Bush cronies to oversee all federal regulation| |
Excerpt: In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries...The administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration...The directive issued by Bush says that, in deciding whether to issue regulations, federal agencies must identify "the specific market failure" or problem that justifies government intervention.
Comment: With a single directive that's getting little publicity, Bush has effectively wiped out all government regulatory agencies that exist in this country. The government is no longer allowed to prevent companies from doing as much harm as possible to consumers and the planet. |
| | Iran:
The next screwed-up slaughter
Still no evidence to back Bush-Cheney claims on Iran| |
Excerpt: U.S. officials have declined to provide documentation of seized Iranian ordnance despite repeated requests. British officers stationed in Iraq at the time said they had seized no such weapons in the districts for which they had responsibility. U.S. military officials in Diyala have had the same experience. No munitions or personnel have been seized at the border, officers said.
Comment: The Bush-Cheney administration has told us that Iran presents some clear and present danger to America -- while every source un-connected to the White House says that just ain't true. |
Mainstream media rushing
to lie-based war in Iran| |
Excerpt: If you only read one Iran article this week, it should be this excellent FAIR summary of the baseless, anonymous accusations against Iran...and the actual journalism about the ridiculousness of those accusations. |
Middle East expert says Bush is
lying about Iranian "agents" in Iraq| |
Excerpt: To begin with, some 99 percent of all attacks on U.S. troops occur in Sunni Arab areas and are carried out by Baathist or Sunni fundamentalist (Salafi) guerrilla groups. Most of the outside help these groups get comes from the Sunni Arab public in countries allied with the United States, notably Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. Washington has yet to denounce Saudi aid to the Sunni insurgents who are killing U.S. troops.
Meanwhile, the most virulent terror network in Iraq, which styles itself "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia," has openly announced that its policy is to kill as many Shiites as possible. That the ayatollahs of Shiite Iran are passing sophisticated weapons to these, their sworn enemies, is not plausible.
Comment: The Bush administration has been telling this lie for a year. |
Former military chiefs urge talks with Iran| |
Excerpt: Three former senior U.S. military officials warn that any military action against Iran would have "disastrous consequences" and urged Washington to hold immediate and unconditional talks with Tehran. |
U.S. Air Force to patrol Iran-Iraq border| |
Excerpt: The efforts could include more air patrols by Air Force and Navy fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of bomb supplies from Iran, said a senior Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Comment: This latest U.S. military aggression comes after deploying warships to Iran's coast, ordering U.S. soldiers to kill or capture Iranians found in Iraq, and kidnapping five Iranian diplomats from their Iraq offices. The Bush administration's nonsensical insistence this week that they are not planning to start a war in Iran only makes sense as a quibble about verb tenses ... they aren't GOING TO start a war on Iran because that war has already begun. |
Only the U.S. hawks can
save the Iranian president now| |
Excerpt: Ahmadinejad is failing to deliver for the poor and losing support, but he could yet survive because of the international threat |
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Sen. Feingold's bill would bring
troops home in six months| |
Excerpt: Feingold's bill uses Congress's power of the purse to force the President to safely re-deploy U.S. troops from Iraq by prohibiting funds for continued operations six months after enactment. Feingold's legislation allows for specific operations to continue in Iraq beyond six months, including counter-terrorism efforts, protection of U.S. personnel and infrastructure, and training of Iraqi security forces. |
Congress asserts right to stop Iraq war| |
Excerpt: Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania argued that under the Constitution, the president shared his powers with Congress. "I would respectfully suggest to the president that he is not the sole 'decider,'" said Specter, the head of the Judiciary Committee until Democrats won control from Republicans in November. "The decider is a shared and joint responsibility."
Comment: It's a good thing that Congress is asserting that it still has some say over whether America goes to war. Seriously, a smattering of applause for that. Too bad they have no interest in stopping this war, or the next war that's clearly coming soon. |
U.S. judge shelves Guantanamo lawsuits| |
Excerpt: Sixteen lawsuits by Guantanamo Bay detainees have been put on hold by a U.S. federal judge who said he may no longer have jurisdiction to hear the cases.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said the Military Commissions Act, signed into law in October, has left him unable to consider whether the detainees can challenge being held at the naval base in Cuba. |
Florida rejects touch-screen voting| |
Excerpt: Gov. Charlie Crist announced Thursday that he wants all 67 counties in Florida to have voting machines that will produce paper ballot trails in time for the 2008 presidential election. Republican Crist called it a bipartisan solution to a public demand for election accountability, in the wake of the 2000 presidential election meltdown and problems reported with touch-screen machines more recently.
Comment: This is a great step forward, but it doesn't make up for the fact that a candidate that lost a Florida election two months ago has been seated as a voting member of the House...
Florida touch-screen election
still disputed in the courts
Excerpt: Christine Jennings was among the attendees in the House chamber for President Bush's State of the Union address last week, as a guest of California Democratic Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher. "I have invited Christine to attend the State of the Union because she should have a seat in Congress. Period," said Tauscher in a statement.
Though the House seated Vern Buchanan, Democratic Rep. Rush D. Holt of New Jersey raised a parliamentary inquiry during the opening day of the 110th Congress, prompting the House Administration Committee to investigate the election....
Jennings has appealed a court ruling stating that Election Systems & Software, the maker of the iVotronic machines used in Sarasota County, should release the computer codes because they may contain valuable information about the machine's history. Campaign spokesman David Kochman estimated that Jennings will find out the status of her appeal in mid- to late February. |
Regulators say nuclear plants don't
have to defend against terrorists| |
Excerpt: Making nuclear power plants crash-proof to an airliner attack by terrorists is impracticable and it's up to the military to avert such an assault, the government said Monday...Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission appears not to have followed the direction of Congress "to ensure that our nuclear power plants are protected from air- or land-based terrorist threats" of the magnitude demonstrated on Sept. 11. |
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Trashing the planet
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Congress investigates White House
interference with climate scientists| |
Excerpt: At a hearing of Congress, scientists and advocacy groups described a campaign by the White House to remove references to global warming from scientific reports and limit public mention of the topic...Forty-three percent of [scientists surveyed] said their published work had been revised in ways that altered the meaning of scientific findings...Much of the testimony yesterday centered on the influence exerted by Mr. Cooney, a former lobbyist for the petroleum industry who was put in charge of the Council on Environmental Quality.
Bush official barred from
mentioning global warming
Excerpt: During today's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the political manipulation of climate change science, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) revealed the Bush administration has barred Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte from saying the phrase "global warming." |
UN panel: It may already be
too late to stop global warming| |
Excerpt: The bleak outlook of a major new report on climate change shifted the onus onto governments, even mankind, to stop prevaricating and truly act, with dire warnings from around the world that drastic, rapid change is needed -- not least from the United States...The long-awaited report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global warming is "unequivocal," "very likely" man-made and will "continue for centuries" -- findings bleaker than its last report in 2001. |
ExxonMobil-funded think tank offered
scientists cash to dispute global warming| |
Excerpt: Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded think-tank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasize the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
ExxonMobil profits set new
all-time corporate record
Excerpt: Exxon Mobil's 2006 profit beat its own previous record for a U.S. company of $36.13 billion set in 2005. Its net income for 2006 equals the approximate gross domestic product -- a measure of all goods and services produced within a country in a given year -- of countries like Ecuador, Luxembourg and Croatia. |
Melting of glaciers 'speeds up'| |
Excerpt: Mountain glaciers are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1980s, scientists have announced. The World Glacier Monitoring Service, which continuously studies a sample of 30 glaciers around the world, says the acceleration is down to climate change. |
France tells U.S. to sign climate pacts or face tax| |
Excerpt: President Jacques Chirac has demanded that the United States sign both the Kyoto climate protocol and a future agreement that will take effect when the Kyoto accord runs out in 2012. |
Russia digs through smelly orange snow| |
Excerpt: Russia has flown a team of chemical experts to a Siberian region to find out why smelly, colored snow has been falling over several towns. |
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Libby trial is about a cover-up that failed| |
Excerpt: Why was the White House so nervous in the summer of 2003 about the CIA's reporting on alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger to build a nuclear bomb? That's the big question that runs through the many little details that have emerged in the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The trial record suggests a simple answer: The White House was worried that the CIA would reveal that it had been pressured in 2002 and early 2003 to support administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and that in the Niger case, the CIA had tried hard to resist this pressure. The machinations of Cheney, Libby and others were an attempt to weave an alternative narrative that blamed the CIA.
Vice President's shadow hangs over trial
Excerpt: No evidence has emerged that Cheney told him to do it. But Cheney's dictated reply is one of many signs to emerge at the trial of the vice president's unusual attentiveness to the controversy and his desire to blunt it. His efforts included the extraordinary disclosure of classified information, including one-sided synopses of Wilson's report and a 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq.
Handwritten notes implicate
Bush in Plame affair
Excerpt: Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case. |
Gov't reports on massive
Iraq contracting fraud| |
Excerpt: About $4.2 million of the money was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool, all ordered by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior but never authorized by the U.S. U.S. officials spent another $36.4 million for weapons such as armored vehicles, body armor and communications equipment that can't be accounted for. DynCorp also may have prematurely billed $18 million in other potentially unjustified costs, the report said. Responding, the State Department said in the report that it was working to improve controls.
Comment: The mainstream media brilliantly mixes up Iraq contract fraud and legitimate security problems faced by contractors into one confusing article. Also, the fact that the government's first response to these findings was to try to fire the Inspector General in charge is squeezed into one line at the bottom. |
Ex-U.S. official gets nine years
for Iraq reconstruction fraud| |
Excerpt: A former Pentagon contractor has been sentenced to nine years in prison for helping steer millions of dollars in Iraqi reconstruction aid to a businessman in exchange for plane tickets, watches, alcohol, cigars and sexual favors. Stein served as a comptroller and funding officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. |
FBI widely tracks internet use| |
Excerpt: Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords. |
Court skeptical of Bush terror policy| |
Excerpt: If yesterday was any indication, a federal appeals court will soon hand the Bush administration a major defeat on their policy of indefinitely detaining "enemy combatants." |
Germany issues arrest warrants
for 13 CIA agents in Al-Masri case| |
Excerpt: German prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA operatives in connection with the alleged abduction of German citizen Khaled al-Masri. |
Crooked Congressman's campaign
ended, but his wife still got paid| |
Excerpt: Former Rep. Bob Ney kept his wife on his congressional campaign payroll through the end of last year, even though he dropped out of the race in early August, a report filed yesterday shows. |
Novartis suit threatens
cheap AIDS drugs worldwide| |
Excerpt: And if the High
Court in Chennai sides with pharmaceutical giant Novartis and agrees to grant a patent for its drug Glivec, it would set a precedent for other new drugs to be patented too, including AIDS drugs. And that would make it harder for the world's poorest to get hold of cheap generic medicines...Since generic drugs arrived on the scene, the price of treatment has dropped from about $12,000 a year per person to as low as $70 per patient annually.
Please sign this petition to Novartis
from Doctors Without Borders
Excerpt: Millions of people around the world today rely on affordable medicines produced in India. India's law contains elements that help put people before patents, but Novartis is taking the Indian government to court to force a change in the law. Neither Novartis, nor any company, should stand in the way of people's right to access the medicines they need. |
Bush administration seeks
another $245-billion for wars| |
Excerpt: Keeping troops in Iraq for another year and a half will cost nearly a quarter-trillion dollars -- about $800 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. -- under the budget President Bush will submit to Congress Monday.
Care for U.S. veterans could cost $662-billion
Excerpt: Medical costs for U.S. veterans of the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan could range from $350 billion to $662 billion over the next 40 years, as soldiers survive injuries that would have killed them in past conflicts, according to a Harvard University study.
Due to improvements in battlefield medicine and equipment, there are now about 16 "non-mortally wounded" soldiers for every death, far more than the 2.6 soldiers wounded per death in Vietnam, the study said, citing Department of Veterans' Affairs data. ...
The potential costs include medical care, disability payments and other benefits paid to injured veterans and assume that 44 percent of veterans eventually claim disability. That was the percentage of claims from the first
Gulf War. Bilmes' calculations assume that by 2016, 2 million soldiers will have participated in these wars. |
Overweight patients condemned
to sub-standard health care| |
Excerpt: In the May 2000 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, doctors reported on a survey of 11,435 women which learned that the heaviest women had received less preventive cancer screenings -- screenings that might identify cancers early at more treatable stages. They found 78% of fat women had had a pap smear compared to 84% of "normal" weight women. These differences remained even when accounting for age, education, illness and health insurance. They couldn't explain the barriers to appropriate preventive care.
A study published last October in Cancer Detection Prevention did a chart review of men and women in 22 primary care practices and found obese patients were 25% less likely to be screened for colorectal cancer than non-obese ones. They said research was needed to identify the possible barriers. |
Wal-Mart pays itself rent,
gets large tax breaks| |
Excerpt: Wal-Mart is using a tax loophole involving "real-estate investment trusts" to call "rent" it pays to itself a tax-deductible business expense, Drucker explains. A Wal-Mart subsidiary will pay rent to a real-estate investment trust, which is owned by another Wal-Mart subsidiary. The trust hands the rent to the second subsidiary in the form of a dividend, which cannot be taxed. Additionally, Wal-Mart counts the initial rental payment as a business expense, which is deducted from taxes in the state where the store is located. In one four-year period, Wal-Mart avoided $350 million in taxes using this strategy, which was developed by the accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP. |
Texas Governor requires cancer vaccine for girls| |
Excerpt: Gov. Rick Perry ordered Friday that schoolgirls in Texas must be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, making Texas the first state to require the shots. The girls will have to get Merck & Co.'s new vaccine against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, that are responsible for most cases of cervical cancer.
Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass laws in state legislatures across the country mandating it Gardasil vaccine for girls as young as 11 or 12. It doubled its lobbying budget in Texas and has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country.
Comment: This is, of course, all about money for Merck, not about health. |
Minimum wage hike passes Senate;
tied to tax cuts after GOP filibuster| |
Excerpt: The bill must now be reconciled with the House version passed Jan. 10 that contained no tax provisions. House Democrats have insisted they want a minimum wage bill with no strings attached, though some have conceded the difficulty of passing the legislation in the Senate without tax breaks. |
House will investigate Bush signing statements| |
Excerpt: New House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers used his first oversight hearing Wednesday to say that he's launching an investigation into President Bush's possible abuse of presidential signing statements. Democrats and some Republican lawmakers have accused Bush of conducting an imperial presidency by using bill signing statements to declare that he'll interpret legislative provisions his way and will feel free to ignore some terms. |
Brits seek to censor book that "could damage morale"| |
Excerpt: The foreign office has made a last-ditch attempt to stop one of its former senior diplomats from publishing a book claiming that the government knew that Iraq did not represent a significant threat to the West in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Last night Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the United Nations, declined to comment on a letter asking him to 'reconsider' his decision to publish his book, Independent Diplomat, other than to describe it as 'unpleasant'. |
Baker group advisers 'surprised,'
'upset' at report's Israel-Iraq link| |
Excerpt: In interviews with the Forward, several of the experts who advised the panel said they were shocked that the Israeli-Palestinian issue was included in the final report, since they had been told not to address the matter in their recommendations. "They kept on telling us it is a sensitive issue and that it has too many political implications," one of the experts said. |
Green card cost triples to nearly $1,000| |
Excerpt: While government officials have repeatedly said they encourage immigrants to become citizens to complete their integration into American society, increasing the fees sends a conflicting message. "You're making integration out of reach by virtue of its cost," she said.
Comment: I know a lot of people who have been American citizens all their lives who would have serious problems coming up with this kind of money. This sounds like a deliberate plan to brown-skinned wage-slaves in their place ... at the very bottom of the economic ladder, easily exploited by wealthy Americans. |
New Orleans Housing Authority
threatens tenants' attorney| |
Excerpt: Bill Quigley, a civil rights lawyer with Loyola University in New Orleans, has been outspoken about his views that the housing plan discriminates against blacks. The letter [from the New Orleans Housing Authority] accused Quigley of making "prejudicial extrajudicial statements to the press and others." HANO also threatened to haul Quigley in front of the Louisiana State Bar Association's disciplinary board if did not agree to stop discussing the case. |
Marked rise in MS in the
U.S. debated by scientists| |
Excerpt: Neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease are becoming more common in the U.S., a large new analysis suggests.
Comment: There are plenty of references available showing that industrially and politically-driven increases in environmental pollution and stress -- and a simultaneous plunge in the nutritional value of our food -- likely is wholly responsible for this and many other downward health trends.
To fix it, all you have to do is truly reform election campaign finances, make all high-level decision-making (both business and government) subject to comprehensive 24-7 surveillance and permanent records (which can be reasonably easily opened for investigative purposes and used against execs and politicians in criminal proceedings AT ANY TIME, with zero or minimal waiting period), clean up the lying, misleading, and deceptive hate-and-ignorance-for-profit chunk of the mass media (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc.), gut the war machine, enact universal healthcare, catch up to advanced nations in environmental and business regulation, and permanently separate business from government, just as the founding fathers meant to do with religion.
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Gonzales releases FISA
warrants to a few Senators| |
Excerpt: The Justice Department turned over documents on the government's controversial domestic spying program to select members of Congress on Wednesday, ending a two-week confrontation that included pointed threats of subpoenas from Democrats. But Gonzales and other Bush administration officials also indicated they have no intention of making the orders and related documents available to the public. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the documents will help determine "what further oversight or legislative action is necessary.''
Comment: This better be a first step towards holding the Bushies accountable for their illegal domestic spying. Otherwise, it's nothing but a spitting contest between Congress and the White House. |
Seattle liable for illegal WTO arrests| |
Excerpt: The jury found the city liable for violating the rights of about 175 protesters against unreasonable search and seizure, but did not find a violation against their free speech rights. |
Is Microsoft's new "Vista" both garbage and dangerous?| |
Excerpt: You may ask: why are you posting this on a blog devoted to crime, justice and social justice issues? My answer: (a) If you are reading this, it affects you because it goes through a computer. (b) The way this is set up, it appears "switching to Apple or Linux" is intended to be made ineffectual. I smell antitrust violations (among other things) in this -- and violations of the antitrust laws can be (and are) prosecuted criminally.
Vista speech command exposes remote exploit
Vista lies about file contents
Vista may damage iPods |
Boston panic over cable TV ads
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Comment: I really don't think, at heart, America is a nation of sniveling cowards, but panic and paranoia is national policy. Ever since 9/11/2001 Bush and Cheney have offered nothing but fear and worry and public pleas to report anything suspicions and exaggerated reports of so-called terrorists and constant reminders of 9/11 and lies about who was behind 9/11 and "If we don't fight the terrorists there we'll have to fight them here" ... and this is the sad, almost laughable result.
Another suspicious object of
could-be terrorism was found
"Infernal machine" charges seem weak
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Apple pays $700,000 for bloggers' legal fees| |
Excerpt: In total, Apple was ordered to pay nearly $700,000 -- a small amount for a company that reported nearly $1 billion in profit in the December quarter, but a large moral victory for bloggers, journalists and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which helped defend against Apple's subpoenas. |
Bush's nominee as top spy
comes from ethical swamp| |
Excerpt:
President Bush's choice to be the nation's new spy chief works as a $2 million-a-year private consultant with some of the same senior military and intelligence officials he would supervise as director of national intelligence.
Retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell could face an unusually daunting challenge avoiding ethical entanglements after a decade working with Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a large defense and intelligence consulting company with sales of $3.7 billion worldwide, according to an extensive Associated Press review of McConnell's finances and business deals. |
Former Guantanamo "detainee"
runs for office in Australia| |
Excerpt: Former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Mamdouh Habib, has officially announced he'll attempt to make the transition from former terrorist suspect to state politician.
Mr Habib launched his campaign for the western Sydney seat of Auburn at an unusual press conference today, promising to defend his constituents' human rights, but reluctant to push his credentials on protecting them from terrorism. |
U.S. must abandon Iraqi cities or
face nightmare scenario, say experts| |
Excerpt: The U.S. must draw up plans to deal with an all-out Iraqi civil war that would kill hundreds of thousands, create millions of refugees, and could spill over into a regional catastrophe, disrupting oil supplies and setting up a direct confrontation between Washington and Iran.
This is the central recommendation of a study by the Brookings Institution here, based on the assumption that President Bush's last-ditch troop increase fails to stabilize the country -- but also on the reality that Washington cannot simply walk away from the growing disaster unleashed by the 2003 invasion. |
Reporter pleads with CBS
to air report from Baghdad| |
Excerpt: Lara Logan filed the gritty report about dangerous conditions near the Green Zone on Jan. 18 for the "CBS Evening News." The network didn't air it, deeming some of the images of tortured bodies that it contained too graphic, and because another story Logan filed that day from Iraq was more newsworthy, said Sandy Genelius, news spokeswoman. |
Agency says higher Iraq casualty
total was posted in error| |
Excerpt: The 50,508 figure caught the attention of the Pentagon when Prof. Linda Bilmes of Harvard mentioned it in an opinion article on Jan. 5 in The Los Angeles Times. A few days later, said Professor Bilmes, who teaches public finance, she had a call from Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, challenging the number.
Professor Bilmes explained that she had used the government tally, the one on the "America's Wars" page of the veterans' department Web site. She faxed him a copy. A few days later, the number on the Web site was changed.
A spokeswoman for Dr. Winkenwerder confirmed that he had called the veterans' department to have the figure corrected and that the worker had misunderstood the Defense Department figures. |
South Dakota introduces revised abortion ban| |
Excerpt: An abortion ban bill introduced Wednesday in the South Dakota state House would allow exceptions for rape and incest, but only if the crimes are reported to authorities with DNA evidence. A bill passed last year contained an exception only to save the life of a woman. A petition campaign forced that bill onto the ballot and voters rejected it in November by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent. |
Teen sues record industry for collusion| |
Excerpt: A 16-year-old boy being sued for online music piracy accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.
In papers responding to a lawsuit filed by five record companies, Robert Santangelo, who was as young as 11 when the alleged piracy occurred, denied ever disseminating music and said it's impossible to prove that he did. |
Big-Brother tracking code
in Xerox printers cracked| |
Excerpt: Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer-privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of Xerox printers, an invisible barcode of sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed. |
More states challenge national driver's license| |
Excerpt: The Maine Legislature on Jan. 26 overwhelmingly passed a resolution objecting to the Real ID Act of 2005. The federal law sets a national standard for driver's licenses and requires states to link their record-keeping systems to national databases.
Within a week of Maine's action, lawmakers in Georgia, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington state also balked at Real ID. They are expected soon to pass laws or adopt resolutions declining to participate in the federal identification network. |
Iraq war a calamity, says Brzezinski| |
Excerpt: Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser, told Congress the war in Iraq was a calamity and was likely to lead to "a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large." |
Charge dropped against elderly war protester| |
Excerpt: Rosemary Jackowski, 69, was among 12 people arrested for standing the street after being asked to move by police in the 2003 protest against the Iraq war. Eleven reached plea agreements with the state; Jackowski, an Air Force veteran, decided to go to trial.
Six "grannies" arrested at anti-war protest |
Judge throws out another
conviction in Enron case
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Excerpt: A federal judge in Houston on Wednesday threw out the conviction of Kevin A. Howard, the former chief financial officer for Enron's Broadband unit, citing a ruling in a similar case in which the jury's verdict was vacated. |
Oils may cause breast growth in boys| |
Excerpt: Lavender and tea tree oils found in some shampoos, soaps and lotions can temporarily leave boys with enlarged breasts in rare cases, apparently by disrupting their hormonal balance, a preliminary study suggests. |
EC mulls Europe-wide smoking ban| |
Excerpt: The European Commission discusses whether to introduce legislation that, in its most stringent form, would totally ban smoking at work and in public places. |
Court overturns ban on graffiti supplies| |
Excerpt: The law is intended to limit access to the supplies favored by graffiti artists. But the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the city doesn't have the right to block sales of spray paint, broad tipped markers and etching acid to young adults ages 18 to 21. |
Toll road giant buys
newspapers to silence critics| |
Excerpt: Many of the small papers purchased, most have a circulation of 5000 or less, have been critical of the Trans-Texas Corridor. An article in the Bonham Journal for example, states, "The toll roads will be under control of foreign investors, which more than frustrates Texans." |
Fake psychic Sylvia Browne
tries to silence web critic| |
Excerpt: One of the attorneys with whom I shared this letter said that he would be hard-pressed to decide which of the claims in this letter was the most laughable. |
Texas bill proposes fine for
missing teacher meetings| |
Excerpt: Parents beware: Miss a meeting with your child's teacher and it could cost you a $500 fine and a criminal record.
A Republican state lawmaker from Baytown has filed a bill that would charge parents of public school students with a misdemeanor and fine them for playing hooky from a scheduled parent-teacher conference. |
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Lightning round news
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Chewbacca strikes back
Have you clicked our Mystery links?
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"We are the people who run this country.
We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. ... We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"
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Molly
by Leigh Saavedra, Unknown News
We wish you could have stayed
to see the valid close
his smug smile gone
drowned in full disgrace ...
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American's complacent, obedient slaves
by Kathy Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: In the end it won't be the war to end all wars, but the war to end all worlds! And Americans brought it upon themselves. |
Terrorized stupid
by Kevin Good, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Authorities fired 911 rounds in the direction of the suspected explosive devise, striking it five times and wounding six officers. A bomb squad robotic device moved the suspected terrorist bomb a safe distance from the school and destroyed it as the IED attempted to reactivate itself by saying, "The cat says meow."
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Democrats in Congress -- Do your duty!
by The Alchemist, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: What are you waiting for? Stand up and do your duty. Even if you Democrats are only marginally more honest than the Republicans, you will be seen as heroes, here and around the world. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. |
On finding our way out of despair
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Depending on heroes and leaders to save us will not work. The authentic ones will just be killed, or worse turned, and the phony ones will be made to seem real. All that is left, however, is enough. Dialog with neighbors, friends and family that is inclusive of all points of view and self assigned identity is enough. Word of mouth is more powerful than mass media. |
Don't eat this, eat that by Underground Panther in the Sky, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Nobody knows why we get fat, but everyone's got an iron clad pet theory and the moral superiority complex that goes with it. And yes, they'd be more than happy to tell you how to live if you just follow their methods and buy their books. |
There is nothing more important than this
by Kathy Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: It's the good side of human nature, the very best, to try and keep trying to bring people to their senses. Trying to bring the injustice to a permanent halt. That is the best part of being alive, isn't it really? Doing what you can, to do something good? |
Six lies you shouldn't believe
about Iran, especially since,
hey, there's people down here
by Rosa Schmidt Azadi, OpEd News| |
Excerpt: I'm an American who used to live in New York City. All my life, when I heard about warships, it was US warships going places far away. I never even imagined hostile warships sailing toward New York. Now I'm in Tehran, and aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis is heading our way. And as it sails, people are discussing Israel and/or the US bombing Iran as if my family and 69 million other people weren't even here. I'm getting scared. |
We are the deciders
by Jim Kirwan, Rense| |
Excerpt: The infrastructure of this nation is in total disrepair, and there are no jobs that pay a decent wage. The government, if it were a functioning institution, could create programs that could employ virtually all the unemployed in rebuilding the infrastructure of America-by putting everyone back to work on rebuilding this nation: instead of selling off our freeways to foreign governments and letting everything else just go to hell. |
Don't you want us to succeed in Iraq?
by Robert Capozzi, Free For All| |
Excerpt: Like most of the English language, the word "success" is squishy. For example, if "success" means the U.S. troops stay in Iraq for 10 years, refereeing a Sunni/Shia Civil War until no militia are left, then, NO, Mr. Hannity, I don't support success. The Iraq War is like fruit from a poisoned tree. It was a mistake from the get-go, based on false premises. It was a set up for failure in my book. Of course, I want to get U.S. troops out of harm's way. I don't want them to die or to be maimed in a cause that I find completely inappropriate. |
Sorry state of the Second Amendment
by Radley Balko, The Agitator| |
Excerpt: Of course, the uniting factor in all of these cases is the fact that the victims had guns in the home. Never mind that the guns were legal. If you're a gun-owner, you should be particularly concerned about this militarization stuff. Those weapons give police an excuse to turn the slightest infraction of altercation into a full-on raid. If you're adamant and vocal about your Second Amendment rights, all the worse for you. |
And most Americans don't know
an iron curtain is descending
by Pariah, CounterPunch| |
Excerpt: Most Americans are unaware of the new police state procedures of U.S. officials who seek to keep millions of Americans from traveling--including trips across the border to our North, once thought the least difficult international frontier in the world to cross. There are now regular stops an "internal" checkpoints for cars traveling toward, away from or near the border in states from Maine to Washington. This includes permanent checkpoints on interstates one hundred or more miles from the border in New York and Vermont, as well as moving patrols who stop motorists in all parts of the border states. Some have called these "whiteness checkpoints," since the border guards often pull over dark-skinned motorists and people perceived as Middle Easterners. |
Nemesis: The last days of
the American Republic
by Chalmers Johnson and
Tom Engelhardt, AntiWar| |
Excerpt: We are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation starts down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play -- isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.
History is instructive on this dilemma. If we choose to keep our empire, as the Roman republic did, we will certainly lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates. There is an alternative, however. We could, like the British Empire after World War II, keep our democracy by giving up our empire. |
2007 State of the Universe Address
by Swami Beyondananda, Wake Up Laughing| |
Excerpt: Did you know that over the 20th century, war caused 260 million deaths? Why if someone did just one 260 millionth of that, it’d be all over the 6:00 news with details at 11. And if any one of us did what we allow “all of us” to do, we’d be put away forever. I guess they must have changed the Ten Commandments while we weren’t looking. Thou shalt not kill, except in extremely large groups. |
Conservatives learn nothing from
five years of blundering catastrophe
by Francis Fukuyama, The Guardian| |
Excerpt: The United States today spends approximately as much as the rest of the world combined on its military establishment. So it is worth pondering why it is that, after nearly four years of effort, the loss of thousands of American lives, and an outlay of perhaps half-a-trillion dollars, the U.S. has not succeeded in pacifying a small country of some 24 million people, much less in leading it to anything that looks remotely like a successful democracy. |
Contemplating the road ahead
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: As the Vietnamese saying goes, "When elephants fight, ants get crushed." We ants, in our multitude and resourcefulness, stand a better chance of survival than spoiled effete elephants. |
The torch of leadership
-- extinguished, not passed
by Jim Kirwan, Rense| |
Excerpt: In Washington and across this land a huge percentage of people are confounded by how to deal with Bush & the Bandits. Impeachment is handicapped by the fact that the public has not demanded the arrest of Dick Cheney and the subsequent prosecution of Bush by Impeachment proceedings. The missing component in all of this is that huge number of young people -- the same group that brought down the government over the illegal and obscene war in Vietnam. Those students were idealistic to be sure, but they knew their lives were on the line -- hence they fought the government to a standstill until the war was forced to an end. |
There is but one top priority
by A Proud Liberal| |
Excerpt: The parallels to the Vietnam War cannot be ignored, except that the moral justifications for our involvement in Vietnam far out weighed those in Iraq. The most glaring of these is the fact that one side (the South) of a continuing civil war wanted our participation, in Iraq there was no civil war until the invasion and occupation. On December 31, 1970, the U.S. Congress repealed the entirely fictitious Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which in 1964 authorized a dramatic increase in U.S. military involvement in Vietnam in response to an attack on U.S. forces that later turned out to not have happened. Why cannot the current Congress step up to the bat and do the same with the Congressional resolution that supposedly gave Bush the power to invade Iraq? The basis for that resolution was even more false than the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. No more "but look at how many Democrats voted for it," should even be allowed. Continuing two wrongs still does not make a thing right. |
Stop the Iran war before it starts
by Scott Ritter, The Nation| |
Excerpt: If hearings show no case for war with Iran, then Congress must act to insure that the United States cannot move toward conflict with that nation on the strength of executive dictate alone. As things currently stand, the Bush Administration, emboldened with a vision of the unitary executive unprecedented in our nation's history, believes it has all of the legal authority it requires when it comes to engaging Iran militarily. The silence of Congress following the President's decision to dispatch a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf has been deafening. The fact that a third carrier battle group (the USS Ronald Reagan) will probably join these two in the near future has also gone unnoticed by most, if not all, in Congress. |
Is it better to fight them in Iraq?
by Thomas Hoyt, Strike the Root| |
Excerpt: "Would you rather fight the terrorists in Iraq or in Manhattan?" Upon first blush, this is just what the doctor ordered. Even if 1,000 Marines get killed in a single day in Baghdad, squeamish citizens can reflect that it's better for 1,000 people to get killed in a different country than in Times Square. After all, you don't want blood spattering on a starlet or something.
I was musing along these lines when it suddenly occurred to me: The enemy would rather fight us in Iraq, too! Think about it: Suppose you really hated the U.S. empire and wanted to kill as many U.S. soldiers as possible, but you were an unemployed goat-herder living on the outskirts of Fallujah. If the U.S. kept its men in arms stationed in secure bases in Georgia and Texas, it would be pretty hard for you to hurt them. First you'd have to stow away on a ship crossing the ocean, or save up 50 times your annual income to buy a ticket. How much more convenient it would be if the U.S. commander-in-chief ships over 100,000 such troops over to your neighborhood! |
The "wipe Israel off the map" hoax
by Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet| |
Excerpt: Did Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really threaten to "wipe Israel off the map" or is this phrase just another jingoistic brand slogan for selling the next war in the Middle East? |
We only spy on terrorists ... and protesters ...
by Ken Grandlund, Bring It On| |
Excerpt: According to documents obtained by the ACLU, at least 186 anti-war protests have been monitored by the Pentagon's domestic surveillance program, collecting nearly 3000 reports on American citizens who are neither terrorists nor doing anything illegal. In fact, the groups being actively monitored are primarily groups that are against the Bush War in Iraq. Groups like Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Military Families Speak Out. Groups filled not with berserker jihadists, but instead filled with honorable American former service members and their families. People who have fought for this country or lost family members in this stupid and ill-fated war in Iraq. |
A cost analysis of Windows
Vista content protection
by Peter Gutmann| |
Excerpt: The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.
Comment: This is well worth a read, even if you don't understand all of the technical mumbo-jumbo. Come back to it later when you have more time if you need to, but don't give up just yet. The implications are clear to most laymen, even if the details are not. To call it "evil" is an oversimplification. It's Orwellian. Phil H. PERMANENT LINK |
Love Jesus or burn forever in Hell...
by Dennis Diehl, Ezine Articles| |
Excerpt: In effect this would be the same as me, a loving parent, telling my kids, either you love your daddy, or I will kill you and not in a good or easy way. Any parent that was reported to have said this to a child would be arrested and probably loose custody of the child. But not "God." of course. Now any real God would never have such a flawed "these are the rules of love" mentality and this is more a reflection of the human who thought it up as cute or threatening, depending on the desired effect. It's also hogwash. |
My six months on right wing blogs
by Maccabee, Maccabee's diary| |
Excerpt: The carnage is the result of dead-enders, terrorists, and the press. It's the Liberals fault, it's John Kerry's fault. Also, whenever there is blame, it should also be pointed at everyone. "Everyone saw the same intelligence"...etc. You will rarely find a criticism of Bush on right-wing blogs and when you do it is filled with disclaimers. |
Checkpoint comradeship
by Amira Hass, Ha'aretz [Jerusalem, Israel]| |
Excerpt: Brigade commanders come and go, soldiers are replaced and yet, during the past two years, the reports about the distant Taysir checkpoint have remained the same: soldiers who invent harassments, waiting times way beyond what is justified, on various false excuses (one time it is construction work at the checkpoint, another time forged documents and yet another time a security warning), and reports of people who were made to pass through a different checkpoint. |
Texas hold-em
by Stephen Pizzo, Smirking Chimp| |
Excerpt: He's demanding we roll over his already defaulted loans -- demanding we make him additional loans in U.S. lives, treasure and reputation and, though he has established a nearly unbroken record of a deadbeat borrower, he wants us to accept that his new plan is a good one. We must, Texas George says, provide what he says he needs to complete his plan. And, if we refuse, he warns ominously, the resulting failure will be entirely our fault.
Comment: So much print wasted on sound and fury signifying nothing these days regarding the Bushites, so little insight offered. This article is an exception. The author has the background to make the connections between the Savings and Loan Scandal, which he wrote a great book about (Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans), and the current vast conspiracy of the Bush presidency. Herb Ruhs, MD PERMANENT LINK |
Hospice got me boinked
by Nick Wallis, The Guardian| |
Excerpt: Since I was 13 I have spent weekends at Helen House, a children's hospice in Oxford, and more recently Douglas House, a hospice for young adults. In 2004, when I was 20, I decided to broach the subject with one of the doctors whom I had known from the outset and whom I trusted. I was already aware that other people with disabilities used, for want of a better word, prostitutes, or more politely, sex workers. |
The empire turns its guns on the citizenry
by Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch| |
Excerpt: In recent years American police forces have called out SWAT teams 40,000 or more times annually. Last year did you read in your newspaper or hear on TV news of 110 hostage or terrorist events each day? No. What then were the SWAT teams doing? They were serving routine warrants to people who posed no danger to the police or to the public. |
Sen Webb rips up prepared
speech, rips Bush a new one
by Jeff Cohen, Common Dreams| |
Excerpt: The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command ... and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable -- and predicted -- disarray that has followed. |
Capitalism's hard rain
by Ben Stein, New York Times| |
Excerpt: When yeoman farmers sent their savings to banks in London and Glasgow and Paris, they had to be able to count on it not being stolen. That was what allowed capital to be accumulated and deployed, and for the entire world economy to take off.
When I see what the top dogs at all too many corporations are now doing to that trust, I feel queasy. Outrageous -- yes, obscene -- pay. Greedy backdating of stock options, which in my opinion is straight-up theft. Managers buying assets from their trustors, the stockholders, at pennies on the dollar, then forestalling competing bids with lockups and insane breakup fees.
These misdeeds and many, many more are hammer blows at the granite foundation of trust we built in the 1940s and '50s. How long democratic capitalism can survive these blows before it gives in and gives birth to revolution or to an out-and-out aristocracy, I am not sure. |
Disneyland for sociopaths
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: The basic moral judgement in US business life is, "It's only wrong if you can't get away with it." Restraint is seen as a sin of commerce. In fact, "under the law," managers of corporations are required to place "shareholder value" above all other considerations of conducting business. From this blueprint we have constructed a Disneyland for sociopaths. |
What American "democratization" has accomplished in Afghanistan and Iraq
by E13, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Iraq is in a worse situation now than it was at the time of its elections, there is still no water, electricity, jobs, or security; over 100 civilians are dying violent deaths every day, and twice as money are being wounded, but there is a draft resolution on the table giving American and British oil companies access and rights to Iraqi oil for the next 30 years. Is this going to make the life of the Iraqis better, freer, more secure? The Afghanistan election story is even worse. ... |
Wealth and power of Bill Gates
by Phil H., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Do not kid yourself. There *is* a master class and a slave class in this world. If you are concerned at all with rectangular bits of numbered paper or digits on an ATM screen that measure your worth, guess which one you belong to? |
War -- what is it good for?
by KathyFisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: You are scared to believe the truth. You don't want them knocking down your door, but the very fact that you are frightened of this means down deep you know they have too much power, they are out of control. You know what they did, but damn there's too much to give up if you admitted that they have committed crimes. |
Driving me crazy
by Michelle, WhyYouLittle| |
Excerpt: Armed with liquid courage, George continues to give new meaning to "offensive driving"; running lights and flipping off the other drivers. When asked about the highway carnage he's leaving in his wake, George says he feels bad about the deaths but insists that he really is one of those rare drivers who operates better after a few drinks, and that we just need to trust him. |
Hillary Clinton and the Israel lobby
by Joshua Frank, AntiWar| |
Comment: Hillary Clinton is owned by AIPAC. Bought and paid for, lock, stock and barrel -- She is an absolute horror show for America's hopes for peace and justice for mankind. A sociopathic prevaricator like Bush, except smart... Mr. Chuckles PERMANENT LINK |
Don't you love the smell of propaganda in the morning?
by CactusPat, CactusPat's Blog| |
Excerpt: This is propaganda 101 as practiced by the Bush Occupation. Crude and stale as it may be, it will no doubt prove marginally effective as the corporate state mediawhores are freely doling out the misinformation of the illegitimate Bush Cabal. And you thought propagandizing the public by the US government was against the law.... |
Ongoing lies of pundits and politicians
by David Sirota, San Francisco Chronicle| |
Excerpt: The president was barely bothered by reporters about why he denied he ever said "stay the course." Lieberman continues to be invited on Sunday talk shows as a credible guest discussing Iraq, and no one asks him about his hypocrisy. Meanwhile, Klein, Brooks and Cohen are still prominent news analysts for the largest publications in America, playing key roles shaping a political debate they now distort. |
Will the US become a banana republic?
by Marc Faber, LewRockwell.com| |
Excerpt: In the late 1980s, the super-rich did very well in Japan. In the mid-1990s, the super-rich creamed off all the money in Southeast Asia. Both periods were characterized by asset accumulators becoming rich and being highly leveraged. In both cases, subsequent events -- the bear market in asset prices in Japan, and the Asian crisis -- - hurt the asset shufflers the most; ordinary people, especially those living in the countryside, were hardly affected. I suppose that if you have nothing, you have little to lose! Therefore, as a contrarian bet, I would look at shorting at some point companies that have benefited the most from the shift in wealth from the masses to the asset shufflers. Such a list would obviously include luxury retailers, the brokerage industry, asset management companies, and custody banks, all of which either arranged or benefited from this transfer of wealth and the asset inflation. |
What $1.2-trillion can buy
by David Leonhardt, New York Times| |
Excerpt: In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so. |
Stand up against the surge
by Molly Ivins, syndicated columnist| |
Excerpt: We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on January 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"
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Your cellphone is more powerful than you probably know
by Andrew Kantor, USA Today| |
Excerpt: Like most people, I suspect, I hadn't considered that a turned-off phone could be used to listen to me. (Note to self: Remove batteries before discussing you-kn0w-what with you-know-who.) And I would have liked to believe the Feds would require some oversight before demanding to know where I am at any moment. But things, we're told, are different now. It's for our own good.
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First bomb Carter; then nuke Iran!
by Alex Cockburn, CounterPunch| |
Excerpt: For weeks now the Israeli lobby has hurled its legions into battle against former President Jimmy Carter. He has been stigmatized as an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, a patron of former concentration camp killers, a Christian madman, a pawn of the Arabs who "flatly condones mass murder" of Israeli Jews. (This last was from Murdoch's New York Post editorial, relayed to its mailing list by the Zionist Organization of America.)
Any day now I expect some janitors at the Carter Center to resign, declaring that they can no longer in all conscience mop bathrooms that might have been used by the former President, their letter of protest duly front-paged by the New York Times, just like the famous fourteen members of the Carter Center's Board of Councilors. Actually there were, at the time of resignations, 224 people on this board, where membership is mostly a thank you for a financial donation to the center. So the headlines could be saying, "Nearly 95 per cent of Carter Center Board Members Back Former President." |
I hate to say Bush is right about anything, but ...
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: What goes around comes around. We should consider ourselves lucky to eventually suffer anything less than complete annihilation at the hands of the rest of the world for the crimes America has participated in. |
Bush the liar and unfortunately still the decider
by Leon Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: The Bush Administration, posing as the legitimately-elected government of the People, is a criminal entity which has seized and maintained power through the manipulation of two national elections in order to carry out an agenda based on the Project for the New American Century, the blueprint for American and Israeli hegemony over the oil producing nations of the Middle East. |
Poverty is coming to town
by Mr. Chuckles, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Nickels and dimes add up really fast when you're on a budget. And when Dented Cans, Inc. and Big Lots raise their prices, the poor have no alternative. There is no place lower, and no more down to go -- except food banks and dumpster diving. |
Bipartisan crimes against humanity
by Leon Fisher, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: This substantial reinforcement of American forces, especially that of another carrier battle group, will add significant weight to an attack upon Iran and Syria, and is undeniable proof of their intent to expand the war. Bush and the Zionists must be stopped before this new scenario unfolds. |
Impeachment: Hurry up! Here's why...
by Pavel C., Unknown News| |
Excerpt: Bush doesn't see that he is creating his own failures. He thinks that all this is someone else's fault. And he is emotionally lashing out, using the American military as a substitute for facing reality. He is in denial, still thinking he has a chance to redeem everything by continuing as before. |
The coming third front in Bush's war
by The Canadian, Unknown News| |
Excerpt: There is nothing more dangerous than a zealot, be they Persian, Arab, Israeli or American Fundamentalist Christian. The US has re-elected a man more dangerous than I had anticipated. |
Once more, unto the breach of trust
by Bill Brent, The Adventures of LitBoy| |
Excerpt: Well, once again, my uncanny sense of timing proves itself. Within 72 hours of setting up this ironically titled blog, I learned that Advanced Marketing Services, and its subsidiary, Publishers Group West, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. You can read about this at MediaBistro.com. If I understand correctly, this means that about 150 PGW-distributed independent publishers will probably never get their money for three months' worth of book sales during one of the year's busiest seasons. That means the writers of those books will most likely never get their money, either. |
Is Baghdad burning?
by Stan Goff, TruthDig| |
Excerpt: The surge plan is a painfully twisted military option, but what is twisting it is not well understood. Stability in Iraq could be achieved relatively easily, even now, in conjunction with a precipitous redeployment of Anglo- American military forces. The strange attractor -- strange mostly because the media never mention it -- is Iraq's "first postwar draft hydrocarbon law," which would "set up a committee consisting of highly qualified experts to speed up the process of issuing tenders and signing contracts with international oil companies to develop Iraq's untapped oilfields." This law, which is tantamount to privatization with an Anglo-American franchise in perpetuity, is the bottom line for the U.S., as evidenced by the fact that this is the one, absolute, bottom-line point of agreement between the Bush administration and the so-called Iraq Study Group. The rhetorical scuffle between these two entities is not the what, but the how. |
Forget net neutrality: Keep packets private
by Daniel Berninger, GigaOM| |
Excerpt: Moving from the Internet, where a packet-is-a-packet, to something that looks suspiciously like the 20th century telephone network requires remarrying the content and connectivity that TCP/IP divorced. It requires deep packet inspection. It requires looking at the content of communication. |
There are Klingons in the White House
by Rep David Wu (D-Oregon) VIDEO | |
Rep David Wu's speech in Congress: "Four years ago, this administ |
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