinker-a super-complex theory of a secret K.G.B. within the K.G.B. that was running super-secret meta-deception operations that were confusing the West by using the tactic of "false defectors," a double "double-cross" system-defectors who weren't really defecting, but were sent over by the K.G.B. to manipulate us by posing as defectors. Soon, Golitsyn predicted, false defectors would be sent across to try to discredit him, because he was the only one who escaped alive from the Soviet Union with the truth about the Inner Truths, the secret K.G.B. Only he-and his compliant acolyte, Angleton-could decipher the inner truths, including the "disclosure" that the whole U.S.S.R.-China split was a put-up job, a Soviet "disinformation" operation to lull the West into a false feeling of security. In the end, by the time Angleton was fired in 1975, both he and Golitsyn came to believe that the C.I.A. had been turned inside out (in Edward Jay Epstein's dramatic description of the Angletonian view) by the American moles and false defectors running the show for the K.G.B.'s disinformation purposes.

11:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

As former Peruvian Intel czar Vladimiros Montesinos goes on trial finally, there's no mention in the short reports I've seen of his CIA grooming over decades, despite evidence he was making money on both sides of the drug war

There are strong suspicions in Peru that Montesinos's reach even now extends into the judiciary that's trying him.

11:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

South Dakota man detained for wearing mask in a van -- carrying foul-smelling food [u]

6:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Privacy is Terrorism file:

The Dept of Transportation has proposed labelling every airline passenger a terrorist [u]
This program is tucked away in what the DOT euphemistically calls the Privacy Act System of Records, Christopher Effgen reports on his Disaster Center Web site. "DOT," Effgen writes, "is proposing that passengers' names be entered into a computer program that will then match their name against names in law enforcement systems of records, financial and transactional databases, public source information, proprietary data, and be used to create risk assessment reports. When a person is identified as being a possible suspect, in violation of any federal, state, territorial, tribal, local, international, or foreign law, the information will be forwarded to the appropriate law enforcement agency. These agencies may also access the database."

6:26 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Undernews today quotes Ha'aretz saying that Netanyahu has declared a "blood feud" with Belgium over the Supreme Court decision to prosecute Sharon for the Sabra and Chatilla massacres in the 80s
Israel's consul-general in Florida has issued a call to Jewish organizations and community activists to boycott Belgian products in the wake of the Belgian Supreme Court decision allowing Ariel Sharon to be prosecuted for war crimes at Sabra and Chatilla, once he is no longer prime minister. An e-mail signed by Miami Consul-General Miki Arbel calls on recipients to take "immediate steps" to protest the Belgian court decision, including "boycotting Belgian products," avoiding travel to Belgium "for any purpose" and protesting Belgian legations in the United States.

Damned if I can find any sign of the article on google or ezwww, or the Ha'aretz site.

That's kind of funny, isn't it?

6:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Culture must go file:

Florida shrub wants to close the State Library (link is also petition form) [History News Network]

1:23 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism by Joan Roelofs [u]

"Documents how even progressive foundations serve to reinforce the political status quo."

From a September 1995 Monthly Review article by Roelofs available through Ebsco's database:
The contours of the nonprofit system become clearer when we look at its great planning and funding arms: the large foundations. They contribute to amusement, to placation of artists, to biochemical research, and to routine charity, but perhaps their most interesting endeavors are in directing social reform. They and their creations supply the ideas for political change. The great multipurpose foundations first arose in the early 20th century, closely connected in spirit and practice with Progressivism and the rise of the social sciences. The new millionaires of robber baron infamy saw foundations as devices to serve several purposes. First, they would provide a systematic way to dispose of vast fortunes. Second, they would permit considerable social control through philanthropy. John D. Rockefeller decided "to establish one great foundation. This foundation would be a single central holding company which would finance any and all of the other benevolent organizations, and thus necessarily subject them to its general supervision." Third, foundations could improve public relations; many believed that the Rockefeller Foundation was created to erase the scandal of the Ludlow Massacre.

12:23 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Antiwar march postcard

Jimmy Breslin captures the moment [u]
On streets of beauty, the warm people inched along or stood and chanted and laughed against a war and for peace and their warmth made the winter temperature irrelevant.

They were summer people in winter clothes.

They were the largest and happiest crowd seen in this city maybe ever, outside of a war's end in 1945.

[...]

Where yesterday they said they did not want war.

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

Venezuelan e-news service VHeadline banned by AOL

12:03 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

"I am bionic. ... I'm getting back on track."

Nerve stimulator implant suppresses extreme headache pain

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

shrubco filed a brief with the federal 3-judge panel that affirmed NYC's march permit denial, urging the panel to uphold that denial [Stratiawire]

2:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

CNN edits out parts of Blix report that refer to Iraqi compliance and "partial refutations" of Powell's claims; later they mysteriously reappear [Sassafrass]

12:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Essential reading

The money behind the erosion of academic freedom in America [Sassafrass]
Foner and Gilmore cite several apparently unconnected people and organizations as being part of "a broader trend among conservative commentators, who since September 11 have increasingly equated criticism of the Bush administration with lack of patriotism." Readers of the article might come away with the impression of a number of independent conservative "voices" concerned with what is being said on campus.

But is this true? All the voices cited originate from organizations funded and coordinated by a core group of wealthy individuals and organizations. Any scholar finding what appears to be a broad trend should be aware that the deliberate creation of an illusion of broad trends is a tactic used to influence the public by the conservative movement that is funded by this core group.

12:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, February 17, 2003

Many networks actually just one

Fox steals NBC shuttle explosion captures: fair use

11:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Chemical saturation of industrial countries worse than you think [u]
Two recent studies cast dramatic light on the extent to which Americans are absorbing toxic chemicals in their bodies as part of everyday life. They present a striking picture of Americans riddled with low levels of chemicals, the vestiges of eating, drinking, breathing and touching the synthetic products of the industrial world.

[...]

For 20 years, she ate organic produce and followed all the usual recommendations to reduce chemical exposure, from using non-toxic household cleaning detergents to avoiding pesticides in her home and garden.

[...]

Brody used to think her efforts helped limit her exposure, but after volunteering to take part in a study measuring toxic chemicals in her body, she was shocked to find that she still had some 85 toxic chemicals in her blood and urine.
The chemical industry's response:
"Just because chemicals are found present in the body doesn't mean there's cause for concern, but only that an internal metabolic process has occurred," said Jennifer Biancaniello, a spokesperson for the American Chemical Council, a trade association of chemical manufacturers. "CDC hasn?t come out and said there's cause for health concern."

5:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

ENUM [u]
The U.S. government is supporting a move to a new standard designed to create a single point of contact for telephone and Internet communications.

The new electronic numbering system, also known as ENUM, would give consumers a single number for all their telephone numbers, e-mail and instant messaging addresses, fax numbers and mobile phone numbers.
Don't like this at all.

4:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

UAE study says US to replace Saudi Arabia with Iraq for oil, base of operations [u]

4:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Drought denial and water allocation in the dry Western states [u]
The Southwestern approach to drought is "definitely head-in-the-sand," said Owen Lammers of Utah-based environmental group Living Rivers, which is sharply critical of how federal dams and what it calls greedy cities rearrange Western water flows. "We're characterizing this as the Enron of water management. The government keeps saying lake levels will get better, and the reality is that things are going down, down, down."

The wide variance in public water restrictions can deflate conservation efforts by prompting complaints of unfair treatment and downstream waste, water experts said. And even if downstream draws from the Colorado River are legal, they may injure streams or lakes in a way that everybody has to pay for in the future.

"The river that many of these states depend on is being overtaxed, so despite what your rights are, there are reasons here to be concerned," said Bart Miller, water projects director for Land and Water Fund of the Rockies. "It strikes the average citizen as unfair or strange when others are using much, much more water."

4:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, February 16, 2003

The thing that struck me about this report of cops teargassing the antiwar crowd in Colorado Springs was the name of the police spokeman -- Lt. Skip Arms

3:21 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wrong kind of intelligence file:

2 narcotics agents in Philadelphia who were "forcibly transferred" because of connecting a CIA-backed Dominican politician with drug trafficking have been vindicated in court [u]

12:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Our "embedded" media covering the Iraq War [u]

Looks like they're going out of their way to allow coverage.

We'll see.

11:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

internalmemos.com

Interesting site devoted to publishing corporate memos, though much of it is only for paid subscribers

9:23 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Hagel's legal muscleman tried to kill voting machine scandal story [u]

9:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

MSNBC report quotes bin Laden call to oust Hussein, then recants [u]
The actual tape, played and translated live on every major cable news channel, told a very different story. Osama bin Laden swore vengeance against America if Iraq was attacked, and demanded that the Muslim world stand in solidarity with the Muslim people of Iraq. In very clear words, Osama bin Laden told the people of Iraq to rise up against both American aggression and against "socialist" Saddam Hussein. If the translations that were provided were reliable, there is no ambiguity in bin Laden's words on the matter. So much, it seems, for Powell's case that Hussein and bin Laden are working together.

And this is where it gets interesting.

An MSNBC.com report on the bin Laden tape carried the following sentence: "At the same time, the message also called on Iraqis to rise up and oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who is a secular leader." This clearly confirms the clarity of mind Osama bin Laden displayed in regard to Saddam Hussein, and conforms to the recorded message heard by millions and millions of people around the world.

Less than twenty minutes after this report appeared on MSNBC, that sentence was deleted from the report. A few intrepid Internet news junkies, including myself, preserved what is called a 'screen-grab' of the original article before it was scrubbed. The version of the article currently in existence has replaced the text above with this far more benign text: "The taped statement reflected Saddam, a secular leader, but made it clear that Saddam was not the immediate target." A similar story line, bereft of the portions describing bin Laden's wish that Hussein be killed, has appeared in virtually every mainstream news media report on the matter.

9:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Christer theocracy looms in shrubco prison program [u]
Most inmates at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility live three to a cell and have no privacy, even when they use the toilet. But if they agree to immerse themselves in Bible study and "the transforming love of Jesus Christ," according to two lawsuits filed yesterday, they are given keys to their cell doors, private bathrooms, free phone calls -- even access to big-screen TVs.

The lawsuits, filed by the Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, challenge the constitutionality of a prison ministry program that President Bush has promoted as a model for his effort to allow religious groups to compete for public funds to provide social services.

Bush helped bring the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, run by evangelist Charles Colson's Virginia-based Prison Fellowship, to the Texas prison system when he was governor. During his presidential campaign, he cited it as the kind of faith-based program he wants to see spread across the country.

8:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Byrd speech (quoted at length in Undernews) will haunt Congress
In only the space of two short years this eckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years.

One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.

But to turn one's frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word.

8:51 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Inspections are an adequate substitute for war, diplomacy is a substitute for war, human relations are a substitute for war, and so I think that there is no case made for war"

Kucinich to announce campaign this week

8:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Despite heavy manners, peaceful antiwar demonstrators around the world make their presence felt

Already old news in most media, I see.

This was the first time I enjoyed watching TV (CNN covered the protests farily well it seemed) since 9/11.

It was a great day, and the beginning of something big.

8:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

REVIEWS

from Sassafrass (9/23/02)
"Unconventional viewpoints at 'charging the canvas'

Opinions that will ruffle feathers, from someone who clearly knows their way around information and the blogosphere."

Blog of the Day
1/18/02

WEEKLY QUOTE

In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed it; that the vast clandestine apparatus we built up to probe our enemies' resources and intentions only served in the end to confuse our own purposes; that the practice of deceiving others for the good of the state led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that the vast army of intelligence personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences to them and us.

-- Malcolm Muggeridge

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

-- Mark Twain

NOT IN OUR NAME
(link to list against Iraq War)

CULTURE LINK

Philip K. Dick

DEEPER NEWS LINK

PR Watch

charging the canvas

The Link Section