Saturday, November 23, 2002

Another Latin American leader with popular support but opposition in the ruling classes and, no doubt, shrubco's Evil Eye, is about to take office in Ecuador
[Lucio] Gutierrez, who had a poll lead of at least 9 percentage points over banana billionaire Alvaro Noboa ahead of the runoff election, rejected his rival's claims that he would plunge Ecuador chaos similar to that tearing up Venezuela.

"I admire Chavez's courage, just as I admire the courage of (South American independence hero Simon) Bolivar, as I admire George Washington's courage in fighting for the independence of the United States," he told Reuters as he left his home in the Andean mountain capital Quito to meet electoral observers.

But Gutierrez, 45, said he was pragmatic and a moderate and would bring native Indians and bankers together in a government of consensus very different from the Chavez administration, which has split Venezuela and faces almost daily riots.
He'll soon figure out where the Big Dog Sits, eh?

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

Referral roster
george gray weakest link pic app
"one day overstay"
Hybird Cars + natural gas cars + free questions
2002 morticians email contacts worldwide
"william conway" + murder + rhode island
FWIMC
google pro essay(legalized gambling)
vincent van gogh peasants essay
"The Patriot" by Andrew Wyeth
"hanging wooden signs"
vintage liquor prints
pooh's hunny b's cereal
newspapers rajcoomar november [doj]
"public health" "linkin park" "effect"
rabbi michael lerner + despite everything we can still laugh
eno far-reaching revolution finger
I'm separating out the 2 blogs now, this is just for ctc.

1:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Now this is shocking news

Senate committee claims there's a few loose ends where the Saudis are concerned, re 9/11

*cough cough* Forbidden Truth *cough*

3:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrubco sticks America's face in the exhaust pipe and guns the engine

New pollution exemptions for old power plants take immediate effect, draw lawsuits and calls for Whitman's resignation

Yeah yeah, like the Dems aren't in the energy industry's pocket too.

I see Days of Polarization and Mass Protest ahead, and the further isolation and fortressing of Washington. The 2 party system as we've known it for the last 80 years or so is already over.

Build the bunker high, George. Dick Nixon said he'd be back -- but you're not half as smart, and your Bipolar ReichsKabinet will soon implode.

Then we'll check your hatsize.

3:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

In the Nov 19 Undernews:
-- Fox News chairman Roger Ailes -- the former GOP strategist that er wasn't

-- World Bank/IMF-mandated water privatization in Ghana spreads disease

-- an FBI list of people they wanted to talk to (not necessarily suspects) after 9/11 which was disseminated to the private sector is being used to create blacklists for employment

-- Palestinian malnutrition at par with Congo

-- a moving indictment of warfever by Sam Smith:

A homicidal psychopathy had taken over the capital. Its establishment has turned its collective energy to the mass death of others. There is no real debate on the subject; if you try to speak for the human or challenge the madness, you are described as irrelevant, na�ve, a pacifist, or laughable. Besides, you haven't read the documents.

Of course, Washington's elite always does that to those who challenge its presumptions and paradigms. It never really debates them, it just ignores or dismisses them. Virtue is just another American colony and there are no moral questions anymore. Only strategies and tactics.

The city's establishment is a culture that has been remarkably successful in isolating itself from the reality it is attempting to govern. The abstract, soulless nature of the city protects it from the pain it causes, the suffering it neglects and the concerns it can quantify but not ameliorate. Here statistics substitute for tears, data for anger, and mechanically modulated voices recounting promises never to be fulfilled serve as a placebo for real hope and joy.

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

Friday, November 22, 2002

Librarians get down with the Children's Internet Protection Act

10:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The EPA page to check your area for regulated businesses (that release pollutants), info about your watershed, and the UV forecast (and what it means)

I could swear I got this from Susan's post here or at her blog, though I can't find it now. One of those times Blog Studio closed the iron door, and I had to save the post for later.

Anyway, Susan's neat, check out her blog.

10:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Center for Public Integrity has posted the final chapter of their investigation of the shadowy world of private military companies and their connections with multinationals, Making of a Killing: The Business of War
Amid the military downsizing and increasing number of small conflicts that followed the end of the Cold War, governments turned increasingly to private military companies -- a recently coined euphemism for mercenaries -- to intervene on their behalf in war zones around the globe. Often, these companies work as proxies for national or corporate interests, whose involvement is buried under layers of secrecy. Entrepreneurs selling arms and companies drilling and mining in unstable regions have prolonged the conflicts.

A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has also found that a handful of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East have profited from this war commerce -- a growth industry whose bottom line never takes into account the lives it destroys.
It's 11 chapters but looks essential. There are .pdf links at the bottom of the first page of each installment.

This reminds me of my interest in rogue agents of the Intel community, including Naval Intelligence, and what they do that is off the record, both during their employ and after. That's why I picked up Jim Hougan's Spooks a few weeks ago. But I decided to investigate the Intel community more thoroughly from WWII before jumping forward to the 60s and the 70s, when Hougan's book was originally published.

There's a lot to go through, and tangents along the way. Certainly the Levenda book (see left column) is relevant, since it appears US Intel (and others through them later) learned a lot from Nazi SS experiments and activities in the 30s and 40s (mind control experiments with mescaline and other drugs, for instance).

Did you know the character that Ian Fleming based the "M" character in the Bond books on was a student of Aleister Crowley's?

Strange times in Casablanca, indeed.

9:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Pentagon drops plan to curb Net anonymity
-- for now
A Defense Department agency recently considered--and rejected--a far-reaching plan that would sharply curtail online anonymity by tagging e-mail and Web browsing with unique markers for each Internet user.

The idea involved creating secure areas of the Internet that could be accessed only if a user had such a marker, called eDNA, according to a report in Friday's New York Times.

eDNA grew out of a private brainstorming session that included Tony Tether, president of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the newspaper said, and that would have required at least some Internet users to adopt biometric identifiers such as voice or fingerprints to authenticate themselves.
*sigh*

5:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Identity thieves strike eBay

Read this: these people are sharp.
Con artists often send out scam e-mails that tell recipients someone has tampered with their account or that some unspecified fraud is suspected. The e-mail then tells the recipient to click on a link leading to a site where visitors can enter or change their username and password.

Vexing the issue further is the fact that eBay is sending out its own share of legitimate appeals, urging some people whose accounts have been tampered with to change their passwords. Even savvy users have a hard time telling the difference between scam spam and the real deal.

"They are really getting sophisticated out there," said Ina Steiner, publisher of AuctionBytes.com , a Web site with a pair of auction-focused newsletters. "People that I talk to are experienced Internet and eBay users, and they got fooled."

5:44 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

US households with $75,000 income can't afford health insurance

12:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Free science research site killed by shrubco's Energy Dept
The U.S. Energy Department has shut down a popular Internet site that catalogued government and academic science research, in response to corporate complaints that it competed with similar commercial services.

Department officials said abandoning PubScience, an electronic service that cross-indexed and searched roughly 2 million government reports and academic articles, will save the government $200,000 a year because two equivalent services exist in the private sector.

The decision alarmed researchers in and out of the federal government, who worry that services operated by other federal agencies might be forced to give way to private gatekeepers that would control access to information and research, much of which was created with public money. Government agencies maintain extensive databases and search engines for information on medicine, agriculture, finance and other disciplines.

"What we worry about is what's next," said Charles Hamaker, associate librarian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. PubScience, which began on paper in the late 1940s and went online in 1999, offered one-stop shopping for people looking for literature on energy and science topics.

2:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

xymphora on the likelihood of al Qaeda-Intel collaboration in the 9/11 attacks and detailing an exhaustive rundown on the "sniper rifle"
The general pattern is that the al-Qaeda member finds the useful identity, either he or someone else researches the identity and steals the paperwork, and a mercenary who has some terrorist skill assumes the stolen identity. Thus the hijacking cadre consists of two groups, the original fundamentalist terrorists and the mercenaries (more accurately, I think there were two kinds of fundamentalists: those who lived in the United States and were involved in the early planning or at least the setting up of the operation, and those who arrived very late to assist as the 'muscle' in taking over the airplanes). As time goes on it is becoming apparent that at least part of the mercenary group was associated with the illegal drug trade, exactly the sort of thing that you would expect them to be involved with (the other likely area of involvement is gun smuggling). It has become abundantly clear that U. S. government intelligence agencies have used the drug trade to further their own goals, and the type of mercenaries I am thinking about keep popping up in such areas as the JFK assassination, various attempted attacks on Castro, Iran-Contra, and the CIA involvement in allowing the sale of crack cocaine in the United States.

2:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Update on Wolfowitz's outing of the Yemen drone attack [og]
What is now well established, however, is the fact that Wolfowitz, along with other Israeli-allied Chickenhawks in the Pentagon, have been conducting their own intelligence operations, directed against the Middle East intelligence assessments coming out of the CIA and even the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Wolfowitz's "Chickenhawks intelligence agency" is being run by Doug Feith, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy, in close coordination with the Defense Policy Board, headed by Richard Perle.

One thing that Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith all have in common is that they were all suspected, in the 1980s, of being part of the "X Committee" of Israeli spies, inside the Reagan-Bush Pentagon, who were running the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy operation, in league with Ariel Sharon and "Dirty Rafi" Eytan, the head of Israel's Lekem scientific espionage agency.

Wolfowitz's actions came precisely at the moment that President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell were finalizing an agreement with Russia, France, and China, to secure passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq. For Wolfowitz and the Chickenhawk/Sharonistas in the Bush Administration, this decision signaled a delay, and perhaps, cancellation of the war on Iraq -- for which Wolfowitz et al. had been pressing since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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

The deleted Onion piece on Michael Bay and the Chechen rebels attack in Moscow [og]

2:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Waterborne disease outbreaks are dropping in public water systems, but rising in general, partially because of poor monitoring of private wells

1:28 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Season of Being Disinformed

I sure am tired of these campaigns which stink to high heaven of disinformation on marijuana and paranormal abduction phenomena.

The study on the relation of pot to cancer a week ago made me suspicious -- not that smoking anything with tar etc. in it is exactly good for you -- but this new study relating it to schizophrenia is just bullshit. The clustering of the release of these studies reeks of an agenda.

And -- it's not on the site anymore, but Whitley Strieber mentioned last month on his radio show that his survey on what people think of the intentions of aliens was running 45% benevolent, 19% negative, the rest unsure (and a lot of contactees and abductees visit his site). But these experiences are almost always negative in the media, like in the movie Signs and on The X Files. Taken promises more of the same.

As usual, books and the Net have alternative views that should be explored before making any decisions about these issues.

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

Thursday, November 21, 2002

Eastern European countries supplant US role selling arms to Iraq in the 80s
Iraq's activity in Eastern Europe is natural, Western officials say. There is a long history of weapons sales from that region to Iraq, dating to the days of Communist rule when the region built large weapons industries.

"There is an old boys' network that never died out," said a Western diplomat in Bosnia. "The connections are there and the desire to make weapons deals is there."

Most of the countries alleged to be doing the selling are nominally friendly to the United States.
Just good business, I guess.

The US, of course, would never supply arms to a known tyrant.

...2,3,4

6:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

UFO caught on film over Malaysian city, reported on state-controlled TV

One of many sightings by officials and civilians in the Kota Kinabalu area.

6:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Brit royal fined a "shilling" for her dog's attack on 2 kids; dog stays free
In court, prosecutor Anthony Smith said the dog had chased and jumped at the children as they were cycling in the park with another child and the father of one of the boys.

The 12-year-old suffered a bite on the collarbone and two bites to his left leg, while the seven-year-old had scratches on his right forearm, back and left leg.

Smith said Princess Anne had apologized for her dog's behaviour and had driven the children to hospital.

Canine psychologist Roger Mugford told the court that three-year-old Dotty should not be put down and described her as "an utterly placid, playful dog."

"Utterly placid"?

10:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Never mind the pollution and coastal flooding -- that damned global warming stopped a golf tournament

Time for action.

10:35 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Interesting visitor

Someone from DOJ searched my site for info on Bob Rajcoomar, the ex-Army Major and doctor who was detained at the Philly airport for being of Arab descent and, well, just being there it seems

I'll have to see if I can find out more about what happened with his lawsuit.

10:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Buzzflash interview with William Rivers Pitt on his War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know tract with Scott Ritter
Because the United States of America and the Bush administration in particular are preparing to go to war against a country preemptively, which is something we have never done, that will set a precedent that is incredibly deadly. We have been allowed to live in the fantasy that the entire 20 million civilian population nation of Iraq is in the guise of one man. We will kill tens of thousands of these people. We will lose hundreds or thousands of our own people.

We will destabilize and set aflame the entire Middle East. We will guarantee worse terrorism on our own shores, up to and including the possibility of terrorists getting a hold of Pakistani nuclear weapons, which somehow we're perfectly satisfied with Pakistan having. The downside of this is far greater than the farcical and unproven and incredibly- remote-as-to-be-nonexistent possibility that Saddam Hussein might drop some terrible weapon on us. That's not going to happen. The fact that Saddam Hussein, in the midst of this pitched charge towards war against him, was savvy enough to offer to allow the inspectors back in, means that he is many things, but suicidally stupid is not one of them. He would be signing his own death warrant.
I'm posting amazon link to this and the Ahmed book at the left, even though I haven't read them.

There isn't time.

12:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

F.B.I. Officials Say Some Agents Lack a Focus on Terror

All kinds of questions come up here. Are the brass just passing the buck, knowing that there's going to be a lot of work with little payback in this process? Do the field agents (especially in smaller cities) know there just isn't enough evidence to justify surveillance? Is the bureau's internal bickering and office politics bogging things down?

I think -- as I've alluded to before -- that throwing a huge bureaucracy at terrorism is mostly going to waste huge sums of money. Maybe they think that this Homeland Security boondoggle will probably pre-empt everything they start out to do -- so why bother? What about the agents that tried to cut through the red tape with info that might have helped prevent 9/11 -- and didn't exactly get a slap on the back?

Maybe some agents are wondering if the White House and other higherups don't always want to hear what they have to tell them -- say, about connections with the Saudis and other rich supporters of Islamic terror cells that are being shielded from exposure for who knows what dark reason?

12:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Alaska quake likely first of cluster

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

Can you say "Police State"?

US government will monitor every purchase made by every American citizen
Rear Adm. John Poindexter, former national security adviser to President Reagan, is developing the database under the Total Information Awareness Program. Poindexter was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation. Those convictions were later overturned, but critics note that his is a dubious resume for someone entrusted with so sensitive a task.

Aldridge said Poindexter will only "develop the tool, he will not be exercising the tool." He said Poindexter brought the database idea to the Pentagon and persuaded Aldridge and others to pursue it.

"John has a real passion for this project," Aldridge said.

TIAF's office logo is now one eye scanning the globe. The translation of the Latin motto: knowledge is power. Some say, possibly too much power. "What this is talking about is making us a nation of suspects and I am sorry, the United States citizens should not have to live in fear of their own government and that is exactly what this is going to turn out to be," said Chuck Pena, senior defense policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
Just for the record. I know you've heard about this. Just putting it here for posterity.

Just the fact that someone isn't raising hell about Poindexter being a part of the government is chilling.

9:15 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Narco News on Caracas mayor Alfredo Peña's (and others) failed attempt to use the municipal police force -- and the mythologizing of the local media -- to destabilize the Chavez government

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

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw admits the Brits carry the lion's share of the blame for MidEast troubles
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - After British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw blamed his nation's own imperial past for the troubles of the Middle East, an Omani daily on Saturday urged him not to repeat those errors again in Iraq. . . In an interview published Friday Straw admitted: "A lot of the problems we are having to deal with now, I have to deal with now, are a consequence of our colonial past. "The odd lines for Iraq's borders were drawn by Brits," he said. "The Balfour declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis -- again, an interesting history for us, but not an honorable one," he added. Britain invaded Iraq during World War I, when it was part of the German-allied Ottoman Empire, then administered it under a League of Nations mandate until 1932. The Balfour declaration of 1917, named after then foreign secretary Arthur Balfour, was taken by Zionists as a green light to establish Israel in what was then British-mandate Palestine

9:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

In case you didn't hear -- it isn't grunts on the ground shrubco is worried about getting dragged into international war crimes court -- it's Cowboy George himself
"Our concern goes beyond the possibility that the prosecutor will target for indictment the isolated U.S. soldier. ... Our principal concern is for our country's top civilian and military leaders, those responsible for our defense and foreign policy," Under Secretary of State John Bolton said in a speech released on Friday.

"A fair reading of the treaty (setting up the court) leaves one unable to answer with confidence whether the United States would now be accused of war crimes for legitimate but controversial uses of force to protect world peace," Bolton told the Federalist Society in Washington on Thursday.

"No U.S. presidents or their advisors could be assured that they would be unequivocally safe from politicized charges of criminal liability," he added.

8:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Are you on the list?

Finally found the salon premium article by Dave Lindorff on the "no-fly" and "harass and let fly" lists somewhere else
...a spokesman for the new Transportation Security Administration has acknowledged for the first time that the government has a list of about 1,000 people who are deemed "threats to aviation" and not allowed on airplanes under any circumstances. And in an interview with Salon, the official suggested that Olshansky and other political activists may be on a separate list that subjects them to strict scrutiny but allows them to fly.

"We have a list of about 1,000 people," said David Steigman, the TSA spokesman. The agency was created a year ago by Congress to handle transportation safety during the war on terror. "This list is composed of names that are provided to us by various government organizations like the FBI, CIA and INS . We don't ask how they decide who to list. Each agency decides on its own who is a 'threat to aviation.'"

The agency has no guidelines to determine who gets on the list, Steigman says, and no procedures for getting off the list if someone is wrongfully on it.
If I were on such a list, I'd actually feel good about it in a way. Of course it would suck if I were going to a family funeral, say. And I'd start to feel like Aung San Suu Kyi or a character in a Phil Dick book.

TERROR = SECURITY

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

Just found this in a Paraview newsletter: Charles Crenshaw (one of the MDs who attended JFK after the shooting) published an update of his 1992 book on the medical coverup last fall -- including the details of his defamation suit against JAMA
The book I originally wrote with Jen Hansen and J. Gary Shaw, JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, was published in April, 1992 and was well-received across the nation by the American public. I had broken the "edict of silence" thrust upon us, those who tried to save President John F. Kennedy, and, two days later, his accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. My observations contradicted the "official" version of the assassination, as reported in the Warren Report. I stated that President Kennedy was shot at least once, and I believe twice, from the front, and Oswald could not have been a "lone gunman." I had anticipated criticism from some, but I never expected the vicious attack from my medical colleagues.

In May 1992, the editor and a writer for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) called a press conference in New York to promote a JAMA article which attacked me both personally and professionally. They quoted some of my fellow physicians who had been in the Parkland Emergency room on that tragic day, with statements that varied significantly from the testimony that they had sworn to before the Warren Commission.

I repeatedly asked JAMA for a retraction and correction and received correspondence denying our request. My coauthor Gary Shaw and I were advised to sue JAMA, and on November 22, 1992, exactly 29 years since that fateful day in Dallas, we filed suit for "slander with malice." In October, 1994, we agreed to court-ordered mediation and accepted a monetary settlement offered by JAMA. The litigation details and exposure of JAMA's unethical publication are included in this book in the section written by our attorney, D. Bradley Kizzia.

2:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, November 18, 2002

Oil spill off Spain could cause double the damage of the Exxon Valdez

5:04 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Hello? Is everyone there?"

Secret appeals court overturns other secret court in -- guess what -- a private hearing [drudge]
The appeal hearing was not public, and only the Justice Department's top appellate lawyer, Theodore Olson, presented arguments.

Although the court allowed "friend of the court" briefs to be filed by civil liberties groups and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, since the Justice Department was the only party the ruling can likely not be appealed.

"This is a major Constitutional decision that will affect every American's privacy rights, yet there is no way anyone but the government can automatically appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court," Beeson said.
It's OK -- it's all to preserve freedom and er democracy. . .

5:00 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Damn, there goes that quiet getaway in Kandahar I'd planned for the weekend

4:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

US Intel stretched to breaking point to deal with terrorist threat and Iraq

Retirees and reservists have aready been called up, and foreign intel agencies will be backing the US up, since "'It is easier to help us out with intelligence,' which can be done without public notification, than with troops, a senior official said."

Which calls into question whether throwing more bodies at the terrorist threat will work anyway. And -- of course -- why the Iraq action is happening at all.

1:01 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sometimes you can believe what you hear

Guess I was off-base poo-pooing an al-Qaeda/Chechen connection a few days ago. Realized this while I was reading last week's Time magazine report on the US losing ground in Afghanistan and the casual mention of the Chechens teaching the aQ about remote-controlled mines.

They would be natural allies now that I think about it.

I'll be more careful from now on, weeding out the dis/mis-info.

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

Nothing is true
Everything is permitted

Real-time video manipulation makes all video fiction [og]
What sets the Witt demo apart - way apart - is that the technology used to "virtually delete" the skater can now be applied in real time, live, even as a camera records a scene and instantly broadcasts it to viewers. In the fraction of a second between video frames, any person or object moving in the foreground can be edited out, and objects that aren't there can be edited in and made to look real. "Pixel plasticity," Livingston calls it. The implication for those at the satellite imagery conference was sobering: Pictures from orbit may not necessarily be what the satellite's electronic camera actually recorded.

[...]

The importance of the issue will only intensify as the technology becomes more accessible. What now typically requires an $80,000 box of electronics the size of a small refrigerator should soon be doable with a palm-sized card (and ultimately a single chip) that fits inside a commercial video recorder, according to Winarsky. "This will be available to people in Circuit City," he says.

[...]

Even cool heads like [John] Pike, [an analyst of the intelligence community for the Federation of American Scientists], however, concede that the media's fortress of skepticism has an Achilles heel: the Internet. "The issue is not so much your ability to get fake video on CNN, but to get it online," he says. That's because so much Internet content is unfiltered. "This could play into the phenomenon in the news production process where you would not replicate the original report, but you might report that it was reported," says Pike. And that could cascade into a CNN effect. "These are undoubtedly experiments that will be done," Pike says.

The trouble is, says [Steven] Livingston, [professor of political communication at George Washington University], it may only take a few such experiments to forever make people question the authenticity of video. That could have enormous repercussions for military, intelligence and news operations. An ironic sociological consequence might emerge: a return to heavier reliance on unmediated face-to-face communication.

12:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

US food companies slam biotech firms for mixing GM and non-GM crops

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

Sunday, November 17, 2002

Canadian hunter threatened with up to 10 years for gassing up at border station released on bail [u]
Jalbert interrupted a duck hunting trip on Oct. 11 to do what people in his border community have done for years - fill up his truck with cheaper American gas near the Estcourt Station border crossing. The Gaz Bar gas station sits by a logging road, nearly a mile from the U.S. Customs inspection station. The station's driveway is in Canada, but its pumps are in the United States.

Border agents visiting the gas station saw the shotgun in Jalbert's truck and arrested him for being an armed illegal alien. He was indicted on federal charges that carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The woodsman, who speaks only French, was locked in the Piscataquis County Jail, where family members say he suffered anxiety attacks and depression.

U.S. Attorney Paula Silsby said the agents did what they were supposed to do. Jalbert has a 12-year-old criminal record that would have barred him from entering the country legally, so he could not be released. She said they could not make an exception for him because people customarily used the gas station in the past.

On Thursday, the government ended its opposition to Jalbert's pretrial release, and his father posted $5,000 cash bail. He was driven to Fort Kent by the U.S. Border Patrol, according to his lawyer, Jon Haddow...

According to the bail order written by U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuk, the weapons charge would likely be dropped because of a hunting exemption, and Jalbert faces a jail sentence of no more than six months.
Canadians are furious about this, though most Americans don't even know about it. '"It reinforces the opinion that the U.S. does whatever the hell it wants to do, regardless of the agreements," [Charles] Colgan [a professor of public policy at the University of Southern Maine] said.'

4:38 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

A last-minute addition to a proposal for a Department of Homeland Security would punish malicious computer hackers with life in prison [u]

Rules on spying on people online and on the phone were also eased.

4:28 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

7-time Italian PM and "senator for life" Giulio Andreotti convicted of murder
"Sentences and acquittals follow each other frantically, beyond any logic, in a judicial context beset by partisanship and persistent hatred," [Prime Minister Berlusconi] was quoted as saying by Italian television.

Members of the ruling coalition also condemned the ruling.

"This sentence is the expression of a justice system turned on its head, walking with its head on the ground and its feet up in the air," said Marco Follini, leader of the Christian Democratic Centre - part of Mr Berlusconi's coalition government.
Sounds like they got the right guy.

4:06 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Guide to anonymous activism for government employees available for $10 [u]
According to Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, judicial rollbacks have severely impacted federal whistleblower protections: "Today federal employees no longer have credible protections from being fired or harassed when they blow the whistle." Protections for state employees vary depending on state law.

Ultimately, working through intermediaries may be the best route for some. "The best way for whistleblowers to impact public policy is to get information out to the public while maintaining their anonymity, letting non-governmental actors like nonprofits and journalists serve on the front lines. Government agencies often successfully deflect attention from the policy failures being exposed by attacking the credibility of publicly identified whistleblowers," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight.

10:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A surprising glimpse into media censorship by the US Military [u]
"This article was discussed extensively in recent days with several senior civilian and military Defense Department officials," the Post reported. "At their request, several aspects of the plan are being withheld from publication. Those aspects include the timing of certain military actions, the trigger points for other moves, some of the tactics being contemplated and the units that would execute some of the tactics."

The article went on to reveal that the officials saw a "strategic benefit" to the publication of the information contained in the article. It was meant to suggest to world opinion that the Pentagon was determined to avoid large-scale civilian casualties, while it amassed an overwhelming armed force capable of crushing any Iraqi resistance.

In short, military censors vet the article, and the newspaper unabashedly accepts its role as a conduit for war propaganda.

The only thing that set the Washington Post article apart from those appearing in the New York Times, USA Today and other publications was the frank acknowledgment of the Pentagon's role in crafting the piece. This admission recalled the warning labels affixed to cigarette packages and liquor bottles-"Caution: the article you are reading contains government disinformation that may be hazardous to the truth."

10:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Scott Ritter on Iraq
Ritter contended that it was ridiculous for an uninformed Congress to give President Bush sole power to wage war: "It's like going to a doctor who says you have a brain tumor and that he needs to chop off your head so he can dig it out. You say, 'Wait, that's kind of extreme. May I see the X-rays?' And the doctor says, 'Don't worry about X-rays. Just trust me on this.' "

The students laughed, but Ritter cut them off, saying: "Don't blame Congress or Bush. You are the government. They just represent you. What they are doing is happening in your name."

[...]

Ritter made the case that America is hellbent on war with Iraq no matter what U.N. arms inspectors find if readmitted to that country. Why? We want to control Mideast oil.

"We see the world as one big grocery store," he said. When the United States needs another country's natural resource, he said, we will make friends with oppressive regimes to get it, steal it or take it by force.

Ritter said we obtain copper "by propping up African dictators who send their people into copper mines where they die by the thousands just so our lives can be made more comfortable."

Instead of hunting down terrorists with Predator drones, only to see them replaced by more terrorists, better to ask why and how people become terrorists in the first place, Ritter said.

"The anti-American sentiment is out there, and it's not because people are jealous of us," he said. "People don't like us because we're a bunch of obnoxious, ignorant bullies."

10:28 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

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from Sassafrass (9/23/02)
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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

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(link to list against Iraq War)

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