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Archives
It's a birthday!
 I started this blog 2 years ago with the following post: Thursday, August 10, 2000
10:16 PM What a long strange trip it's been.
Empty Calories It's Like a Movie, but It's Not Critics usually focuses on the thin plots, the lame jokes, the lack of characterization and the bombast of special effects. As they see it, many films now use an aesthetic sleight-of-hand that substitutes volume, speed, size and other neurological overloads for the more traditional satisfactions of entertainment, allowing viewers to expend a minimal amount of emotional energy. These are faux movies, and are about the only kind most teenagers respond to. They are also Exhibit A of a larger phenomenon: the illusion of entertainment. [read more] thanks to consumptive.org
Astronomy Summer shower on tap, from space The most viewer friendly meteor show in the Northern Hemisphere is quickening its pace, peaking next week in its display of colorful light streaks. [read more] thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!
Best times will be after evening moonsets on the nights of August 11-12 and August 12-13. Enjoy.
Corporate logos gone bad thanks to reenhead.com
The Renewed Israeli Occupation In the West, however, there's been such repetitious and unedifying attention paid to Palestinian suicide bombing that a gross distortion in reality has completely obscured what is much worse: the official Israeli, and perhaps the uniquely Sharonian evil that has been visited so deliberately and so methodically on the Palestinian people. Suicide bombing is reprehensible but it is a direct and, in my opinion, a consciously programmed result of years of abuse, powerlessness and despair. It has as little to do with the Arab or Muslim supposed propensity for violence as the man in the moon. Sharon wants terrorism, not peace, and he does everything in his power to create the conditions for it. But for all its horror, Palestinian violence, the response of a desperate and horribly oppressed people, has been stripped of its context and the terrible suffering from which it arises: a failure to see that is a failure in humanity, which doesn't make it any less terrible but at least situates it in a real history and real geography. [read more] thanks to also not found in nature ---------- Lest you think peaceful demonstrations are the answer... Peaceful demonstrators to be deported Today’s march in Huwwara was a peaceful civilian protest against siege, curfew, occupation and terror. Signs held by Palestinian children read, “Occupation is the worst kind of terror” and “Give us Freedom, We will bring the food and medicine.” Unarmed civilians, old and young were gassed, shot at, beaten and arrested by Israeli soldiers and police for protesting collective punishment and other grave violations of international law being committed by the Israeli military and government. Unfortunately, Palestinians, who often try to protest alone and otherwise attempt to make their voices heard, are met with brutal, sometimes lethal violence, and international silence. The Israelis are not held accountable to anyone for the life and well-being of the Palestinian people – a people living under Israeli military and civilian occupation. Today, dozens of foreign civilians joined hands and voices with Palestinians to call for a lifting of siege and curfew and an end to the occupation. The Israeli military and police viciously attacked the peaceful demonstrators and the Israeli government is now deporting these international voices of freedom and conscience. Why? [read more] The Israeli Border Police and Army violently attacked a group of approximately 700 Arab and Jewish demonstrators who were attempting to enter Bethlehem from Jerusalem for a cooperative Palestinian and Israeli demonstration against the occupation outside of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem. The demonstration was organized by the joint Arab/Jewish organization Ta'ayush. [read more]
Life You can search all LIFE covers from 1936 to 1972, the years when LIFE was published as a weekly magazine.
 This was the Life cover on my birthday — August 24, 1944.
Cancer Sticks Hollywood's Responsibility for Smoking Deaths A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old. (I was 12 when I started to smoke, a geeky immigrant kid who wanted so very much to be cool.) The gun will go off when that kid is an adult. We in Hollywood know the gun will go off, yet we hide behind a smoke screen of phrases like "creative freedom" and "artistic expression." Those lofty words are lies designed, at best, to obscure laziness. I know. I have told those lies. The truth is that there are 1,000 better and more original ways to reveal a character's personality. [read more]
Architecture Some people just get carried away with things, which is great for us.
 The scale model of Rome is a plaster model of about 70 square metres (11m*6m). Its scale being 1/400, the model represents 3/5 of the city as it was when Constantine was its Emperor, at the beginning of the fourth century. Its creator, architect Paul Bigot (born in Orbec,1870-died in Paris,1942) was awarded the Grand Prize of Rome in 1900 and he devoted most of his life to this reconstruction of Rome. [read more] thanks to plep
Water, Water Everywhere No Need to Guzzle All That Water, Expert Says Newspaper articles, health and beauty magazines all advise drinking at least 8 full glasses of water a day totaling 64 ounces for optimal health -- an approach called "8x8" by proponents. But Dr. Heinz Valtin of Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire said there is no scientific evidence to back up this advice, which has helped create a huge market for bottled water. "After 10 months of careful searching I have found no scientific evidence that supports '8x8'," Valtin, who has written textbooks on the subject of human water balance, said in a telephone interview. [read more] thanks to MetaFilter
Music Zappa Fest Descends on German Town Living in communist East Germany, Wolfhard Kutz used all kinds of schemes to smuggle in his beloved Frank Zappa records: secretive rendezvous with West Germans at highway rest stops. Hidden compartments in his car doors. Accomplices who sneaked albums across borders. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Kutz could pursue his passion openly, and created a fan club: the Arf Society, a reference to Zappa's Barking Pumpkin record label. Thanks to the group, the little town of Bad Doberan, in an economically depressed area near the Baltic Sea, has become the unlikely site of an annual Zappa festival. This week, the town also dedicated a bronze bust of the late American musician in its central square. [read more] ---------- Lawmakers ask Ashcroft to target online song swappers U.S. lawmakers have asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to go after Internet users who download unauthorized songs and other copyrighted material, raising the possibility of jail time for digital-music fans. [read more]
War Against Some Terrorists Before war with Iraq, consider this Before this nation invests trillions of dollars and spills the blood of innocents over war with Iraq, Congress and the American people should consider the following. The first Bush administration lied to and manipulated Congress, the American public and the Arab peoples in order to win support for the Gulf war. Dick Cheney was then George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, and Paul Wolfitz was a Defense Department aide. [read more] thanks to BookNotes ---------- thanks to BookNotes
OBEY
 Obey Giant: The Mandate That Grabbed a Generation
Graphic artist Shepard Fairey -- chatting on a cell phone as he readies to tell a New York advertising firm just how it's done -- is the poster boy of a new American irony, a mixture of sincerity and cynicism that leaves question marks in the eyes of many and a wad of cash in the pockets of a few.
No, really. He is the poster boy. Since 1989 he and countless followers have illegally pasted his propaganda-style artwork across much of our urban landscape: on billboards and buildings in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
Jerry, man!
 thanks to wood s lot for the reminder
Space Pics Really cool satellite images.
 [read more]
Welfare 'Barn Door' Opens to Expose the Failure of Welfare Reform
Dumbshits Pistol fires accidentally at reception for Georgia's Rep. Bob Barr; no one injured "Nobody was in any danger. We were handling it safely, except that it was loaded," said Widener, an independent lobbyist. "I am thankful Bob was careful to always keep the weapon pointed in a safe direction." [read more]
Geometry Applying mathematics to Escher's Print Gallery
 This project aims to visualize the mathematical structure behind Escher's Print Gallery. This mathematical structure answers some questions about Escher's picture, such as: "what's in the blurry white hole in the middle?" By a five step process a wide variety of different pictures have been made, such as a straight picture, and a picture twisting the other way. [read more]
Hiroshima and Nagasaki 57 years ago...
'One hell of a big bang' thanks to MetaFilter ----------
Nagasaki Journey
 [read more] thanks to Spitting Image ---------- August 9.1945 It was to be a day of carnage and horror that, one can only hope, will be remembered for all eternity. [read more] thanks to Spitting Image
Civil War
'It's Fantastic': Monitor's Gun Turret Recovered After nearly 140 years of resting on the ocean bottom off North Carolina, the massive gun turret of the Monitor—the first modern warship—was brought to the surface Monday evening along with its two large Dahlgren cannons. [read more]
Globilization
Despair in Once-Proud Argentina Word spread fast through the vast urban slums ringing Rosario. There was food on the freeway -- and it was still alive. [read more] thanks to MetaFilter
Lighter than air
 Over Lakehurst, New Jersey, the sky was unsettled on the afternoon of September 2, 1925. At times it was almost clear; then ominous clouds would scud across the field of the Naval Air Station and disappear as quickly as they had come. The airship Shenandoah, nose to her high mooring mast, was floating gracefully with the variable breezes. Her twenty gas bags were about 91% full; her tanks loaded with 9,075 pounds of water and 16, 620 pounds of gasoline. Sailors were riding up the elevator to the top of the mast. The 682-foot ship- her Indian name meant "Daughter of the Stars"- was almost ready for her fifty-eighth flight, a tour of Midwest state fairs. Everybody wanted to see the flying battleship. [read more]
Wall Street & White House Crooks The combination of the back-from-the-dead passage of the Sarbanes- Oxley corporate responsibility bill and the broadcast-ready perp walks of Adelphia's John Rigas and WorldCom's Scott Sullivan may give the public the sense that corporate reform is a done deal. But nothing could be further from the truth. [read more] ---------- Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty- Four," was a rewrite man. His job was to destroy documents that could undermine the government's pretense of infallibility, and replace them with altered versions. Lately, Winston Smith has gone to Washington. I'm sure that lots of history is being falsified as you read this — there are several three-letter agencies I don't trust at all — but two cases involving the federal budget caught my eye. [read more] ---------- Yesterday's New York Daily News reported that Harken Energy Corporation--President Bush's now-infamous oil firm -- set up an offshore subsidiary in the Cayman Islands to minimize its taxes. Was this illegal? No. Was this immoral? Some say "no," but many say "yes." And, unfortunately for Bush, Republicans have been among those saying "yes." [read more] ---------- Think Like a Bush: Lie Coordination Bureau Needed As of July 31, the markets have been down for four consecutive months - the first time that's happened in twenty years. The release of this week's economic statistics, particularly the Gross Domestic Product numbers, indicate that the economy was weaker last year and that economic growth in the first half of this year was also weaker than first believed. This points out a growing problem: the increasing unreliability of government economic statistics. These numbers would always be revised from the month before, but now we're seeing revisions of economic data released 18 months ago. The question then is -- why can't the government get it right in the compilation of statistics? Of course, the reason why is the because of the way the Reagan-Bush Regime rejiggered all the economic statistics. [read more] thanks to Ethel the Blog ----------
Taking on corporate crime like regular crime
Glow in the dark
Hole in the Head Ohio’s elder reactor has a hole in its head. So, apparently, do the people who are trying to re-start it. In a surreal act of desperation, a dying industry seems more than happy to put at risk all of northern Ohio and one of the world’s largest bodies of fresh water. [read more]
Indict the Murderers of Oslo!!
How 90 Peruvians became the latest Jewish settlers
I would have done the same
Israeli 'restraint' still means terror for the Palestinians Israel Widens Its Range of Reprisals
Palestinians Lose Their Lifelines
Military Industrial Complex Garret Vreeland, at DANGEROUSMETA!, linked to these. Eisenhower's farewell address, in 1961, should be required reading. If only we had listened. And could our present Resident think and write something like this? The answer to that makes me want to run screaming in despair. Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. [read more] ---------- The Pentagon believes in Santa Claus. Why shouldn't it? Every day is Christmas over there. Programs for health care, schools, playgrounds and day-care centers get killed, casualties of war, but at the Pentagon, economy is not a watchword; it is a wimpy, lefty kind of word used by people who don't want to invade Iraq or build the missile defense system, the commander in chief's dearest dream. [read more]
Clothing Utilikilts: What are you looking at? Maybe I look like Ed Wood Jr. on the set of "Glen or Glenda?" Perhaps you've noticed men like me — and they're hard not to notice — walking around in modern-looking kilts. Camouflage, khaki, no tartan, no bagpipes, and they're not skirts ... really. Are we being infiltrated by McTerrorists or Scottish yuppies? Turns out they're wearing "Utilikilts," from a small Seattle company of the same name. In the spirit of consumer reporting, I'm taking one for a test drive. This one's a breeze. [read more] ----------
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Homeland Insecurity In Surreal Development, Bush Administration Routes TIPS Calls to TV Show "America's Most Wanted" In a development bordering on what the American Civil Liberties Union called "surreal," the on-line magazine Salon.com today revealed that the Department of Justice is forwarding incoming Operation TIPS calls to the Fox-owned "America's Most Wanted" television series. [read more] thanks to This Modern World
War Against Some Terrorists I think Brian Lamb, at Blowback, said it best: Watching America careen towards an inevitable attack on Iraq is like reading that someone is filming a big-budget remake of Ishtar starring Jerry Lewis and Michael Jackson. Attempts to halt the progress with appeals to decency or logic are clearly useless. The sheer depth of the madness too profound to fathom...
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The logic of empire There is something almost comical about the prospect of George Bush waging war on another nation because that nation has defied international law. Since Bush came to office, the United States government has torn up more international treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world has in 20 years. [read more] ----------
The PowerPoint That Rocked the Pentagon Diplomatic china rattled in Washington and cracked in Riyadh yesterday when the Washington Post published a story about a briefing given to a Pentagon advisory group last month. The briefing declared Saudi Arabia an enemy of the United States and advocated that the United States invade the country, seize its oil fields, and confiscate its financial assets unless the Saudis stop supporting the anti-Western terror network. [read more] This article has the power point presentation. ---------- Kissinger, Quayle, Gingrich and Perle on a Lie Detector? Will the Pentagon wire up Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich--that is, submit them to lie detector tests? And do the same with all other members of the Defense Policy Board? It seems that someone connected with this advisory panel--a neocon-tilting group of prominent ex-government officials chaired by former Reagan Pentagon official Richard Perle--leaked word to The Washington Post of a private briefing. In that session, RAND analyst Laurent Murawiec maintained that Saudi Arabia, due to its support of Islamic terrorists, ought to be considered an adversary of the United States and that Washington should demand that Riyadh cease funding Islamic fundamentalist outlets. If the Saudis do not comply, he argued, its oil fields and overseas financial assets should be "targeted." [read more]
Transportation changes My trusty 1982 BMW R100RS has been my transportation device for the past four years. (Two wheels good, four wheels bad!) I finally broke down and bought a vehicle with four wheels. The shame of it! One of the requirements for a four wheeled vehicle is that it be able to carry the BMW.
 My "new" four wheeled vehicle — a 1976 6 cylinder Chevy cargo van. No seats (well — there is one for the driver and one passenger). The back of the van has been lined with plywood and carpeted. A great vehicle for carrying stuff. The van has been well taken care of and runs well. Yesterday was spent having my mechanic look at the van and then finalizing the transaction. The bike is the BMW which needs to be retired for some overdue maintenance and cleaning. It will return and claim it's rightful place as my primary transportation device. But I will still have a good two wheeled transportation device.
 I finally got some new tires for my Trek and am back riding it again. I need to get back in shape. With my black shorts, black shirt, very white legs (and expanded girth from not riding for too many years) I look like Orca Man! There are some great roads for cycling here on Whidbey Island. Lots of nice hills. Between buying the van, and doing David Ossmans TT I have gotten behind in blogging and work. Regularly scheduled activity will return soon.
TestingTesting (again)
 I have Zoe's many wonderful pictures up of David Ossman's show. Check out the pictures and listen to the show.
TestingTesting David Ossman, of Firesign Theatre fame, was on TestingTesting last night.
 The sound archive of the show is up. Pictures up soon. David has lived on Whidbey Island for 15 years. He lives about a mile down the road from me. He's active in the community and is a really nice guy. Sometimes it's a little hard to reconcile this Whidbey Island neighbor with the Firesign Theatre god. In the end, he's just another guy — another guy that is responsible for twisting so many young minds. After all, we're all bozos on this bus. I never know what he is going to do on the show. The treat last night, for me, were his poems for two voices using found text. Wrap your mind around those. A great performer.
I webcast a show every two weeks from my living room. This week we have David Ossman from the Firesign Theatre. (He just lives a mile down the road from me.) He will be doing his own stuff — we never know what to expect. Not to miss. Click on in at 7pm (pacific). Leave a message on the show guest book and I will read it to him during the show.
The Indisputable Science of Global Warming Not to suspect that a dirty little word lies at the center of the controversy spawned by the most recent Bush administration document on climate change. In the June EPA policy paper "Climate Action Report 2002," the government admitted that climate change is not only real but getting worse, that human activities are the most likely cause, and that the negative consequences are real and dangerous, a clear and present threat. This dirty little word may have been the reason conservative leaders have privately pressed to have EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman fired from her position—for producing a document that provides the most realistic, scientifically accurate picture of the problem available from current research. This dirty little word may be the main reason President Bush is eternally trying to distance himself from this itchy environmental problem, this foreign cause touted by Russians, Europeans, and Japanese. The word: liability. [read more]
Economy One bubble burst, then another and another. Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom. The rectitude of auditors--pop. Faith in corporate CEOs and stock market analysts--pop, pop. The self-righteous prestige of Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase--pop and pop again. The largest bubble is the stock market's, and it may not yet be fully deflated. These dizzying events are not an occasion for champagne music because the bursting bubbles have cast millions of Americans into deep personal losses, destroyed trillions of dollars in capital, especially retirement savings, and littered the economic landscape with corporate wreckage. Ex-drinker George W. Bush explained that a "binge" is always followed by the inevitable "hangover." What he did not say is that the "binge" that has just ended with so much pain for the country was the conservative binge. [read more] ----------
thanks to also not found in nature
Mary Jane The urban ecology of cannabis is an exploration of the long inter-dependence between human culture, civilisation, cities and cannabis hemp. This paper will examine the marginalised history of cannabis hemp, and explore the inter- relationships with the physical and human ecology of cities, landscapes, regions and society. This paper will consider hemp in all its forms, but is not primarily concerned with debating the criminological, sociological or medical reasons for cannabis law reform. This has been done by many other individuals and groups, and will only be discussed briefly to provide a necessary social context. Instead this paper will document the historical context and demostrate ecological and economic reasons to legalise cannabis and highlight new functions and roles for the demonised cannabis hemp plant in the brave new ecological city-state-world of the 21st Century. [read more] thanks to abuddhas memes
The Renewed Israeli Occupation Sharon tells A-G to weigh proceedings against Gush Shalom Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday ordered Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein to look into reports that activists from the Gush Shalom peace organization are monitoring Israel Defense Forces officers in order to report them to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Sharon said it was "inconceivable" that a political organization could try to deter reservists from carrying out their orders in the territories by threatening them with legal action in an international court. [read more] ---------- Some Questions to the pilots of the F-16 who comitted the massacre in Gaza , Haaretz, July 24 2002 Those who took part in the liquidation of Salah Shehadeh and 14* other human beings, among them 6 children, and 2 babies (and 150 wounded). Do you know the concept "manifestly illegal order"? Is the order which you followed one of them? Is there a limit to what you would be willing to do? [read more] thanks to Gush Shalom ----------
Sharon's Bloody Hands Like the "Energizer Bunny from Hell", Ariel Sharon just keeps killing and killing and killing. On July 23, 2002, as everyone knows by now, Ariel Sharon ordered the assassination of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, while he slept, with his wife and children. The assassination was completed using a 1-ton bomb dropped from an American-made F-16 fighter plane. The ensuing explosion destroyed not only Shehadeh's apartment building but several other apartment buildings directly adjacent. 14 civilians including 9 children were killed along with Shehadeh and his bodyguard. European negotiators have said that a cease-fire agreement was 95% complete and probably would have been announced the same day as the assassination.
This would have been a milestone in the peace negotiations as it would have been the first time in history that all of the major Palestinian militant groups would have agreed to cease their attacks on Israelis - both civilians and soldiers. It is said that the agreement would have stopped attacks both in Israel and in the occupied territories. This page will keep track of all the deaths and injuries attributed to the assassination of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, both from the initial bombing and from retaliation attacks.[read more] thanks to Gush Shalom ---------- The chief of the Shin Bet security service, Avi Dichter, told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this week that, "The damage that Salah Shehadeh caused the State of Israel is no less than that caused by bin Laden to the Americans." However, he did not bother to note whether the damage was caused before or after the "targeted interdiction" of Shehadeh, whose Hamas organization is now promising to liquidate 100 Israelis in retaliation for the Gaza bombing. [read more] ---------- US, Israel sign non-extradition pact Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and US Undersecretary of State John Bolton Sunday signed an agreement intended to prevent citizens of either country from facing charges in the International Criminal Court in The Hague. [read more]
Mac Switchers A couple of Mac Switcher ads that probably won't make it to prime time. thanks to random walks
Kulture
Welcome to the Official You see, over the last 30 years I've had the pleasure of capturing some Very Special Appendages for my collection. They are my sweet babies and I am their Mama! For some time now we've been on the lookout for a warm, moist planet to spread our seed and, by jove, I think we've got it. [read more] thanks to Andrew Abb @ American Samizdat ---------- If you're into dead presidents (and gosh, who isn't?), you came to the right place. By simply clicking your mouse button, you can see pictures of me, Manus Hand, visiting the final resting places of every one of them (save three -- I'm still working on it!) Prepare yourself for excitement and adventure (or at least for a bunch of pictures of me standing in cemeteries, tombs, crypts, and mausoleums). [read more] thanks to plep
Dead Bug I started scanning the dead bugs as a lark but they turned out to be beautiful in their own wierd way. I talk about my scanned bugs and I find others that like bugs and that have their own bugs that they let me scan. This bug was brought in by Olivia, one of Zoe's cats. (Actually it is sort of our cat but I am allergic to cats so I have to live in another house.) I feel like some sort of Count Dracula in a C grade movie (doesn't even qualify as a B grade) sending out his minions in search of dead bugs. The minions reply, of course, in an eastern European accent "Yesss, Master." Anybody else got some cute bugs? See larger images and the rest of my dead bugs.
Globilization In the 1970s a powerful humanitarian sanctuary movement arose in southern Arizona for refugees fleeing our Central American wars. A similar movement is stirring--with little or no national attention except from the American Friends Service Committee--to protect economic refugees from Mexico, who risk their lives to cross the heavily militarized border in search of work. [read more]
Architecture On the Road: Kentucky's Roadside Commercial Architecture 1920-1960
 By the time of the Great Depression, the prevailing idea was to jump-start the economy through automobile usage and construction of new service and recreational facilities accessible solely by car. The effect of these policies, which guide decisionmaking even today, was far-reaching. New types of buildings were created to serve the automobile and a new dispersed landscape was established. This exhibit focuses on commercial architecture of the roadside in its infancy---from 1920 to 1960. [read more] thanks to plep
War Against Some Terrorists Watching the pathetic, mealy-mouthed response of President Bush and his State Department to Egypt's decision to sentence the leading Egyptian democracy advocate to seven years in prison leaves one wondering whether the whole Bush foreign policy team isn't just a big bunch of phonies. Shame on all of them. [read more] ----------
Aggressive New Tactics Proposed for Terror War The chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command proposed a series of aggressive new covert actions against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in a closed-door meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday, part of a new Pentagon initiative to reenergize the 10-month-old counteroffensive against terrorism. [read more] ---------- This confusion has reached such heights that many are beginning to call this a "Wag the Dog" war, an attempt to avoid a Republican disaster in the November elections. While the exact timing may be affected by domestic considerations, the claim that they are the reason for the war itself is implausible when you consider that there has been talk about war on Iraq ever since 9/11, at a time when the world was Bush's oyster. In fact, the war is simply a continuation of the "regime change" policy of over 10 years' standing -- except that in the post-9/11 world the government believes that it can get away with anything by invoking terrorism as a threat. So what is really going on? [read more] ---------- In the light of the tragedy and the devastating images from New York City, in the shadow of embarrassingly stupid remarks made by the major western 'free world' leaders and in the light of the call for a western jihad against a faceless enemy, I feel obliged to expose the lie that stands in the center of the current liberal democratic militant enthusiasm. [read more] ----------
Invasion on autopilot This week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding hearings of George Junior's intent to invade Iraq again. Just like Daddy. Unlike 12 years ago, there is no compelling invasion of Kuwait (or fake incubator deaths) to spur global outrage (and alarm over oil supply). There is, in fact, no compelling reason of any sort to go to war against Iraq. The only recent development cited by the Bush Administration is the claim that Iraq is developing new "weapons of mass destruction." That claim that has consistently been considered patently absurd by the rest of the world, including a succession of United Nations officials charged with looking into such things. Several of the ones who've headed the "Food for Oil" program, or who've served as weapons inspectors in Iraq, have quit their jobs (and careers) and become full-time activists trying to counter White House propaganda (under both Clinton and Bush) and the steady, inexorable war drums of the past two years. [read more] ----------
War and forgetfulness Three and a half years ago, some key information about U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq briefly surfaced on the front pages of American newspapers—and promptly vanished. Now, with righteous war drums beating loudly in Washington, let's reach deep down into the news media's Orwellian memory hole and retrieve the story. [read more] ---------- Bush held up plan to hit Bin Laden The Bush administration sat on a Clinton-era plan to attack al- Qaida in Afghanistan for eight months because of political hostility to the outgoing president and competing priorities, it was reported yesterday. [read more]
Photography In 1937, my maternal grandmother, Joycolyn Knapp took a road trip with my grandfather, Jack Knapp, his sister Gladys, and her husband Wayne "Windy" Anderson. I hope you enjoy Grandma's amazing photo journal of their trip
 [read more] thanks to plep
Mondo Washington A good James Ridgeway Mondo Washington.
Grim News From Capital's Front Lines
Bush projects that the stock market will rise this year, when it already has tanked. When Bush came to power, the Dow Jones industrial average stood at 10,600. Last Monday it fell below 8000. According to the Standard & Poor's Index of 500 stocks, Bush's first year and a half has been the worst ever recorded.
A Return to the Bad Old Days? This brief story describes perfectly the smear campaign run by the FBI and its look-alikes during the '60s and '70s. It shows the slime politics played in the Supreme Court, the mendacity of the Johnson people, and, of course, business as usual for Hoover's FBI. And it reveals how military intelligence was employed to spread smears about people. And this is precisely what Bush is in the process of recreating, so that the two-bit snoops from the Pentagon can fan out across the nation. Homeland security boils down to the FBI's acting on neighborhood snitch watches to penetrate and track supposed terrorist groups while the military dicks spread out like a plague of locusts to spread the gossip.
CIA Official Wants to Swat Journalists
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