Saturday, December 14, 2002

With the GOP taking over the Senate again and Dan Burton stepping down, it appears shrubco will dodge any scrutiny, particularly concerning corporate donors

One can sense that the post-9/11 honeymoon with the public is getting long in the tooth though. And who knows what will happen, particularly later next year forward into the election?

What will shrubco do with this long rope?

11:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Just below the radar: drug shortages at hospitals
Pharmacy directors often spend hours each week calling medication distributors to find key drugs, or calling manufacturers directly for ones they now ration to patients needing them most. More time must be devoted to keeping doctors and pharmacists up to date on drug shortages and alternatives, then to training nurses on administration of unfamiliar replacement drugs and their side effects. Nurses, in turn, must explain drug switches to patients and families.

For some drugs, alternatives are not as effective, cause more side effects, are also in short supply or unavailable - or simply don't exist.

Scott Mark, director of pharmacy at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., is particularly worried about the loss of an enzyme drug called Wydase when the only manufacturer stopped production. It's commonly used in hospitals to limit tissue damage when drugs in intravenous lines accidentally leak into surrounding tissue, a problem he estimates occurs twice a week in most hospitals.

"Depending on how quickly it's caught, patients could lose a limb," Mark said. "Now everybody's using very rudimentary treatment, like cold compresses."

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

Mark Crispin Miller on The Bush Dyslexicon and Bush behind the malapropisms
"I did initially intend it to be a funny book. But that was before I had a chance to read through all the transcripts," Miller, an American author and a professor of culture and communication at New York University, said recently in Toronto. "Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss." Miller's judgment, that the president might suffer from a bona fide personality disorder, almost makes one long for the less menacing notion currently making the rounds: that the White House's current occupant is, in fact, simply an idiot.

3:31 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Shallow Throat" on arrogance of shrubco bringing downfall

Maybe this is fictional, but it's on the money anyway.
"As a lifelong Republican, I can't, and won't, join the Democrat party. But I may choose to support the anti-war groups that are opposed not only to the coming war with Iraq but to the imperial tendencies of the Bush Administration. I never thought I'd hear myself say those words, but so far has Bush&Co. moved the government to the outer fringes of morality and foreign policy respectability that I have no choice. And, now that the conglomerates control the major newspapers and TV networks, I will support the last truly free press in America -- the internet -- and work toward trying to establish a more objective media, maybe even founding our own TV network, one beholden to no party or faction."

"What's your gut tell you about our chances of success?" I asked.

"Look, the HardRightists worked like beavers, openly and covertly, for nearly two decades to get where they are. They've finally got all the reins of power in their hands and aren't going to give up easily. In the short run, you're going to get your asses handed to you; in the long run, those guys are gone. The Amerian people may get taken in by fear-mongering and lies for a while, but, in the end, they don't react well to bullies and hypocrites. When the cracks begin to widen more, and they will as Bush&Co keep pushing their extremist domestic and foreign policies, you're going to see the American people turn very quickly against their over-reaching rulers.

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

Texas woman alleges she and her husband were raped by shrub and FBI agents

Stumbled across this on Pravda, then found several links through scoop.

Complaint docs here.

The language is confused at times and it's hard to judge it's validity. But I wanted to post it anyway.

3:08 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrubco discovers the unemployed
After declining to engage on the issue for months, President Bush changed course Saturday and said extending unemployment benefits for laid-off workers is so urgent it should be "a first order of business" for the new Congress.

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

shrubco & the PMA: real rulers of the docks

The longshoremen's life and the PWA lockout
Most people's image of longshoremen is probably refracted through the lens of Cold War Hollywood: On the Waterfront's labor racketeers, the thuggish Reds in I Married a Communist and Big Jim McLain. Those negative images weren't much improved upon over the last half-year when the ILWU was negotiating for a new contract with the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), whose members include shipping lines, stevedoring companies and terminal service outfits. On September 29, after a fruitless three months, the PMA locked out the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's 10,500 West Coast members at 29 ports. The "longies," besides being portrayed by big media as overpaid and lazy, were pilloried as arrogant and woefully behind the times.

On November 23, the ILWU and PMA signed a tentative agreement that must be ratified by the union membership in January. If its members approve the agreement, the ILWU's first 21st-century contract will forever change the union. The question is, into what?

[...]

There was never any doubt that President Bush would invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, which forced open the ports just long enough to prevent a Christmas-season wipeout. The administration, which regards the prerogatives of big business as unassailable droits des seigneurs, had regularly consulted with PMA executives during the talks while threatening to militarize the docks in the name of national security if the ILWU didn't sign a contract. There were also some not very subtle hints that the White House might look into placing the ILWU under the same no-strike status as railway workers, and declare "monopolistic" the ILWU's rule of binding all ports under a single contract.

Public impressions of the lockout were predictably shaped by TV news, which eagerly played the toy card by hammering home the idea that the closure would deprive children of their Christmas presents. By counterposing images of ILWU pickets with those of toy stores, TV news also implied the shutdown was the doing of union Grinches; it wasn't unusual for news readers to erroneously call the lockout a "strike." Dire predictions about the impact of the shutdown on the recovery of the national economy had pegged lockout costs at $1 billion per day, a figure that then miraculously leaped to $2 billion -- only to be considerably knocked down when the lockout's toll was eventually tallied up.

10:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Elites and allies turning coupscrews on Chavez

10:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Could be uh lots of reasons, I guess. . .

Coke will stop posting earnings forecasts

2:41 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

On the highly suspect smallpox vaccination program
Asked last week why public health doctors fear the worst from smallpox vaccination despite politicians' enthusiasm, [Georges C] Benjamin, [executive director of the American Public Health Association] and the former health secretary of Maryland, said:

"The difference can be summed up in a word -- experience."

With millions of Americans now preparing to roll up their sleeves -- some eagerly, others out of duty -- Benjamin's world-weary view will be put to the test.
I see if you have eczema you're exempt, so I'm out anyway.

I have a bad feeling about this, since it is a live virus they're injecting, and it is contagious. So it affects you even if you're not inoculated.

Wake up, people.

Here's a sobering FAQ.

2:30 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I've been wondering why there isn't more outcry about those cruise ship virus outbreaks too

Rappaport thinks they might be some OP to keep people from travelling. Don't know about that, but it could be several things, and it seems awful unlikely there isn't some weirdness going on here.

I just realized these last 3 posts have links to Stratiawire which might not be accessible if you don't sign up for their 30-day (90 days when I joined up a month ago) free trial. Let me know if that's so, I've saved the articles and can email them if anyone wants me too.

2:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Jon Rappaport interviews intel source on reality behind Iraq War

This is just hearsay of course; but it sounds pretty damn close to me
Q: Who is really behind the war on Iraq?

A: A group that at one time would have been called a rogue clique inside the energy cartel. But now that group has assumed much more power. Its aim is to exert more control over Middle East oil.

Q: You are talking about a political restructuring of the Middle East?

A: Yes. A Pax Oil.

Q: Such a plan would be rife with danger. You don?t just move in and make war and take over a hostile region of that size and composition.

A: I?ve pondered that question for a long time. You?re right, of course. But these planners are not conventional ?energy people.? They are more than willing to risk a conflagration in the Middle East.

Q: Because?

A: Chaos is their favorite dish. They see progress toward global management of all resources and people as being too slow. They are very impatient.

Q: They are willing to build their fascism on the ashes?

A: Yes.

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

Some chilling statistics on previous smallpox vaccination programs

I'm sure medical science has come a long way since then.

But you're still not pricking me, lizardboy.

1:46 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Research to create remote-controlled bacteria [Sassafrass]

1:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Claim that shrubco planning school in Costa Rica to replace "the infamous Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC)" (formerly the School of the Americas)

I found these 2 sites, trying to research this: this one looks like the presence of School of the Americas goes back at least a few years there, while this one speaks of "a new international law enforcement academy proposed for San Jos� by U.S. officials."

I'm not sure whether this means what Wokusch claims, but I have no doubt this training goes on elsewhere. The latter article mentions similar academies to the one proposed for Costa Rica in Budapest, Hungary; Bangkok, Thailand; Gaborone, Botswana; and Roswell, N. M.

Like Rumsfeld said about the foreign propaganda office, they'll find a way to do it whether we like it or not.

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

US turns to proxy piracy to establish Iraq pretext

The White House knew weeks ago that the North Korean shipment of missiles was bound for Yemen -- they just misread Yemeni diplomatic signals or were suckered into thinking Yemen wouldn't get in the way of a scam to claim Iraq was the buyer

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

I saw this article the other day on how the United bankruptcy is being used to drastically slice airline workers' pay, and wasn't sure if there were some silver lining to it

Can't remember it now, and having it show up again in the Undernews newsletter moves me to post it.

I still think there's other stuff afoot with this though.

If nothing else, it will radicalize more and more of the "ones who don't matter" if this spreads to other industries.

12:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Write Your Own Bush Speech

I'm not much for Flash sites (esp. having a dialup), but this one where you can write your own Bush speech and hear him speak it is great [u]

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

Friday, December 13, 2002

Uruguayan congressman claims knowledge of US covert ops to overthrow Chavez in the next 72 hours [og]

11:31 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Companies buying forensics software to predict criminal behavior, dig into employees' pasts [og]

11:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wow. I step away form the PC for a few hours and look what happens.

Kissinger resigns from the 9/11 commission, Cardinal Law steps down, and Mary Matalin jumps ship

Too bad Lott groveled impressively, but refused to resign. That would've really made the day.

7:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

If shrubco and the powers-that-be want Lott to resign, who do they want to lead the Senate? Who's the most likely choice?

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

Merc Multinational absorbed

Computer Sciences buys Dyncorp

Have to do some research on CSC.

12:05 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Rural communities and the new ghettoes [u]
Around the country, rural ghettos are unravelling in the same way that inner cities did in the 1960's and 70's, according to the officials and experts who have tried to make sense of a generations-old downward spiral in the countryside. In this view, decades of economic decline have produced a culture of dependency, with empty counties hooked on farm subsidies just as welfare mothers were said to be tied to their monthly checks. And just as in the cities, the hollowed-out economy has led to a frightening rise in crime and drug abuse.

But unlike the cities' troubles, which generated a national debate about causes and solutions, the rural collapse has been largely silent, perhaps because it happened so slowly.

Crime, fueled by a methamphetamine epidemic that has turned fertilizer into a drug lab component and given some sparsely populated counties higher murder rates than New York City, has so strained small-town police budgets that many are begging the federal government for help. The rate of serious crime in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Utah is as much as 50 percent higher than the state of New York, the F.B.I. reported in October.

Towns of 10,000 and 25,000 people are now the most likely places to experience a bank robbery. Drug-related homicides fell by 50 percent in urban areas, but they tripled over the last decade in the countryside.

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

Dr Benway, please report to the Overlizard Underground Command Headquarters for Permanent Terror

Mysterious blasts beneath Cheney D.C. residence to continue for 8 months [Unknown Country]
The Navy says the explosions are part of a construction project that has been going on for several months now, but won't say more because the project is classified.

Navy spokeswoman Cate Mueller described the work as an "infrastructure improvement, a utility upgrade."

She said the Navy has tried to reassure the neighborhood, which includes the Washington residence of former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, that the blasts would not damage their homes.

Mueller said most residents understand that because of national security concerns the Navy can't reveal details or confine the construction to a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule.
I feel so much safer knowing that The Wise Men are In Charge.

What's the Navy doing underground in D.C. anyway?

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

Thursday, December 12, 2002

Hey, you've seen those camoued soldiers shilling for Solo-Flex: military is sexy. So sign up for sniper school today!

If the local police academy isn't interested, you can always sign up for the government's "Be A Mind-Controlled Zombie for Jesus" program. And the girls will love you!

Of course this isn't an endorsement.

Just one pal to another. . .

10:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

What can I say?

A Winnipeg high school student ordered by a judge to write an essay on the evils of drugs -- then go on a public speaking tour -- has stunned justice officials by turning it into a "how-to" guide filled with advice for young users.

The 18-year-old, who was arrested last winter during a highly publicized undercover drug sweep at Kelvin High School, submitted his assignment in court this week.

His 24-page essay includes steps on how to prevent medical problems while taking ecstasy, tips for teens about limiting their drug intake for the best results, and even a plan about how to use drugs safely.

"The message of abstinence does not work and never will work for one simple reason - curiosity. So much is left to the unknown that is sparks this primal urge to know what is not known," he writes in the essay, obtained by the Free Press. [link via Undernews]

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

Multi-linked Chicago Tribune piece on the rise and fall of the Supercar, the 80 mpg car project started during the Clinton Administration [u]
This "Supercar" not only would be a tremendous boon to the environment, reducing pollution and slowing global warming, but it also would cut the nation's reliance on oil imports from the volatile Middle East and inject new life into a stagnating domestic auto industry.

In short, Supercar would make America a cleaner, safer and more prosperous place in which to live. "We do not have the choice to do nothing," Clinton told the crowd.

But nine years after it was born in pomp and splendor, Supercar is dead.

The victim of bureaucratic turf wars, a hostile auto industry and self-serving politicians, the car that was supposed to change everything now stands as a sobering reminder of the forces arrayed against greater fuel efficiency and a cleaner environment.
To be fair, I don't think a majority of Americans gave a fuck anyway. How could someone driving an SUV to work everyday be concerned about these issues?

8:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

US wants extensive dossier on every Canadian crossing the border [Unknown News]

5:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

New nukes, biowar agents research on tap at Livermore/Los Alamos/Sandia [Unknown News]

5:06 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Since '73, Israel has cost Americans $5700 per person, divided by today's population [Unknown News]
Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years.

Adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.

[...]

And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy.

Considering Israel's deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don't pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out.

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

Bouquet of referrals
dyncorp qatar security jobs
malysian music industry
shania twain church of scientology
searing p2p movie files
sharia stoning pics
email contacts of lead companies in panama from 2002 til date
"General Logistics Systems" Customs
precious moment plastic canvas
robot soldiers herald era of cheaper,safe
"use fedex"&"weed"
"The Statesmen" islamic rap group
pic of martin luther king tombstone
balkans+dyncorp+npr
banking canvas strategies
toronto "leather porkpie hat"
+captive+nc+stories+outdoors
disney ariel hari styling set
montreal loan sharks
12-02 iowa drug arrest
cartoon pocket cowry
2002 december name and email contact board of directors in buenos aires
oakland cheerleader and South Africa
susan sarandon feminist bust magazine
remote-anything file transfer problem
toyota rav 4 /spair
does hiphop have an negative affect on african americans
doonesbury drug poodle florida
the effect of rock music on teens today
gambling on Wall Street in the 1940s Force of Evil
reporter bladder pee diapers
tape recording of LBJ buying pants
The SUV search was my first (known) hit from Cyprus. I'm...just..so proud.

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

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

I'm pretty much convinced now that there is no al Qaeda in Israel -- that hasn't been fabricated by Sharon & co [cicentre]

Not that al Qaeda couldn't recruit there. But with Hamas and Hizbollah etc., why would Palestinians go elsewhere?

11:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Back up

We're back up after most of the recent posts evaporated late last night.

*sigh*

9:56 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Ex-Army Intel agent warns against letting the military snoop on citizens [Sassafrass]
This isn't the first time that the military has slipped the bounds of law to spy on civilians. In the late 1960s, it secretly collected personal information on more than a million law-abiding Americans in a misguided effort to quell anti-war demonstrations, predict riots and discredit protesters. I know because in 1970, as a former captain in Army intelligence, I disclosed the existence of that program.

Back then, the Army employed more than 1,500 plainclothes agents, coast to coast, to watch every demonstration of 20 people or more.

The chances that any one of those protests would grow into a riot so large that regular Army troops would be needed to restore order were remote in the extreme, but Army intelligence wasn't taking any chances. Its plainclothes agents infiltrated civil rights protests, misdirected busloads of anti-war demonstrators, set up phony news organizations and engaged in a paranoid effort to prove that communists were stirring up opposition to racial segregation and the war in Vietnam.

2:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"We have to find ways to convey not just propaganda but the richness of this country's culture"

US writers commissioned to write for American culture anthology to promote US overseas [Sassafrass]
The Bush administration has recruited prominent American writers to contribute to a State Department anthology and give readings around the globe in a campaign started after 9/11 to use culture to further American diplomatic interests.

The participants include four Pulitzer Prize winners, Michael Chabon, Robert Olen Butler, David Herbert Donald and Richard Ford; the American poet laureate, Billy Collins; two Arab-Americans, Naomi Shihab Nye and Elmaz Abinader; and Robert Pinsky, Charles Johnson, Bharati Mukherjee and Sven Birkerts. They were all asked to write about what it means to be an American writer.

Although the State Department plans to distribute the 60-page booklet of 15 essays free at American embassies worldwide in the next few weeks, one ountry has already banned the anthology: the United States.
2500 smackers to shill for shrubco. Who could resist?

2:44 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Phthalates connected to infertility, birth defects

I posted about phthalates last summer.

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

Over 33,000 Germans have sent dirty shirts ("the shirt off our backs")
to their PM to protest tax hikes and lower social welfare payments

The gap between Greens and Social Democrats on the Iraq engagement is widening as well.

2:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Resistance to Fed snooplust grows

L.A. scuba shop says no to Feds' request for customer records, subpoena dropped

1:58 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Racial issues also in Venezuelan mix
Perhaps even more significant than the changing attitude of the military and of the US is the fact that the poor are more mobilised now, to such an extent that there is talk of a possible civil war. Until the April coup, the poor had voted for Chavez repeatedly, but his revolutionary programme was directed from above, without much popular participation. After the coup, which revealed that the opposition sought to impose a regime on Pinochet lines, the people realised that they had a government that they needed to defend. The opposition's protest marches have now conjured up a phenomenon that most of the middle and upper classes might have preferred to have left sleeping - the spectre of a class and race war.

Opposition spokesmen complain that Chavez is a leftist who is leading the country to economic chaos, but underlying the fierce hatred is the terror of the country's white elite when faced with the mobilised mass of the population, who are black, Indian and mestizo. Only a racism that dates back five centuries - of the European settlers towards their African slaves and the country's indigenous inhabitants - can adequately explain the degree of hatred aroused. Chavez - who is more black and Indian than white, and makes no secret of his aim to be the president of the poor - is the focus of this racist rage.

10:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Chavez supporters surround the TV stations and airport
As in Eastern Europe 13 years ago, the final defeat of dictatorial power in Venezuela came last night at the doors of its "control rooms" -- the TV stations.

[...]

By early Tuesday morning the masses had every Commercial TV station in the nation surrounded. Their weapons were nonviolent and theatrical: pots, pans, fireworks and thousands of defiant but smiling faces.

Only at one TV installation in one of the outlying provinces - in Maracay State - did the public actually invade the facilities of a station that uses the public airwaves. Everywhere else, including at all the national TV stations in Caracas, immense restraint has been shown by the masses protesting outside of them.

The bluff of the former ruling class and its media -- that their top-down imposed sabotage of the Venezuelan economy and oil industry of the past week is somehow a popular "strike" -- has been called. The "strike leaders," including corrupt oil union boss Carlos Ortega, have, in recent hours, disappeared from public view, abandoning their own supporters among the upper classes.

To make sure the coup plotters don't flee the country, the neighbors of Sim�n Bol�var International Airport near Caracas have surrounded the airport as well.
Narco News is clearly pro-Chavez, but what's happening in Venezuela has some disturbing parallels (along with many differences) with Chile in '72-'73, if what they say has any truth to it. So I highlight their accounts here, since there's been little variation from the "official" version elsewhere.

2:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

If you've done some research into the history of Iraq and the Mid East as we know it today, you've discovered that the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 created the dodgy schematic we have today; Canadian historian Margaret Olwen MacMillan's new book Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World looks like the definitive study of this pivotal process [newsmakingnews]

Interesting asides:
- MacMillan is the great-granddaughter of the British diplomat at Versailles, David Lloyd George. The book apparently refutes the blame laid on the signatories for all that happened later and "debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War."

- there was a joke circulating at the time that the Council of Four (the US, France, Britain and Italy) were preparing a "just and lasting war." Maybe there was more truth to that than they knew?
Consider the murky history of the Rhodes-Milner Roundtable and the 3 "influential think tanks" which it spawned in the 7 years after the Treaty: (1) the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), organized in 1919 in London; (2) the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), organized in 1921 in New York City; and (3) the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), organized in 1925 or the twelve countries holding territory in what today we call the Pacific Rim. Noted scholar Carroll Quigley wrote a definitive history of the Roundtable (The Anglo-American Establishment), which "explains how all the wars from that time were deliberately created to control the economies of all the nations."

Perhaps the Treaty was the beginning of the manipulations that led to WWII and right through to the currently threatening Iraq War?

Maybe Bill Clinton would know.

He mentioned Carroll Quigley as his mentor in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in July 1992. He's a member of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission.

And he's a former Rhodes scholar.

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

Suspicion growing that Israel invented Palestinian "al Qaeda" [og]

12:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

3000 women a year sold into sex slavery in Israel [og]

12:35 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

LDS now 5th largest church in the nation, over 11 million adherents worldwide

Including children, there are now probably as many Mormons in the US as Jews.
In the second half of the 20th century, the provincial faith that was imbedded for so long in the culture of the Great Basin has become a a religious system that is making itself at home in many different cultures, not simply in the United States and Canada, but throughout the world.

This is demonstrated through a phenomenal growth in membership and in the fact that Mormonism is established in virtually every sector of the globe.

12:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, December 09, 2002

Canada opens the door to US military intervention [a]

11:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Anti-war sentiment finally gathering steam in Hollywood [a]

11:51 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

McCollum NI memo detailing plan to instigate a Japanese attack from October 7, 1940 [disinfo]

6:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The shadowy life and sudden death of Ramzi Nohra, who "managed to play a deadly game of cat and mouse in south Lebanon's merciless conflict, tip-toeing a precarious line between Hizbullah and the intelligence services of Lebanon, Syria and Israel...all the time amassing a fortune through drug smuggling [cicentre]

6:00 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

America's Cup team co-owned by Microsoft's Paul Allen is penalized and fined for stealing New Zealand design secrets [cicentre]

5:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Imperial Privilege reprazents

shrub appointee crushes GAO suit demanding Cheney Energy Task Force details [American Samizdat]

US District Judge John Bates -- who "as a Whitewater prosecutor in the mid-1990s...successfully argued in a federal appeals court that White House lawyers' notes of conversations with Hillary Rodham Clinton must be turned over to a federal grand jury," handed down the ruling.

In courtroom arguments in September, Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement of the Justice Department said Congress had other ways to seek the information other than relying on the GAO. Congress could issue subpoenas or seek information through the appropriations process, said Clement.
Congress down, NRDC and Judicial Watch/Sierra Club to go.

In another of his now-famous tossed-off quips that aides have come to love (and fear! ha ha), Grand Wizard Cheney later allowed in private that "he would eat them later," an apparent reference to the film Shadow of the Vampire.

5:26 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Andrei Codrescu on the charisma of fascists
People sometimes confuse "populist" with "fascist," because they were almost the same in the 1930s when Mussolini, Juan Peron, and Huey Long all got their start singing populist tunes. A half-century later, populism is the opportunistic sound of almost every politician, so you need a good ear to spot a fascist. Clever fascists these days sound more populist than ever.

12:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, December 08, 2002

PATRIOT Act abuse begins

The story of Mike Maginnis [u]
After approximately an hour of interrogation, Maginnis was allowed to make a telephone call. Rather than contacting a lawyer, he called the Denver Post and asked for the news desk. This was immediately overheard by the desk sergeant, who hung up the phone and placed Maginnis in a holding cell.

Three hours later, Maginnis was finally released, but with no explanation. He received no copy of an arrest report, and no receipt for his confiscated possessions. He was told that he would probably not get his camera back, as it was being held as evidence.

Maginnis's lawyer contacted the Denver Police Department for an explanation of the day's events, but the police denied ever having Maginnis - or anyone matching his description - in custody. At press time, the Denver PD's Press Information Office did not return telephone messages left by 2600.

10:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Robert Fisk claims al-Qaeda is circumventing surveillance by switching to couriers -- and Pakistani soldiers are tipping them off [u]

10:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The redoubtable xymphora on 9/11 Commission Czar Kissinger's conflicts of interest
Delta Oil is partly owned by the al-Amoudi family of Saudi Arabia (headed by Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi), a family closely related through business interests to the family of Khalid bin Mahfouz, a probable investor in George Bush's company, Harken Energy. It was also supported by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Khalid bin Mahfouz and Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi allegedly have had ties to Islamic charities and companies linked financially to al- Qaeda. So we have Kissinger in the 1990's representing a consortium of Unocal and Delta Oil trying to get U. S. government recognition for the Taliban, who have just been bombed to the stone age in Bush's war on terrorism for 'harboring' al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, with one of the pipeline partners, Delta Oil, having possible connections to George Bush, al-Qaeda, and the King of Saudi Arabia, when the current U. S. position seems to be that funding for al-Qaeda is all the fault of the Saudi Royal Family! You could even make the argument that the Taliban was actually created by the Pakistani ISI at the behest of the CIA in order to create a form of stable government in Afghanistan so the pipeline from Central Asia could go south through Afghanistan rather than through Iran (that is the type of big thinking that Kissinger's clients pay such big money for).

3:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Threat of UK compulsory ID cards meeting resistance

One would hope so.
In July, the government announced a six-month public consultation on proposals to establish a national identity card to confirm entitlement to benefits such as healthcare, welfare, education and public housing.

The ID card is likely to be backed up with a national database of biometric information such as digital photographs, fingerprints and retina scans.

2:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

North Koreans desperately turn to drug smuggling "after losing sources of hard currency funding in Japan and elsewhere" [og]

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

A Taste of His Own Medicine Dept.

Just caught up with the meme: grassroots guerrilla campaign to investigate TIA Czar Poindexter

12:57 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