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READING

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

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

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STOP TERRORISM

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

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

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Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia

Amazon Light

Just consider what current events will sound like two thousand years from now -- the greatest nation on Earth bombing some of the smallest and weakest for no clear reasons, people starving in parts of the world while farmers are paid not to plant crops in others, technophiles sitting at home playing electronic golf rahter than the real thing, and police forces ordered to arrest people who simply desire to ingest a psychoactive weed. People of that era will also likely laugh it all off as fantastic myths...

It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves -- to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity.

This does not have to involve violence. It can be done in small, simple ways, like not financing that new Sport Utility Vehicle, cutting up all but one credit card, not opting for a second mortgage, turning off that TV sitcom for a good book, asking questions and speaking out in church or synagogue, attending school board and city council meetings, voting for the candidate who has the least money, learning about the Fully Informed Jury movement and using it when called -- in general, taking responsibility for one's own actions. Despite the omnipresent advertising for the Lotto -- legalized government gambling -- there is no free lunch. Giving up one's individual power for the hope of comfort and security has proven to lead only to tyranny.

from Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs

* * * *

You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. . .It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

. . . Things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

* * * *

By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, The Louisiana air base had benn placed under siege.

The base's electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.

Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing an federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead the rogue Governor employed proxy guerrillas.

Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana's many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesticides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.

Proles cheerfully grouped in any locale where conventional authority had grown weak. Whenever the net-based proles were not constantly harassed by the authorities, they coalesced and grew ambitious. Though easily scattered by focused crackdowns, they regrouped as swiftly as a horde of gnats. With their reaping machines and bio-breweries, they could live off the land at the very base of the food chain. They had no stake in the established order, and they cherished a canny street-level knowledge of society's infrastructural weaknesses. They made expensive enemies. . .

Louisiana's ecologically blighted areas were ideal for proles. The disaster zones were also impromptu wildlife sanctuaries, since wild animals found chemical fouling much easier to survive than the presence of human beings. After decades of wild subtropical growth, Louisiana's toxic dumps were as impenetrable as Sherwood Forest.

from Distraction by Bruce Sterling

and s-integrator

Saturday, December 28, 2002

Saudis bow to base use during Iraq conflict

Whatever the military advantages, US forces moving into the Muslim Holy Land will surely incite militants.

But that's clearly been part of the shrubco/Saudi plan all along.

11:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Christmas story [Christian Science Monitor]
Let's say you owned a business and, in the spirit of the season, decided to offer $300 cash to passers-by - first come, first served.

How fast do you think it would go?

In Mike Jeffcoat's case, almost 45 minutes. The corporate furnishings consultant taped $1 bills to his front window in Charlotte, N.C., along with a notice: "Please take only what you need. Remember others." Most of those who walked by took nothing. Others helped themselves to a couple of dollars for coffee or bus fare. Two unemployed women split the last $41, one to pay her electric bill, the other for diapers for her child. And somewhere in between a man approached - not to take any money but to offer Jeffcoat $20 more to add to the supply.

6:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Anti-Xmas commercialism gaining adherents worldwide
Some of the challenges are downright peculiar. Last year, on the day after Thanksgiving, Seattle carolers sang their own versions of traditional songs: "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" began, "Slow down you frantic shoppers for there's something we must say." In Japan, "Zen-ta Claus" led a group meditation outside major shopping centers. And in Cairns, Australia, a group wearing black with large bar codes across their chests and plastic chains on their legs shepherded a Corporate Santa, dressed all in logos, and yielding a "consumers whip." Above the entourage towered the campaign slogan: "Stop shopping, start living, buy nothing."

6:17 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The uh Scaled-Back American Dream

Can't afford a home in the Big Apple? Don't worry -- you might win the house lottery

Not that helping people buy a house is a bad thing -- but why did it take til now? And why isn't there more federal aid?

Why can only the rich and craven afford a home in the US now?

6:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Innovative White House tax strategy: give the rich a break, bite the middle class and poor
Economist Bob McIntyre has a sarcastic streak. The director of Citizens for Tax Justice headlines a new study: "White House Reveals Nation's Biggest Problems: The Very Rich Don't Have Enough Money & Workers Don't Pay Enough in Taxes."

Of course, the Bush administration would deny that characterization of its policy. But the arguments put forward by R. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, and Larry Lindsey, the sacked head of the National Economic Council, suggest that at least some White House officials believe the really affluent are taxed too much and that more of the tax burden must be shifted to the middle class and the poor.

"The increasing reliance on taxing higher-income households and targeted social preferences at lower incomes stands in the way of moving to a simpler, flatter tax system," Mr. Hubbard told an American Enterprise Institute conference in Washington.
Keep it up guys. Better keep those "non-lethal weapons" charged up.

6:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

New doc lays out the case against Kissinger
Coolly narrated by Scottish thespian Brian Cox, shot and edited in crisp digital video, and clocking in at a brisk 80 minutes when another 40 would be welcome (and, in some cases, needed), the film lets the details damn its subject in place of obtrusive editorializing. Shots of recently declassified documents often do the "talking" and are intercut with grueling war footage of blasted and burned bodies--often children--and interviews with practiced Kissinger hunters such as journalist Seymour Hersh and legal scholar Michael Tigar. Even more illuminating are interviews with former Kissinger cronies such as Alexander Haig, who comes off as a cackling member of the ethically unencumbered living dead. (Notable Haig quote regarding Hitchens: "He sucks the sewer pipe.")
Not for casual viewing, and probably only to be seen by the chorus, but important nonetheless.

And I have to mention again -- having listened to it now -- Caroline Casey's hour-long interview with Daniel Sheehan (Christic Institute) on the background for 9/11, while it's still available (it's from November '01). Interesting focus on Ted Shackley, CIA Angel of Death who just passed away, and Samuel P Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Essential.

Aside: Shackley attended the Shrine of the Little Flower church founded by Father Charles Coughlin.

12:56 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Holiday week referrals
flood waters push caskets from cemetery
Antidepressant drugs and neo-liberalism
mormons who hate randy bachman
blog flop-house
"frank serpico" toothbrush
Immunological Reviews and username and password
"doing time" securities book
sucking angelina jolie's toes
bloody noses and scuba diving
articles on branding of canvas fabrics
ex-prostitutes sell damaging evidence
laughing gas fetish videos
wallace shawn using a whip
sexual acts in forests pics
"swarm" and "enterprise management"
hateful israelis arrogant american visitors
eccentric british spanking stories
whitney houston parody images
fan fiction sneeze cold
young american farmers pics
paranoia rpg "name list"
A wall cloud in Haskell OK in the 1980s
My sister site planing lakes gets far fewer -- and much less interesting -- referrals. It's a year younger, and I post there less, of course.

1:51 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, December 27, 2002

US blocks resolution condemning Israel for killing UN officials [u]

2:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Jewish Professors Keep Divestment Drive Alive [u]
The national movement to pressure universities to pull their investments from Israel has been battered this year by critics who call it divisive and anti-Semitic.

But it has shown remarkable staying power in large part because of an unusual group of supporters: Jewish professors.

Hundreds of college professors nationwide have signed petitions calling for divestment from Israel, among them several dozen Jewish professors who call their signatures an act of political conscience.

[...]

Modeled on an anti-apartheid campaign that led campuses to divest from South Africa in the 1980s, the petition criticizes Israel's actions in the occupied territories and calls on universities to sell any investments in Israel, and in companies that do business there. It has circulated at more than 50 campuses, including Harvard, MIT, Yale, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Although most university presidents have repudiated or rejected its demands, the petition has had a powerful impact on campus. It has become a flashpoint for arguments among students - particularly Jews and Muslims - and triggered a far more popular counter-petition supporting Israel.

Since they signed, Spelke and other Jewish professors have been bombarded with e-mail and letters accusing them of betraying fellow Jews and Israel, of self-loathing and anti-Semitism, and - most disturbing to some - of giving comfort to suicide bombers in Israel. Most prominently, Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers has publicly suggested that the divestment movement has anti-Semitic overtones.

2:12 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

What 4th Amendment?

Illinois community police gestapo into people's homes on bogus "building inspection" pretext [u]
Invite friends over, babysit your grandchildren or allow relatives to spend the night in Belleville and you risk an armed police officer turning up at your door to search your home and give you a ticket.

Enforcement teams consisting of a housing inspector and a police officer do not obtain search warrants before showing up to check for occupancy code violations, a Belleville News-Democrat investigation found.

Most residents give their permission to come in, although reluctantly, and those who don't usually are charged. Sometimes they simply walk in.

Jim Reese said he was standing in his kitchen when he heard a noise at 7 a.m. and found a housing inspector and police officer standing in his living room.

"I wanted to know who walked in without permission," he said. "They didn't answer me. They just started walking through the place."

1:57 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Good evening, Doctor

The new Senate leader's family founded the Columbia HCA hospital chain -- "one the largest corporate payers of federal criminal and civil penalties in American history." He also got a little carried away with the old medical experiments on animals as a med student. Finally, he may have been the "anonymous" Senator responsible for "the mysterious insertion of a provision in the Homeland Security Bill that would protect Eli Lilly from lawsuits over a preservative in vaccines."

Thank you Dr Benway.

NOTE:I'm kind of taking it easy this week, more because I'm tired than the holidays, which I don't have much to do with. This is a time for introspection and lying low for me. It seems to be my body's natural cycle.

1:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, December 26, 2002

Pat Roberts, a vocal opponent of the Congressional investigation into Intel lapses and 9/11 will become the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, replacing Richard Shelby, an outspoken critic of those lapses [FAS]

And David Rockefeller will replace Bob Graham.

Now we'll get the truth -- in 50 years. . .

2:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

William M Arkin on the Pentagon's new "D5E" propaganda broadside [FAS]

That's "destruction, degradation, denial, disruption, deceit, and exploitation."
The potential for mischief is magnified by the fact that so much of what the U.S. military does these days falls into the category of covert operations. Americans are now operating out of secret bases in places like Uzbekistan and the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq; Special Forces units are said to be inside western Iraq as well. In the meantime, the armed forces are making use of facilities in the Arab states along the Persian Gulf.

In all these cases and more, the U.S. and other western news media depend on the military for information. Since reporters cannot travel into parts of Iraq and other places in the region without military escort, what they report is generally what they've been told.

And when the information that military officers provide to the public is part of a process that generates propaganda and places a high value on deceit, deception and denial, then truth is indeed likely to be high on the casualty list.

2:46 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Looks like it's fairly easy to get historical documents -- intel and otherwise -- from the Public Record Office in Britain, though you have to pay for them [FAS]

The first link is to a summary page of a recent large release of documents, including files on Ezra Pound and Kim Philby's father.

2:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Egyptian "shadow courts" cast embarrassing pall over supposedly democratic state
During his 20-year fight against Islamists and the odd campaigner for election reform, President Hosni Mubarak has been augmenting a powerful network of special courts and emergency laws instituted by predecessors Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar Sadat, and has relied on them heavily to do his political bidding.
Though "Egypt's standard courts have not shied away from opinions that could embarrass the executive office or other power centers," it's easy to see this system perpetuating civil rights abuses.

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

A retreat center for traumatized Israeli soldiers (and others)

Interesting aside that so many soldiers are defecting from the Israeli miltary that the IDF has stopped going after them -- the jails are full.

1:37 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, December 25, 2002

Harpo was a spook [cicentre]
The 165cm-tall comedian was inducted into the dark corridors of espionage in the winter of 1933 when - after the commercial failure of the slapstick comedy Duck Soup - the brothers agreed temporarily to go their separate ways. Joseph Stalin, who was a fan, authorised a six-week tour of the Soviet Union for Harpo, a skilled harpist and mime who played with comedians across the country.

At the end of the tour, Harpo told his family, he was asked by the US ambassador in Moscow to take home some "diplomatic mail", which he was instructed to conceal in his socks. The nature of the documents remains classified.

10:29 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

David Shayler released from prison after serving 7 weeks out of a six month sentence [cicentre]

Wanna know why you didn't hear about it? Don't know who he is?

Check out The Memory Hole's archive of Shayler's disappearing website.

10:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

California Town for Sale on eBay
There's not a whole lot of town left in Bridgeville, and what there is is a bit of a fixer-upper. Opinion varies on whether the successful bidder would be getting a money pit or a gold mine.

Behind Northern California's Redwood Curtain and about 260 miles north of San Francisco, the area is rich in scenery. There's a particularly nice spot on the old bridge, now closed to traffic, that's perfect for elbow-resting and nature-contemplating.

On the other hand, the backhoe ? there's a tractor, too ? is not just for show. There's work to be done on the plumbing, and the county has deemed some of the houses uninhabitable.

2:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thomas Maier's ICIJ-award winning Newsday series on "the extent of health and safety abuses suffered by immigrants in American workplaces and ... the immigrants' often fatal quest for a better life."
Relying on government documents, court records and extensive interviews in the United States and El Salvador, Maier's investigation showed that in every U.S. state where immigrants flocked during the economic boom of the 1990s, foreign-born workers were more likely to die in the workplace than native-born workers.

"This is investigative journalism in its best sense -- a series spotlighting a topic that had not even been noticed, during a year when most people (including the media) were focusing on immigrants as potential threats, not potential victims of the great U.S. economy," the ICIJ award judges said in selecting Maier as the winner of the $20,000 first-place prize.
The other finalists.

2:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Hadn't heard about FEMA director and longtime shrubco crony Joe Allbaugh resigning last week, with all the Lott hoohah [og]

The article mentions without links the "Funeralgate" scandal which Salon did a piece on back in '99. Seems both Allbaugh and Bush have connections with those gruesome funeral home discoveries in Georgia and Florida a while back. Service Corporation International (SCI) -- "the world's largest cemetary company" -- has a checkered history, which the Prison Planet link at the top outlines briefly. There was a suit in Texas involving Bush and SCI in an influence-peddling scandal. Couldn't find anything recent about it though.

Nothing is concluded about the Allbaugh resignation, though you can see why he'd want to be out of the limelight. But Newsday says shrubco is gearing up for the '04 campaign, and that's why a "growing cadre" of his cronies are leaving their positions in the administration.

2:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, December 24, 2002

"No government can go about sucking blood of its own people"

Vampire rumors in Malawi threaten harvest, 3 unfamiliar Catholic priests beaten, President denies "claims that his government was colluding with international aid agencies to supply them with human blood in exchange for food aid"

Love that quote.

1:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, December 23, 2002

I've been invited to join Unknown News's "Reliable Alternatives" webring, which I have, as you can see at the bottom of this page

The links may not be up yet, I just registered.

I don't usually go for webrings, but this seems like a good idea. I'm sure the other sites in the ring are worthy of your attention (or a least a visit) if you're a return visitor here.

6:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

New pop-up menace: move your cursor over the ad and it clicks you through to another page

I take it if your browser or whatever suppresses them, it won't happen.

4:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

River Seine threatens Paris [drudge]

2:05 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, December 22, 2002

Afghan women not really much better off than under the Taliban [u]
"Many people outside the country believe that Afghan women and girls have had their rights restored. It's just not true," said Zama Coursen-Neff, the co-author of the report and counsel to the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. "Women and girls are still being abused, harassed, and threatened all over Afghanistan, often by government troops and officials."

Human Rights Watch found that women's and girls' rights in Herat had improved since the fall of the Taliban, noting that many women and girls have been allowed to return to school and university, and to some jobs. But the report found that these advances were tempered by growing government repression of social and political life. Ismail Khan has censored women's groups, intimidated outspoken women leaders, and sidelined women from his administration in Herat. Restrictions on the right to work mean that many women will never be able to use their education.

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

FBI trying to discredit and infiltrate growing US antiwar movement [u]
According to the advisory, the week of December 15-21 has been set aside as a "week of action against warmongering." An Internet posting by a group calling itself "Every Day a Circle Day" has "called for attacks on the headquarter facilities and other assets of oil companies and defense contractors, singling out Boeing and Lockheed Martin," claims the FBI e-mail. It also points out that "Department of Defense (DoD) assets also represent potential targets for attack."

Other possible targets, says the e-mail, could include "major media companies by 'sanitizing' newspaper vending machines, jamming or hijacking radio and television signals, or attacking broadcast towers and damaging equipment."

Does the FBI know more about upcoming activities of the antiwar movement than the antiwar movement itself? Or is its recent communiqu� a blatant attempt to scare the public, smear the antiwar movement and discourage antiwar protests?

Jason Mark, the Communication's Director at Global Exchange, the Bay Area-based international human rights group, said neither he nor his colleagues had heard of Every Day a Circle Day. He did, however, think that the timing of the ANSIR advisory was suspicious.

10:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

More on the US "editing" of the Iraq dossier [u]
"From about 1975 onwards, these companies are shown to have supplied entire complexes, building elements, basic materials and technical know-how for Saddam Hussein's programme to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction," the newspaper said. "They also supplied rockets and complete conventional weapons systems," it added.

The five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, Russia, France and China -- have repeatedly opposed revealing the extent of foreign companies' involvement, although a mass of relevant information was collected by UN weapons inspectors who visited the country between 1991 and 1998. The UN claims that publishing the extent of the companies' involvement in Iraq would jeopardise necessary co-operation with such firms.

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

Nice dissection of domestic White House propaganda masquerading as a news article in the Washington Post [u]
Paragraph eight says: "Even authorised spokesmen, with one exception, addressed the report on the condition of anonymity. They said the principal source on the chemical transfer was uncorroborated, and that indications it involved a nerve agent were open to interpretation."

In paragraph 12, we are told that the report may be connected to a warning message circulated to American forces overseas and an unnamed official is cited as saying that the message resulted only from an analyst's hypothetical concern.

As one would expect from the Washington Post, the story is carefully written and meticulously researched. But it's basically worthless.

The reporter had clearly spoken to a lot of different people but he failed - not for want of effort - to substantiate the claim that Iraq provided al-Qaida with nerve gas. Although some officials were happy to describe the claim as "credible", none appeared willing to stand up and say that they, personally, believed it.

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

New video billboards adjust ad to your radio station demographic as you ride by [drudge]

The article says it's like "something out of Minority Report," though Spielberg was kind of late on that tip, wasn't he?

1:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

US deleted 8000 pages from 11,800 page Iraqi dossier [a]
Although Powell called the Iraqi dossier a "catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions", the non-permanent members of the security council will have no way of testing the US claims for themselves. This will be crucial if the US and the UK go back to the security council seeking explicit authorisation for war on Iraq if breaches of resolution 1441 are confirmed when the weapons inspectors -- this weekend investigating 10 sites in Iraq, including an oil refinery south of Baghdad -- deliver their report to the UN next month.

A UN source in New York said: "The questions being asked are valid. What did the US take out? And if weapons inspectors are supposed to be checking against the dossier's content, how can any future claim be verified. In effect the US is saying trust us, and there are many who just will not."
Why else would they grab it before anyone else (claiming they could "photocopy" it faster)? Is anyone buying this bizarre behavior?

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

Well. Good for Time Magazine
These women were for the 12 months just ending what New York City fire fighters were in 2001: heroes at the scene, anointed by circumstance. They were people who did right just by doing their jobs rightly -- which means ferociously, with eyes open and with the bravery the rest of us always hope we have and may never know if we do. Their lives may not have been at stake, but Watkins, Rowley and Cooper put pretty much everything else on the line. Their jobs, their health, their privacy, their sanity -- they risked all of them to bring us badly needed word of trouble inside crucial institutions. Democratic capitalism requires that people trust in the integrity of public and private institutions alike. As whistle-blowers, these three became fail-safe systems that did not fail. For believing -- really believing -- that the truth is one thing that must not be moved off the books, and for stepping in to make sure that it wasn't, they have been chosen by TIME as its Persons of the Year for 2002.
Hear hear.

9:09 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

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