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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, October 04, 2003

Sam Smith's history of the Iraq War told entirely in lies verbatim from shrubco comments

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

The American Axis
Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich : review [u]
Max Wallace's ambitious joint biography of American icons Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh retells some well-known stories and provides considerable new evidence of each man's deep anti-Semitism and disturbing relationships with the Third Reich. The book is based in part on new access to the Lindbergh family archives and the recent disclosure by the Ford Motor Co. of more than 90,000 pages of records concerning its Holocaust-era operations in Nazi Germany. Contrary to comfortable myths, Ford and Lindbergh were not "country club" anti-Semites who simply shared the prejudices of their time, Wallace writes in "The American Axis." They were the real thing.

11:36 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sam Smith's history of the Iraq War told entirely in lies verbatim from shrubco comments

11:29 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

On the Yale workers winning their strike [u]

11:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

More disturbing parallels with Roman Empire file

US creeping towards military coup? [u]
The Roman republic, however, failed to adjust to the unintended consequences of its imperialism, leading to a drastic alteration in its form of government. The militarism that inescapably accompanied Rome's imperial projects slowly undermined its constitution as well as the very considerable political and human rights its citizens enjoyed. The American republic, of course, has not yet collapsed; it is just under considerable strain as the imperial presidency -- and its supporting military legions -- undermine Congress and the courts. However, the Roman outcome -- turning over power to an autocracy backed by military force and welcomed by ordinary citizens because it seemed to bring stability -- suggests what might happen in the years after Bush and his neoconservatives are thrown out of office.
The CNN poll I quoted a few weeks ago which showed Americans had more trust in the military than any other institution by far supports this theory, as does a book I just finished reading, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President.

Can you say Wesley Clark?

10:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Underreported stories file

Rappers & Pro Wrestlers get young to register to vote online [u]

10:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Israelis "selling paintings" suspected of spying in Canadian cities [u]

Article in Ottawa Sun deleted mysteriously soon after.

10:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

New book on GM foods

Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating by Jeffrey M Smith [u]
Seeds of Deception also documents the elaborate methods by which industry studies are rigged. With rbGH, for example, researchers injected cows with only one forty-seventh the normal dosage before reporting hormone residues in milk. They heated the milk 120 times longer than standard, to report that pasteurization destroys the hormone. They added cows to their study that were pregnant before treatment, to claim that rbGH didn't impede fertility. Cows that fell sick were dropped from studies altogether. Similarly, nutritional differences between GM and natural soy varieties were omitted from a published paper. Feeding studies diluted GM soy by 10 to 1, and tests on GM corn used 1,250 times the amount of a digestive enzyme recommended by international standards.

10:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Government attacking middle class families for tax revenue due to obsolete law
June and Ron Speltz have been pursued into bankruptcy after they were forced to pay a huge income tax on money they never even made.

"I had an IRS agent tell me, 'I can't believe the federal government is doing this to you. If it were me, I'd be looking for a building to jump off of,'" says June Speltz.

The Speltzs owed the government $210,065 on top of the $53,000 they owed the state.

"How could our tax bill be higher than the president's tax bill?" asks June Speltz. "That just doesn't make sense."

The tax bill was nearly three times their annual income.

10:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Ignored by blood simple bushco Ringwraiths & crypto-Zionists

shrubco task force report and others warned Iraqi oil revenues would come up short last fall, due to infrastructure decay etc.

6:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, October 03, 2003

9th Circuit kaiboshes FBI DNA database

3:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq increase

8:41 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Plug

My brother's open source integration and application server s-integrator (Windows & Linux) is now available

My blogging client, Blog Studio, uses it.

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

Shameless greed file

BigMedia admits peak oil/gas coming much sooner than expected (2010) -- but mainly to claim global warming will therefore not be a problem!

And what if even there's even less than they think/admit?

Also: UN reports world economy in doldrums for immediate future, stresses domestic job creation over global liberalization.

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

Thursday, October 02, 2003

At least they'll be um free, right?

Iraq will be poor 'for years'
Iraq will remain impoverished for years to come because oil will not fund public spending, aid will fall short of what is needed and few companies will want to invest there, a report leaked to Reuters news agency has said.

Even if oil prices are favourable, stability is achieved and debts are largely written off, Iraq's economy will not reach even half the size it was in the 1970s, the US-based Institute of International Finance (IIF) said in a document sent to its members and quoted by Reuters.

4:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Mexican government files reveal at least 360 snipers fired on '68 crowd of pro-democracy protesters in Mexico City

8:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Local News

Scottsdale elementary school principal will probably lose her job for altering student test scores and records.

DoJ investigating Phoenix FBI agents for "set[ting] up private companies and misus[ing] their positions and informants for personal gain."

8:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wired News is up and running

7:28 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Wayne Madsen on the mysterious spike in blackouts worldwide since shrub signed cyberwarfare act authorizing the Pentagon to disable electric grids
Since Bush's directive was signed, the world had witnessed more unexplained massive blackouts in the history of the modern age of electricity. Considering that the Pentagon, through manipulative schemers like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and retired Admiral John Poindexter, has championed such ideas as a stock market betting parlor for future terrorist attacks and an Internet-based personal information surveillance program (both fortunately killed off by Congress), it is not far-fetched to consider the possibility that the recent spate of blackouts around the world are the result of another harebrained operation cooked up by the necons to demonstrate America's superiority in cyber-warfare.

8:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Bolivians not fooled by corporate bandits

Thousands protest privatization of natural gas and other inequities in Bolivia

7:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, September 29, 2003

"Ball of fire" lights up night sky, causes panic in India's Orissa state, shattering windows and leaving meteoric remnants [USW]

8:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Cheney descending into Nixonian delusion as internal DIA study admits much of Iraqi defectors' info "could not be substantiated or was otherwise unusable" [drudge]

8:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Israeli economy eating itself alive, military budget untouched

8:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Study says antacids may aggravate food allergies

8:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Undernews comp on Candidate Clark
We know that the media interest in his candidacy proves the political press is bored with the field as is. We know that the Democratic elite interest in his candidacy proves that many of them - including members of Congress - are apparently underwhelmed by the existing nine candidates and are willing to support someone about whom they know shockingly little. . .

As for the motivations of these (largely) Clinton-Gore types - they all want to beat Bush; they all are totally turned off by Howard Dean personally and by his prospects; they have all lost respect for the rest of the field (because if they can't crush Dean, how could they beat Bush?); and they all (for whatever reasons) failed to find places in the other campaigns. Oh, and most of them are bored in their lawyer, lobbyist, PR jobs, and this Clark thing looks fun to them. . .

So far, Clark has not taken a single position on domestic issues that distinguishes him from the field, and in fact, he appears to be a garden variety liberal on the gamut of party touchstones. There are no distinctive policy positions, third way or otherwise. And for an alleged straight talker, we wouldn't characterize his position on, say, the Bush tax cuts, as particularly straight or crisp. . . [from ABC's "The Note"]

12:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, September 28, 2003

From Undernews Sep 16: a Wisconsin organic farmer on the WTO etc.:
JAMES P. GOODMAN, WISCONSIN ORGANIC FARMER, CANCUN - Just as our industrial agricultural system dictates which crops will be raised and what prices will be paid, it also enslaves not only the farmers of the north, but you the campesinos, the indigenous and the landless of the south. Northern farmers are caught in the trap of buying the GM seeds, the chemicals and the fertilizers that the multi-national corporations force them to accept. We are all prisoners.

Northern farmers accept low crop prices hoping government subsidies will keep them in business, but knowing that all along the profits are intended for the Monsanto's and the Cargill's of the world. Excess production, in the mind of the northern farmer, is the only method of survival.

In reality however, it will eventually be there their downfall. The GM seeds will eventually fail, the government subsidies will eventually end and neither our un-elected government nor the WTO will save us. . . I apologize for the imperial designs our nation seems to have on the world. I apologize for our misguided agricultural policies that threaten to ruin your livelihoods through the dumping of GM grain. I apologize for our governments policy of allowing corporations to turn the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF into tools of corporate domination that are imposed upon your lives.

They hope to divide us, pit farmer against farmer, farmer against consumer, North against South. We will not let this happen. We are winning and they know it. They know they must control us because, ultimately we are right and they are wrong. Money and power will ultimately fail, while our families, our connection to the land and our solidarity will win.

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

Christopher Dickey on Iraq & American pride
Bush knows what a lot of his critics have forgotten: the Iraq war is not just about blood and treasure, or even about democracy or WMD or terror. It's about American pride. And people -- perfectly intelligent people -- have always been willing to sacrifice sweet reason in order to save face, to protect pride. As George Orwell pointed out, they will refuse to see what's right in front of their noses. He called this condition a kind of political schizophrenia, and society can live quite comfortably with it, he said, until "a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Well, that's what's happening right now. It's not only American money and lives that are being lost, it's pride. But people in the United States will try to deny that for as long as they possibly can.

Unfortunately for those of us who live abroad, that's much harder to do -- and that's why the woman at the American University in Paris the other evening was really so angry. When I stopped her in the hall afterward she said she was terribly upset because even though she's lived in France for years, and is married to a Frenchman, the behavior of people here in the last few months has made her bitter.

I know just how she feels. The media talk about anti-Americanism, but what's really noxious right now is an insufferable smugness, a pervasive air of schadenfreude, and I fear it's a symptom of still worse to come from this Iraq adventure. Because the bitterest contradiction of all may be that this war was waged -- first and foremost -- to save face after the humiliation and suffering of September 11. It was meant to inspire awe in the Arab and Muslim world, as former CIA operative Marc Reuel Gerecht and others insisted it should be. And in that it truly has failed. Every day we look weaker. And the worst news of all it that it's not because of what was done to us by our enemies but because of what we've done to ourselves.

9:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

20 unanswered questions on Iraq [u]
No even in recent history has been written about, talked about, or watched and rewatched as much as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - two years ago today.

Not only was it the deadliest terrorist strike inside America, but the hijackings and attacks on New York City's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington were also a seminal event for an information-soaked media age of Internet access and 24- hour news.

So, why after 730 days do we know so little about what really happened that day?

No one knows where the alleged mastermind of the attack is, and none of his accomplices has been convicted of any crime. We're not even sure if the 19 people identified by the U.S. government as the suicide hijackers are really the right guys.

Who put deadly anthrax in the mail? Where were the jet fighters that were supposed to protect America's skies that morning? And what was the role of our supposed allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?

9:35 PM - [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