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Silent Coup: The Removal of a President - Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin (free online version/download here)

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STOP TERRORISM

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

og = J Orlin Grabbe
u = Progressive Review's Undernews
a = Antiwar

amazon wish list

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Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia

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, September 28, 2002

Dick Morris on why polls aren't working [amygdala/me-zine]

Seems to me the body politic is never going to regain what was an increasingly fragile pre-9/11 "equilibrium" (an illusion anyway), and I am skeptical of anything polls are interpreted as saying. Everything you hear and see can be morphed and mutated until spin is the context. Existential angst has become low-to-high-grade existential hysteria, depending on the day. Perhaps it's the beginning of personal responsibility in a new context, one that leads to real change.

It's never a comfortable time.

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

Friday, September 27, 2002

Libertarian "babes" calendar does the Time Warp [u]

11:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Michigan woman admits partiality against police, sentenced to litter duty with convicts [u]

10:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Fine Sam Smith rant on the usefulness of "Intelligence"
This shouldn't really surprise anyone because, "intelligence," despite its name, isn't all that good a way to go about finding things out. At least, that is, the covert sort of intelligence - the part that makes good movies and bad history. There are plenty of well informed people at the CIA, but they tend to rely on available information, working on I. F. Stone's principle that 80% of what a government does wrong it does in the open.

On the other hand, the record of covert intelligence in the post-WWII history of America is fairly dismal. It includes not knowing the Soviets were building an atomic bomb, not predicting the Communist takeover of China or the invasion of South Korea, not understanding even now what really happened in the Kennedy assassination, helping to send Nelson Mandela to prison for 28 years, and grossly miscalculating the Soviet economy during the Cold War.

It is useful as well to remember that not only is Osama Bin Laden still at large after a $35 billion dollar down payment on a war against terrorism, but that the one guerilla who was near certain and proximate mischief - trying to light a bomb in his shoe - was prevented from doing so not by the "intelligence community" but the intelligence of those near him on the plane.

So when one hears the cable clatchers speaking somberly about post-September 11 "intelligence failures" one should bear in mind that they are not really telling you anything new. Intelligence failure is not the exception but the rule. And to pin one's expectations for national security upon intelligence is, to borrow from Dr. Johnson['s] thoughts on second marriages, the triumph of hope over experience.

8:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

When science becomes fiction: shrub makes science heel at the foot of the corporatocracy [oracle.zenic.net]
The Bush administration has begun a broad restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy in areas such as patients' rights and public health, eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices.

In the past few weeks, the Department of Health and Human Services has retired two expert committees before their work was complete. One had recommended that the Food and Drug Administration expand its regulation of the increasingly lucrative genetic testing industry, which has so far been free of such oversight. The other committee, which was rethinking federal protections for human research subjects, had drawn the ire of administration supporters on the religious right, according to government sources.

A third committee, which had been assessing the effects of environmental chemicals on human health, has been told that nearly all of its members will be replaced -- in several instances by people with links to the industries that make those chemicals. One new member is a California scientist who helped defend Pacific Gas and Electric Co. against the real-life Erin Brockovich.
Just like any media outlet that's been "handled" by the CIA should have a disclaimer on the front page, scientists should state their funding sources/political affiliation in their research papers/articles.

It's a given now that any pretext of objectivity is out the window in the press/public discourse. But I think it's only fair that the bias be out in the open, so there's no, you know, confusion.

Same for these brain-numbingly bland-sounding thinktank/"political institutes" that sometimes spout anti-social terrorist agendas poached in doublespeak. . .

4:51 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Private investigators see spike in business post-corporate scandals, 9/11

12:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Celebrity tally for and against Iraq War

For:
Steven Spielberg
Tom Cruise [link]

Against:
Harold Pinter
Barbra Streisand
Brian Eno
Jemma Redgrave
Ken Loach
Catherine McCormack
Jeannette Winterson
Pandit G.
Damon Albarn [link]

Artists' letter agaist US post-9/11 policy from June

Whose signatories you can add to the "against" list, most likely. Among them:

Laurie Anderson
Edward Asner
Russell Banks
Ossie Davis
Mos Def
Casey Kasem
Barbara Kingslover
Grace Paley
Starhawk
Gloria Steinem
Alice Walker
Rabbi Michael Lerner
William Blum

12:21 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, September 26, 2002

Oregon leads 13 states that are considering universal health care this fall

Truth is, a lot of people can't afford health care. For them, the current system isn't providing anything at all. Pretty soon, a lot more people won't be able to afford it.

Something has to change. And a little piece of the War On The World Budget would help considerably.

Oh and there's that little thing about spending over twice what other countries do, and yet the US is rated 37th in the world. What's that about?

5:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Infant morality of DMCA/shrub dividing hacking world into criminals and corporate collaborators [og]
The issue pits two extremes against one another. At one end are the corporate-security experts who wear their metaphorical white hats because they adhere strictly to regulations and tend to believe that software vulnerabilities should be disclosed only to the software maker or a trusted third party. At the other are the black hats who are generally interested only in gaining access and breaking security.

In the middle are the gray hats, who are finding their once-acceptable acts, such as informing the public of company security holes, could now land them in jail.

[...]

"We are reaching a crossroad where decisions have to be made as to which way people are going to go: Are they going to continue to function as a security consultant or go to the dark side?" said Howard Schmidt, vice chairman of the White House's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board.

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

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Despite deep pressure from the business lobby, California enacts legislation requiring "paid time off for workers who want to stay home with a new child or care for a sick relative."
Nearly 13 million of the state's 16 million workers will be eligible for the leave, which allows employees to be away from work for six weeks at about half- salary. The program will be funded entirely by employee payroll deductions averaging $27 a year.

11:45 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

An overview of possible Saddam successors [u]

I remember people talking about this years ago, that all the guys who might take over are at least as bad as he is. Somehow that all got lost in the post-9/11 shuffle I guess.
General Nizar Al-Khazraji

ACCORDING to many human rights groups, he is the field commander who led the 48-hour chemical weapons attack which poisoned and burned 5000 Kurdish civilians in the northern town of Halabja in March 1988. He also, alleges one credible eyewitness who testified in video-taped evidence earlier this year, kicked a little Kurdish child to death after his forces entered a village during the height of the Iraqi repression in 1988.

But, says Ambassador David Mack, a senior official in the US State Department who co-ordinates meetings of Iraqi opposition groups in Washington DC, General Nizar al-Khazraji has 'a good military reputation' and 'the right ingredients' as a future leader in Iraq.
Hey, we hired lots of Nazi war criminals after WWII to fight the Red Menace. Replace "anti-communist" with "pro-American (business)" in the justifications back then and we're singin' the same tune.

11:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

International egghead conference at Oxford confirms Iraq war is just first move in global neo-imperialist strategy by White House
THERE is no way that the US will not go to war with Iraq - with or without an enabling resolution from the UN - and the motives behind the coming attack go far beyond simply toppling President Saddam Hussein or stripping Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction that it may possess.

The impending war has much wider strategic aims such as the cementing of US global supremacy by removing any future threat to America's oil supplies, encircling China, and installing US-friendly 'democratic' regimes across the Middle East.

This is no scenario posited by the over-active imagination of anti-American lobbies, but rather the sober consensus arrived at by eminent academics, historians, economists, global strategists and other experts during an international conference at Oxford University last week.
This merely underlines the basis for shrub's actions in the neo-con strategy papers I've posted about before.

According to the consensus here, the Iraq war would start between November and January. The previous post indicates that this won't be possible even if it's what the White House wants. The situation is in a high flux, I think, and nothing much will be decided til after the election I don't think.

Since my permanent links aren't working yet, here are the relevant external links:

Article on "Defense Planning Guidance for the years 1994-1999" [1992 document by then Defense Secretary Cheney's deputies] Also here and here.

Article on "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" [Position paper for Netanyahu co-written by current members of White House staff in '96]

Timeline of build-up to Afghan War

Article on "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century" [Sep 2000 neo-con white paper]

7:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

US military unprepared for Iraq war til spring? [a]
President George Bush decided to turn to the United Nations after being advised that the U.S. military was unprepared for a war with Iraq.

Related factors included a simulated defeat of U.S. naval forces by Iraq in the Millennium Challenge military exercises last month and an intelligence dispute between the CIA and the DIA.

Western diplomatic sources said Bush's surprise call for the return of UN weapons inspectors stemmed from a recommendation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the United States required up to six more months to prepare for any war against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The sources said U.S. Central Command was preoccupied with the the war in Afghanistan and possessed insufficient assets, logistics, and supplies in countries that neighbor Iraq.

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

Rumors abound that the University of Virginia may close early (and indefinitely) for the holidays because of the drought

They're 88 days from dry reservoirs in the area.

9:58 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

An even more disturbing Mike Ruppert followup to the announcement of the likely potential for mandatory smallpox vaccinations
However, the announcement of the government's ambiguously worded plan for voluntary smallpox inoculations provides more reason to question government motives in its support of the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA). MEHPA has now been passed in 14 states, according to The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). [See FTW's previous reporting on this topic [here]]

MEHPA makes it a criminal offense to refuse a state-ordered vaccination or medical procedure. In some states where it has already become law, refusing a compulsory vaccination is a felony.

[...]

According to the White House's proposal for a Department of Homeland Security, the federal government is also asking for technologies to determine via "non invasive" measures whether or not members of the population have received appropriate vaccinations.
Naturally, one of the states that's approved MEHPA is Arizona.

8:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"How George Bush and John Ashcroft used the Sept. 11 tragedy to shred the Bill of Rights and begin the greatest period of political repression since the McCarthy era. A selective chronology."
Nov. 7, 2001: The CIA comes home The president announces the first formal meeting of the full Homeland Security Council and the creation of a Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, which will deny entry to, locate, detain, prosecute, and deport anyone suspected of terrorist activity. The task force includes the U.S. Department of State, the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Secret Service, the U.S Customs Service, and the intelligence community. This is the first indication of a major new change in national policy: the CIA, which was legally barred from getting involved in domestic cases, will be working closely and sharing information with the FBI and other agencies. The Bush administration has essentially created a domestic secret-police agency. (White House announcement, 11/07/01) [my emphasis]

1:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

An engaging alternative to the whipped-lapdog US media monolith:
cursor [Willamette Week Online]

1:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Classic Tom Tomorrow

1:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Over 1 in 10 Americans live in poverty

1:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Abracadabra
How Dell Twister and Mojave laptops with most parts made overseas end up being "American"

They are "substantially transformed" in the US, see. . .

4:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

me-zine

Also from Sassafrass I learned of this new "blog digest" thingie, which is still in "alpha," but seems to work for me.

You choose from a list of blogs that have signed up and get the latest post or so in one of 9 or less blog boxes -- you set the page to your liking. Or you can switch to a random selection from the list.

Pretty good idea. Loads fast, unlike those meta-browsers that were around (and may still be for all I know) a few years ago and were HUGE.

2:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Muchos Gracias to Sassafrass for the flattering comment yesterday, and the link

Back atcha, pal. You've been on my radar for a while, just didn't put up the link yet.

Taking care of that now.

1:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Rubber-headed post/9/11 cybersecurity plan disintegrates

Not a well-written article. But in any case, perhaps one of the signs that the avalanche of measures that followed the attacks will be honored more in the breach, as they say. (Which I think works in both the current and Shakespeare's original meaning.)

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

Poverty spreading to suburbs, as wage inequality increases

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

Al Martin's theory on why old skool Republicans are against the Iraq invasion:
The reason why Scowcroft and others of the old crusty hard Bushonian right are now turning against a war in Iraq is because, through secret offshore trading accounts, they've gone short oil.

12:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, September 23, 2002

Japanese schoolkids -- who were admired for their good behavior not long ago -- now openly disobey teachers, get into fights and walk out of classrooms

I always thought Japanese schools were kind of spooky, scarily regimented. Cartoons of conformity.

Seems like the pendulum has swung the other way. A quick look at the comix people read over there (well into adulthood) reveals the extravagantly squirmy id running like magma beneath the regimented politeness.

9:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Fighting terror and drugs in one neat little package:
US sliding deeper into Colombian quagmire

But it's OK -- we just have to stop terrorism and drug-taking/selling anywhere in the world, and it'll all be over. . .

4:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

If there's one case of smallpox anywhere in the hemisphere, the White House plans to vaccinate every American -- with a vaccine that can have a range of side effects, including death

I understand the health risk involved, but this creeps me out. Anything Dick Cheney is for makes me wary at the very least. And unlike most Americans who seemed to suddenly find this administration trustworthy and morally beyond reproach after 9/11, I am only more suspicious. And I'm feeling less alone all the time.

4:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

New city-commuting-range vehicle not only runs on air, but cleans it

Something about very cold, very compressed air. Looks like it works.

12:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

2 from Roll Call

Members of Congress who shudder don't want to be perceived as anti-war may offer alternate Iraq resolution.

A Federal ruling accusing noted conservative (and Native American) Senator Nighthorse Ben Campbell (R-CO) of age discrimination goes in his favor This (if upheld) drastically increases lawmaker immunity from lawsuits.

Mimicking shrub's unprecedented assumption of Imperial Insulation and Privilege, Congress wraps itself more deeply in robes of power: Cardinals and Bishops to his Holy See.

8:43 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

googlenews redesign [polizeros]

1:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Libby, a prot�g� of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for the past 30 years, has assembled a "shadow national security council" in the Vice President's Office, which has protected the Israeli agents nest inside the Pentagon and State Department -- and blocked an urgently needed purge of these Likudniks. Libby has his own longstanding deep ties to the Sharon circles, including to the Pollard spy ring.

While out of government, Libby served between 1985-2000 as the personal attorney for fugitive swindler Marc Rich. Rich was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department in 1983 for tax evasion and for trading with the enemy, and he fled the United States, establishing a luxurious hide-away in Zug, Switzerland.

Today, according to Israeli sources, Rich is under investigation, for illegal contributions to Ariel Sharon's last political campaign. He has been involved in Russian Mafia operations in Africa, and, through his Marc Rich Foundation in Israel, has openly financed international operations of the Israeli Mossad. Libby's law partner and mentor, Leonard Garment, was a pivotal player in the Israeli government's damage control effort, following the Pollard arrest in November 1985, and he served as the attorney for Israeli Air Force Col. Aviem Sella, the man who recruited and deployed Jonathan Pollard.
It would be interesting to know how citizens would react if the White House inner circle was laced with people with obvious ties and sympathies towards, say, China. Very different story, perhaps?

This story also may show another -- perhaps better -- reason why shrub whistled past any investigation of Clinton's pardon of Rich.

(As an aside, I have to admit to thinking twice about posting stuff like this, considering some of the people who've been visiting here lately. I get hits from the DoD and so forth every week, as I've noted. And especially since I've been kind of casually looking into the right-wing US/Israeli influence on US foreign policy, I've been feeling kind of ... exposed.

So I noticed someone from the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell visited the site yesterday morning around 6AM their time, and thought it unusual enough to see who they were. Found this well-appointed site and thought, well, these guys are heavy corporate defenders.

Then I was reading Jonathan Vankin's classic survey of conspiracy theories, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes: From JFK to the CIA Terrorist Connection, (of which both editions seem to be out of print and only available used. Looks like this has supplanted it.) to check on what he'd said about Lyndon Larouche. It fell pretty much in line with Icke's reference in The Biggest Secret to disagreeing with some of his conclusions but admiring and quoting his research -- Larouche's Special Reports are expensive but exhaustive and so insightful he's been consulted by the White House and the CIA in the past. Larouche himself seems like a fairly flaky megalomanical dyed-in-the-wool self-taught technocrat with a Puritanical streak -- think Herman Kahn/Jerry Falwell hybrid.

Anyway, I digress. I was scoping the bibliography, and noticed a book (also out of print) on Sullivan and Cromwell, of all people. Looked a little further and Vankin mentions that John Foster Dulles was a partner of the firm when he was signing his letters "Heil Hitler!" back in the 30s and 40s, when S&C were "the" Wall Street law firm. When their clients included IG Farben, one of the German firms most implicated in the Holocaust -- they manufactured Zyklon B, the gas used in the ovens, among other things.

Sooo. These are the guys ("a law unto themselves") that are checking out my very-low-volume website early on a Saturday morning.

So. But I figure, hey, if this bothers me, what's the point of living in a free country, eh?

But just in case my posts stop abruptly . . .

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

Diagram of funding support for left-wing orgs from foundations with strong influence over what can and can't be covered [u]

This is something David Icke stresses: left or right, who's holding the purse-strings?
The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors.
Looks like an interesting site.

12:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, September 22, 2002

Reporters at Guantanamo face most restrictive environment yet -- can't even pee without an escort [u]

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

Air Marshals Wig Out:
Passengers terrorized, former Army Major and military doctor handcuffed and detained [u]
The incident on Delta Flight 442 was scary enough last month: U.S. marshals seized an unruly passenger, then one aimed a pistol at other passengers for a half hour and shouted at them to stay seated.

The event, however, didn't end there. Unknown to most passengers on the Atlanta-to-Philadelphia flight, the marshals upon landing also seized an Indian passenger from first class and silently whisked him away in handcuffs.

Far from being a terror suspect, the second detainee turned out to be a former U.S. Army major and military doctor from Lake Worth, Fla., where he has had a family practice for two decades. Both detainees later were released without charge, and the physician's angry account of his ordeal offers a glimpse at the dark side of America's war on terrorism.

Yesterday, suggesting that the line between security and civil-rights violations is blurring, the physician, Bob Rajcoomar, filed notice in U.S. District Court that he may sue the U.S. government for illegal detention and emotional distress. His wife had been left to wander the Philadelphia airport for three hours during his detention, never told of his whereabouts.

11:38 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Media Mobsters want to make your TV/VCR obsolete -- and TV signals copy-protected -- by 2006
"This bill draft would give an unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucracy the authority to dictate the use of and regulate the devices in a consumer's family room," said Digitalconsumer.org in a statement.

No doubt stimulating even more file-trading.

Illegally watching TV (Who'd a thunk it? TV as act of rebellion) -- creating a new pool of potential incarcerees for the privately-owned prison of the future.

11:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Forget privacy on the road:
Apparently random drug sweeps through motels are common now (?) [u]
"It was a scary thing to wake up to," Boyd-Young recalled. "They asked if they could come in, and I didn't know what to do. They had a big dog in front of me."

She said the officers told her they routinely patrol the hallways of local hotels, with the hotel's permission, and their drug-sniffing canine had shown an interest when they passed by her room.

The cooperative practice is common in suburban hotels, which are sometimes used for illicit youth parties or as venues for drug deals. Charges of possession of controlled substance with intent to deliver resulting from such sweeps are a frequent sight in the Rolling Meadows courthouse, which serves Cook County's Northwest suburbs.

"He said, 'If we find just a joint, we're not going to freak out, and I said, 'Well, if you find a joint, I would freak out,' " she said, noting that no drugs were found. "But then I thought, 'What if people who had stayed there before had left something in the room?' "

Hotel manager Javed Akram acknowledged that such a scenario could happen, since hotel staff don't sweep a room for drugs between guests.

"It's possible," he said. "The best thing to do in a situation like that is to let the police figure out if the person is guilty."

5:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

I'll have a permanent link up today hopefully, but planing lakes, the culture news/links spin-off of this blog is open for viewing

It's going to change a bit before it's just right, and because I'm so busy this week, the links will migrate over time.

11:23 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

What if new aggressive PermaWar policy of US becomes rationale for . . . everyone else to do the same thing

Whoops. Paging Dr shrublove...paging Dr shrublove.

4:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

MIT to begin posting course content Sep 30 -- no charge
There will be no online degrees for sale, however. Instead, it will offer thousands of pages of information, available to anyone around the globe at no cost, as well as hours and hours of streaming video lectures, seminars and experiments.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. MIT wants to start nothing short of a global revolution in education.

"Our hope and aspiration is that by setting an example, other universities will also put their valued materials on the internet and thereby make a truly profound and fundamental impact on learning and education worldwide," said MIT's Professor Dick Yue.

MIT admits that getting OpenCourseWare ready for its internet debut has been a huge challenge.

Staff have spent months clearing up complex copyright issues and designing software tools that will enable hundreds of faculty members to upload their daily lecture notes and video clips directly onto the website.
Heard about this a while back. What a great idea. Especially in the current environment of contraction and fear.

Go MIT!!

4:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

That's one of the great things about living in America: moral superiority is so damned cheap.

-- James Crumley

This country is going so far to the right you won't be able to recognize it.

-- John Mitchell, 1973

Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, or the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it.

-- Sam Smith

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

They tell us it's about race, and we believe them. And they call it a "democracy," and we nod our heads, so pleased with ourselves. We blame the Socias [gangsters], we occasionally sneer at the Paulsons [latest crop of craven pols] but we always vote for the Sterling Mulkerns [good old boys]. And in occasional moments of quasi-lucidity, we wonder why the Mulkerns of this world don't respect us. They don't respect us because we are their molested children. They fuck us morning, noon, and night, but as long as they tuck us in with a kiss, as long as they whisper into our ears, "Daddy loves you, Daddy will take care of you," we close our eyes and go to sleep, trading our bodies, our souls, for the comforting veneers of "civilization" and "security," the false idols of our twentieth century wet dream. And it's our reliance on that dream that the Mulkerns, the Paulsons, the Socias, the Phils, the Heroes of this world depend upon. That's their dark knowledge. That's how they win.

-- Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

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

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

charging the canvas

The Link Section