Most probable Bush response: "Build more prisons!"

. . . but hope is on the way, baby! (not being facetious, I think that and the following help is on the way are great phrases and tap into a deep American unease that's been building for about three and half years now about where the US is going . . . )

Good lesson in doublespeak: 'working forest' goes down but what if they had used the oh-so Opposite Day phrase "Healthy Forests Initiative" as Bush is doing?

Speaking of, a catalog of the Bush admin saying one thing and doing the opposite would be a handy thing, don't you think? We can put it all together and truthfully allege an ongoing campaign of perhaps the most elemental step in their propaganda campaign: have a bowel movement on an old lady or child and call it "bestowing freedom," i.e. Step two would be to release said "bestowing freedom" phrase to the vast right-wing media (using the now well known phrase talking points memo), and repeat, repeat, repeat (see Goebbels). Voila: people who are not millionaires actually vote for you to make their air and water dirtier, their economic situations grimmer, and even to get their kid brutally slaughtered in a senseless war overseas.

Ain't propaganda great?

The Bush administration yesterday made it easier for the government to approve pesticides used by farmers and homeowners, saying it no longer would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to first consult other federal agencies to determine whether a product could harm endangered species.

The change affects federal regulations that carry out the Endangered Species Act, a law that protects about 1,200 threatened animals and plants. [more]

In its second report to Congress, the inspector general's office for the occupation authority that ruled Iraq until recently found significant cases of mismanagement, fraud, missing paperwork and manipulation in the awarding of contracts using millions of dollars of U.S. and Iraqi funds.

The Coalition Provisional Authority inspector general audit, to be released today, uncovered cases of abuse by officials of the occupation government. The report does not name names, but the inspector general's office said its work has resulted in 69 criminal investigations. Forty-two have been closed or sent to other investigative agencies and an additional 27 are still open. [more]

I assume these investigations target the little guys and/or designated fall guys . . . let's see Dick Cheny on that list, currently VP of the US, but concurrently serving as the Honorary President of Evil Scumbags everywhere.

Let's recap this man, shall we? (No offense to actual men out there when I call Dick a man, rest assured.) Dick voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, and "opposed sanctions against the apartheid-era South Africa in the mid-1980s along with voting against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela; voted for a constitutional amendment to ban school busing; voted against Head Start; and voted against extending the Clean Water Act in 1987.

"Mr. Cheney is still drawing a $1,000,000 per year paycheck from Halliburton while serving as the Vice President." [source]

Luckily, we have a self-proclaimed proxy for Dick currently trolling our comments section. Perhaps he can elucidate us as to why being against the Equal Rights Amendment is not anti-women, how being pro-Apartheid and anti-Mandela is not racist, and how being against Clean Water for all Americans is a good thing?

Does Wal-Mart employee health insurance cover that?

. . . who else ran with it? Libertythink.com . . .

"In a new study of media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a group of American college students was asked, 'Who is occupying the occupied territories, and what nationality are the settlers?' Fairly simple questions, but only 29 percent knew the correct answers. The Israelis are both the occupiers and the settlers.

"The study points out that the Americans questioned were journalism and media students and some had even done projects on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. So their answers clearly overstated the public’s level of knowledge about the Middle East." [more]

. . . meds, the belief God is talking to you, a complete lack of compassion for anyone but your own circle of elites, the curiousity of a piece of coral . . . this is a bad combination of qualities for any man, much less the President. Is this the best America can do?

Despite what you're hearing from Boston this week, James Ridgeway of the Village Voice says there's little difference between the policy platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties this election year.

Bring your bodyguards, Mike. Those neocons are some crazy, violent, knuckleheaded types.

(propagate this phrase. . . . Defeat their language-twisting with our own Clarity in Progressive Language Acceleration . . . )

Who is this guy?

When I become president (at least of a fiction novel), I will create and set up a new department: the Department of Visionaries.

So, I was watching the Democratic Convention tonite when I came up with this: how soon until the politiks hire the writers of sci-fi? Ron Reagan talks about becoming diagnosed with Parkinsons, getting some cells taken out of your arm, and then getting a cure. “The future of science,” he declared.

I don’t remember what it was that Theresa Heinz said that got me into a futuristic mood--perhaps it was her mastery of 5 languages, perhaps it was her life on another continent before being transplanted here, or maybe it was her early recollections of the birth of the civil rights movement in Africa and the subsequent jailing of Nelson Mandela (whom Dick “Go Fuck Yourself” Cheney voted against releasing from prison, which is indefensible, and one of the many questions I would like to see him asked by Edwards or anybody coming up).

But when watching Heinz and her langorous, sexily-exotic lilt, I suddenly imagined her talking about bridges of light . . . or somesuch.

Maybe it was all their talk of the future--I was craving the images to back that up, and who better to do that than our present day visionaries--also known as sci-fi writers?

So I imagined a Department of Visionaries, but immediately knew there would have to be some ground rules set up: number one, these visions will be based on imagination and science.

For it wasn’t the snakecharmer that invented air conditioning. And it wasn’t the anti-medicine sect that created the plane. And it wasn’t the bare-breasted-statue-covering-up-cult that gave us the Enlightenment.

When is it going to be politically feasible to get up in front of the American people and say that you don’t base your cosmology on ancient myths? I was thinking I would run for office if only to be the first politician who didn’t end every speech with “God Bless America.” If there is a God--which I doubt--why would he (he?) only Bless America? (As many others have rightfully pointed out?) “Our God has blessed us to drive SUVs and eat at Cow-Corpse King so starve and walk ya third world unblessed chumps!”

But back to the Department . . . who would be the architect? Perhaps the designer of this?:

Who would head it? Him?:



Who would populate it? Him?:


Him?:

And her?:

[for we need the poets, too!]

In the Department of Visionaries, everyone knows that religion is a metaphor--thus not based solely on fact. In the Department of Visionaries, there is only one race: the human race, and the betterment of everyone is widely understood to be beneficial for us all.

Etc.

Unify, coalesce and organize.

Inspire, create and enjoy.

Friends, Americans, Earthlings . . .

I’m Dr. Menlo, and I approve of this message.

Eris Bless You . . .

And Eris Bless Everyone!

"Last night, I had my first direct experience with the so-called free speech zone. It left me with one conclusion: whatever you do, do NOT go inside. It’s not only a blatant offense to free speech, but also highly dangerous and unsafe. I would suggest protesting anywhere in Boston but inside of it.

"No amount of hyperbole can accurately describe how disastrous the interior actually is. It’s like a scene from some post-apocalyptic movie -– a futuristic, industrial detention area from a Mad Max film. You are surrounded on all sides by concrete blocks and steel fencing, with razor wire lining the perimeter. Then, there is a giant black net over the entire space."

Some Cold War nostalgia relevant to today.

Where does your community, state and nation stand on these scales?

(This is so stupid, I had to post it)

BEIJING (Reuters) - Iraq's footballers have brought a ray of hope to their war-ravaged country with their amazing run to the Asian Cup quarter-finals.

Simply qualifying for the tournament had been traumatic enough for Iraq, forced to play their qualifying games in neutral Jordan and share a training pitch with grazing sheep in Baghdad.

To add insult to injury, German coach Bernd Stange quit before the Asian Cup, saying he feared for his life amid the escalating violence in the country.

But cash-strapped Iraq have made a mockery of their problems, beating Saudi Arabia 2-1 in Chengdu on Monday to set up a quarter-final clash with hosts China.

1. A term first coined by security technologist Bruce Schneier in his book 'Beyond Fear' to describe what generally passes for 'security' these days -- namely, presenting the appearance and reassuring illusion of security (or improved security) despite however ineffective such postures might seem to those who know what real security is all about. 2. A favored approach to security by the United States government, even after September 11.

Key 23, a new occulture group blog from Mad Ghoul, Sauceruney, Wes, Mindwarp, LVX23 and me, launched today. From Michael's history of the project:

What is Key 23? Key 23 comes from author Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles graphic novel. Originally termed Key 17, and then remonikered with the 23 later in the series, Key 23 is a chemical substance that forces the person under it’s influence to confuse words with the concepts that they represent, ultimately leading to a blurry line between reality and the written word.

That is our attempt here: to blur consensus reality with the concepts and ideas that you’ll be reading about… and we’ve assembled a team like no other to accomplish this task.

The journalist that said, "There's a lot of confusion. It doesn't seem like anyone knows what's going on." has said something very revealing and quite accurate. It is also something that I have been saying now for weeks prior to the convention.

The FBI warnings about an unconfirmed threat targeting the media was bogus, and was just a way to get the media to shut-up about, to stop complaining about, and stop reporting on, the weak security at the convention. Essentially the government is trying to convince them that they could save their own butts by being silent. Sadly, by journalists being cowed into not reporting on the problems with bad security, they are allowing the government to get away with ridiculously poor security, which in turn is actually increasing the threat to the journalists' safety.

The "emergency call" in Hyde Park cited [in the article linked above] was bogus, and is a well known tactic used by law enforcement when they want to search someone/something but lack a proper search warrant, or probable cause. Simply put, an "anonymous person" (usually another cop) calls in an emergency to 911, the police show up and, under the guise of "the emergency," try to enter the premises. When and if the "victims" refuse to admit the police they forcibly enter (often with guns drawn) and search the premises in violation of the law.

Amid new reports of abuses by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi and other detainees, a major survey of U.S. public attitudes shows strong opposition to torture and many of the other more-coercive methods that were authorized under some circumstances by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and used against prisoners held by U.S. forces.

The survey, conducted by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), found that 66 percent of the U.S. believe that "governments should never use physical torture" and that 60 percent believe that all captured individuals should have the right to appeal their status to a neutral judge, even if they are not conventional soldiers as defined by the Geneva Conventions.

from OneWorld

Senator John Kerry is a pro-choice candidate. For that reason, Catholic bishops such as Robert Vasa say they would deny communion to Kerry if he were to ask them for it. Why would Bishop Vasa deny communion to Kerry? Because he was ordered to do so by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who in turn was acting on orders from the Vatican. Ratzinger, now there's a name that's hard to forget... where have I heard that name before... oh yes, he was the one who confirmed that as recently as 2001 the Vatican order titled Crimine Solicitaciones was still in effect. The Crimine Solicitaciones, personally approved by the Pope in 1962, made it Roman Catholic policy to cover up child abuse among the clergy by moving them to different parishes. As rotten as this is for the abused and those who trusted the clergy, don't think for a minute that it is the religionists who will pick up the tab for their crimes. Bishop Vasa works his trade in Oregon, where a parish has just declared bankruptcy (miraculously, this will prevent any further child abuse claims showing up in court and get them out of paying anything further). Seven thousand native Canadians were abused by clergy, and the government (ie taxpayers) paid the fines. The government of Ireland (ie taxpayers) shelled out billions to pay the fines for abuse that the religionists said they couldn't pay.

So there seems to be a pattern here: ass rape all the little boys you want all over the world, get Uncle Sam (or somebody else, any body else) to pay the fines, don't pay taxes and keep all the magic cookies for yourself. Praise the Lord!

The President of the United States has once again claimed that he is the messenger of God. When you've got God on your side, you can do anything and anything you do is right - and any criticism is a criticism of God, now isn't it? Little wonder that clergy across the US feel like with their boy in office they can do anything they want, including risk their own tax exempt status, openly, because they have God on their side. They even deny the magic cookie to politicians who don't fall in line. What is this religion business good for anyway? Canada had to ammend its hate speech laws to accodate religious hate speech, and England may do the same (see here and here and here and here and here and here and here for why). It's a tough call to say whether the politicians are using religion or religion is using politics - probably some of both - but while we may be stuck with government for a while there's no reason to not keep chipping away at the ossified corpse of religion with the tools of reason and compassion.

Wow. What I meant to be just a quick response ended up being a rant.

I have mixed feelings about thisAlterNet excerpt from Jim Hightower's new book

Hightower emphasizes that the largest number of job gains between now and 2010 are in unskilled, low paying fields. He doesn't note that most of the jobs lost to date, and most of the jobs that will be lost during the same period are also low skilled jobs.

This is one of the major problems: people are coming out of relatively high paying but low skill jobs to low paying low skill jobs.

This problem is compounded by the wage drop due to wages increasing at a slower pace than inflation.

This is a big problem, and it's leading to new labor unions. And part of the solution will most likely involve higher minimum wages.

What irks me is that Hightower implies that job training won't be important, especially since as far as Hightower's concerned, the economy's problem is the lack of high tech jobs. In the excerpt Hightower cites the BLS' 30 Occupations Adding the Most Jobs by 2010 report. Perhaps Tower is working from a different list from the one I found, but the list I found has registered nurses, postsecondary teachers, retail salespersons, and customer service representatives above "Combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food." At any rate, he's right that over 2/3 the jobs on the list require minimal skills. [update: I think I must be looking at a different one from him, because the one I'm looking at goes to 2012 not 2010]

But he ignores the fastest growing jobs. More than 2/3s of the jobs on this list require specialized training. Almost all of them are in technology, health care, or education. And, depending how you count, about 2/3s of them can't be offshored. At least one of these jobs, nursing, is already surfering from major shortages. So, the problems: people need to be able to afford to take the time off to train or re-train for these positions, pay for the training when necessary, people need to be motivated to re-train rather than wait around for jobs that will never come back, and there needs to be funding for the jobs once people are trained. So there needs to be money for health care, education, and social service programs. This money can come from taxes on corporations who off-shore mass amounts of employment services.

One thing that needs to happen is that public education needs to better prepare students for a constantly changing labor market. Remember, public education was designed to prepare an elite group of students for college and the rest for factory work (President Woodrow Wilson: "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."). Schools seem to set people up for failure. The school system does not provide students with the confidence and basic learning skills to adapt to changing demands. Even the "go to college" mantra repeated in high schools is detrimental: it gives students the idea that all they have to do is go to college and everything will be fine, and it damages the confidence of students who don't go to college or think they aren't smart enough.

Welfare and social services don't do any better with adults, and college and universities could be greatly improved to enhance students ability to cope with the job market.

Anyway, I could ramble more about this, but I don't have time. I'd also like to talk about starting new businesses and stuff. Some other time, I guess.

"After launching two wars, President Bush said on Tuesday he wanted to be a 'peace president' and took swipes at his Democratic rivals for being lawyers and weak on defense."

(Crossposted to Warblogger Watch)

I haven't posted here in a while because, like other commentators I suspect, I have more important things to do than critique the obvious failings of the worst intellectuals of our time. And I don't miss the clueless often nameless Aussie commentators ("'ealth care is free in Amurica by crikey...you scum!") who defend them. In fact, after the Dean debacle, I decided to get away from the keyboard and do something hard and difficult for political change in America.

I've joined the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, which consists of the NAACP/ACORN/ACT/MOVE On and a dozen other groups and I register voters door to door and on busy streets when I get a spare moment. I do it six days a week. I left my job selling Dell computers to do this. And if you're wondering about what's wrong with the American economy, I make more money working for the non profit.    I actually wrote about this in my newest column for Better Humans. Excerpted here:    

Today, I'm back at it in Pittsburgh, knocking on doors and asking people if they're registered to vote. You might ask yourself what this has to do with the transhumanist dream, where we live out our lives in fusion-driven Betterhumans space habitats, whiling away our several century lifespan seeking to understand every allusion and reference in the works of Joyce or Alan Moore, or actively partaking in the terraforming of Venus or Titan, or even studying up on that hot new personal genomic cosmetic item, the black rhino horn, grown wherever you like, with accessories.
 
The answer is that unless transhumanists think seriously about politics and self-promotion, this vision will always remain an interesting dream and not a reality. In fact, not only will you have to work for such a future—a future with real self-determination, no wage slavery and more than a vote every two or four years when all the real issues have already been settled—you will have to fight for it. And most likely, your opposition will be violently stupid people who refuse to give up what Carl Sagan described as the "demon-haunted world" and the obligatory yet soothing bliss stations—an eternity with Jesus and departed loved ones or Allah's 40 virgins—that go along with it.  

Right on, eh?

First, a bit of thanks to Doc Menlo for mentioning my interview with RU Sirius over at Better Humans.  Luckily, I'm a pervert, and I'm always looking at Sensual Liberation Army for my latest masturba-, uh, "intelligent" reading. (Nice touch with you adding the politics to the sex. Note to self: Immediately steal this idea, porn + politics = Gold...)  

James Hughes, the guy behind the great Changesurfer Radio show, also interviews RU Sirius right here. It's in two parts so scroll and download appropriately. Actually, if you haven't heard Changesurfer, you might want to check out all of the recent shows.

And last but not least, there's a new issue or RU's Neofiles that just came out. It features interviews with main extroprian guy Max Moore, and other goodies.

Haven't seen this film, but a friend of mine recommends it highly. Here's a synopsis:

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire examines how a radical fringe of the Republican Party used the trauma of the 9/11 terror attacks to advance a pre-existing agenda to radically transform American foreign policy while rolling back civil liberties and social programs at home.

The documentary places the Bush Administration's false justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neoconservatives to dramatically increase military spending in the wake of the Cold War, and to expand American power globally by means of military force.

At the same time, the documentary argues that the Bush Administration has sold this radical and controversial plan for aggressive American military intervention by deliberately manipulating intelligence, political imagery, and the fears of the American people after 9/11.

Narrated by Julian Bond, Hijacking Catastrophe features interviews with more than twenty prominent political observers, including Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who witnessed first-hand how the Bush Administration set up a sophisticated propaganda operation to link the anxieties generated by 9/11 to a pre-existing foreign policy agenda that included a preemptive war on Iraq.

Joining Kwiatkowski in a wide-ranging, accessible, and ultimately empowering analysis are former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin, defense policy analyst William Hartung, author Chalmers Johnson, Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff (Ret.).

At its core, the film places the deceptions of the Bush Administration within the larger frame of questions seldom posed in the mainstream: What, exactly, is the agenda that drove the administration's pre-war deceptions? How is 9/11 being used to sell this agenda? And what are the stakes for America, Americans, and the world if this agenda succeeds in being fully implemented during a second Bush term? [more]

And here's the trailer.

We now know that the public was misled over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But have we also been misled over the even more emotive issue of Iraq's mass graves. [more]

Presumably, we're talking about those "bad" mass graves, not the "good" ones...

...which I linked to while reading through this Cryptome piece on the seemingly shoddy security measures in place (a few days ago) around The Fleet Center.

It's time for me to put an end to all the "will Bush dump Cheney from the GOP ticket" speculation:

Dick's The Ticket
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Dick Cheney's Halliburton teamed
With evil axis, mad regimes,
To make big bucks while Dick was CEO.

Now Cheney lies and feigns and schemes,
With haughty self-regard extreme.
His pompous air and bluster's quite the pose.

The rest of Dick's" The Ticket is here.

[Reader's Digest Hyper-Abridged Summary (American Samizdat Mix)]

I'm something an American rightwing pundit or politician once said or wrote.

I'm an excerpt from an important book some social scientist or historian wrote.

You get to draw your own conclusions.

As you may already know, one of America's two political parties is extremely religious. Sixty-one percent of this party's voters say they pray daily or more often. An astounding 92 percent of them believe in life after death. And there's a hard-core subgroup in this party of super-religious Christian zealots. Very conservative on gay marriage, half of the members of this subgroup believe Bush uses too little religious rhetoric, and 51 percent of them believe God gave Israel to the Jews and that its existence fulfills the prophecy about the second coming of Jesus.

Liberals could read these statistics and sneer about "those silly Republicans" were it not for the fact that it's the Democrats who hold these beliefs. And the abovementioned ultrareligious subgroup is not the so-called "Religious Right" but rather the so-called "African-Americans."

Really, I think this just goes to show how easy it should be to sell the religious on the Democratic Party.

Via Mindwarp

Good stuff via New World Disorder:

People at universities have formed groups and done a few weird things, like confronting David Horowitz, the right wing provocateur. Students all over the country tend to confront him and interrupt his talks, which gives him the edge, because he can claim the banner of free speech and so forth. So some people associated with the Revolution Party at Miami University, instead of doing that, celebrated his right to free speech, and carried on in a way that would subvert his message by seeming to support it. It kind of blew his circuits.

[...]

I'm sure there's plenty of fun to be had for people who want to pretend to be Bush supporters. If you want to show up at places where Bush is speaking, and carry signs that don't quite give you away, so that they let you into the area where other people are carrying signs, signs that seem pro-Bush but subvert the message - something that will create an element of doubt in people who happen to see your sign broadcast on TV, that kind of thing. So, I think infiltration is probably the best technique for having some fun with this election. Actually, there is going to be a yippie presence at the Republican Convention in New York in August.

“Are you all right with that?” Gore fumes, “With the president saying that mercury shouldn’t be treated as a hazardous air pollutant?” The audience responds with a resounding No. “Are you all right with that—the country’s worst polluters getting off the hook while you and I pay? Are you all right with that—the EPA being stripped of its ability to protect our air and water?” More No’s abound. “These are not small shifts in policy,” Gore continues, buoyed by the crowd, “They are radical changes that reverse a century of American policy designed to protect our natural resources!” The crowd stands to deliver furious applause. [more]

More mercury in the air . . . so hipublican, man! Yea!

"Malpractice costs are a fraction of 1 percent of all health-care costs. By contrast, prescription drugs are 16 percent of health costs. If Mr. Cheney and the Bush Administration wanted to lower health care costs, they would have permitted the government to bulk purchase prescription drugs for Medicare recipients. Limiting what innocent victims collect from wrongdoers cannot have an impact on health care premiums. Only curbing the greed of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries can make a real difference, but those industries are among biggest campaign donors on the hill." [more]

"I trace the current outbreak of droidlike conformity to the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when groupthink became the official substitute for patriotism, and we began to run out of surfaces for affixing American flags. Bill Maher lost his job for pointing out that, whatever else they were, the 9/11 terrorists weren't cowards, prompting Ari Fleischer to warn (though he has since backed down) that Americans 'need to watch what they say.' Never mind that Sun Tzu says, somewhere in his oeuvre, that while it's soothing to underestimate the enemy, it's often fatal, too...

"Societies throughout history have recognized the hazards of groupthink and made arrangements to guard against it. The shaman, the wise woman and similar figures all represent institutionalized outlets for alternative points of view. In the European carnival tradition, a 'king of fools' was permitted to mock the authorities, at least for a day or two. In some cultures, people resorted to vision quests or hallucinogens -- anything to get out of the box. Because, while the capacity for groupthink is an endearing part of our legacy as social animals, it's also a common precondition for self-destruction."

Barbara Ehrenreich, "All Together Now"

so speaketh the the magpie

Ohio Voter Purge --by Steven Monroe:

I noticed that one of the most critical counties in President [sic] Bush's re-[s]election efforts in Ohio, Hamilton County (Cincinnati), had a dramatic decrease in the voter rolls. It went from over 585,000 in 2000 to 519,048 today. I sent an email to the elections board in Hamilton County and received the following explanation for the decrease.

Note that over 105,000 voters were purged because they had not voted in 4 years, including 2 federal election cycles.

In 2000, 11,651 registrations were canceled because of move out of the county, death or felony conviction.

In 2001, 22,157 registrations were canceled because of move out of the county, death or felony conviction. 70,804 registrations were canceled because of inactivity (not voting in four years including two federal elections).

In 2002, 19,126 registrations were canceled because of move out of the county, death or felony conviction. 949 registrations were canceled because of inactivity.

In 2003, 12,525 registrations were canceled because of move out of the county, death or felony conviction. 35,824 registrations were canceled because of inactivity.

In 2004, 4,560 registrations were canceled because of move out of the county, death or felony conviction (as of June 30).

Something our otherwise astute friend seems to have missed, from the Department of Justice website:

The NVRA places limitations on removal of voters from registration lists, specifically prohibiting purges for not voting, and allows voters to be removed from the registration rolls only at their request, because of criminal convictions, death or mental incapacity, or due to a change of address (provided that particular safeguards are followed). The NVRA also provides additional safeguards under which registered voters would be able to vote notwithstanding minor technical problems (voters who move within a district or a precinct will retain the right to vote even if they have not re-registered at their new address).

Not only is this voter purge questionable, it seems to be pretty damned illegal, too.

As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate's public-address system and cued up the infamous "Seven Minutes of Funk" break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be described as a "take no prisoners" freestyle rap battle.

Most of the rhymes kicked therein cannot be quoted in a family publication, but observers gave Mr. Cheney credit for his deceptively laid-back flow. Mr. Leahy was applauded for managing to rhyme the phrases "unethical for certain," "crude oil spurtin'," and "like Halliburton."

The United States is a nation secular by default. But that doesn't stop people on either side of the wall of separation between state and superstition from trying to tunnel through to each other. The First District Court of Appeal in Florida takes an average of ten months to resolve an appeal, with only six out of 3,500 appeals more than six months old. But strangely, the challenge to Florida's voucher law (which provides public funds to religious organizations) was filed in August 2002 and the appeal is still pending. And while the Reverend Jerry Fallwell continues to enjoy the tax-exempt status of the organizations he leads, he does not feel compelled to refrain from partisan endorsement of President George Bush - in direct violation of the laws governing tax-exempt organizations. Whether it be a friendly court providing a wink and a nod to the faithful, or a religious group assuming political power, the threats to this secular nation are grave. Is it perhaps time to at last use our reason and our laughter to chase away these tellers of ghost stories? Or do we need more airplanes flown into buildings, more Presidents lead by providence, before we can stand up to religion?

H. L. Menkin, in his coverage of the Scopes monkey trial, wrote: "True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can't disarm their enemy."

. . . can they really be this stupid?

"'I know in my heart what the truth is,' Smith says. 'Taser hasn't killed any of these people.'"

Who needs coroner's reports when you know in your heart what the truth is? Sound familiar?

Scattered thoughts from a scattered brain . . .

So Iran's the one, now, huh? Betcha Wolfowitz is bloody drooling all over his damn se'f. Baghdad is bad, but Teheran gonna be unimaginable . . . nuke's 'n' all . . .

"Grrrly boys", eh, Awnuld?? Fuck you . . .

Are people in communities around military bases in the US at all  prepared for what's gonna happen when (if?) thousands of battle-whacked boys and girls come back home? . . .

Come what may in November, we're gonna be VERY sorry we didn't stick with Howard Dean. And I'm pissed! I'm pissed at him  for rolling up the show when it got bumpy; and pissed at myself for succumbing so early to the DNC's crap-'n'-flush . . .

If imperial war is the most evident generator of "terrorism", isn't making "war on terrorism" just about the most . . . aahhhhhfuggedaboudit . . .

This makes me dizzy: when it comes right down to it, in the post-capitalist world, wars are fought mainly because there's profit in it. Billions/trillions are passing from the common people through the "government" cash converter into the pockets of the warmakers so they may make their wars to make profit by protecting their profit. This is not "free-market" capitalism, because all the killing and destruction make less  markets, not more. So . . .how do we make peace more profitable than war?

_________________________________
There's still time (about 24 hours) to enter the ddjangoWIrE ChALLenGe for this week. Don't miss it!!!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Be at peace

What would happen if a Palestinian terrorist were to detonate a bomb at the entrance to an apartment building in Israel and cause the death of an elderly man in a wheelchair, who would later be found buried under the rubble of the building? The country would be profoundly shocked. Everyone would talk about the sickening cruelty of the act and its perpetrators. The shock would be even greater if it then turned out that the dead man's wife had tried to dissuade the terrorist from blowing up the house, telling him that there were people inside, but to no avail. The tabloids would come out with the usual screaming headline: "Buried alive in his wheelchair." The terrorists would be branded "animals."

Last Monday, Israel Defense Forces bulldozers in Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, demolished the home of Ibrahim Halfalla, a 75-year-old disabled man and father of seven, and buried him alive. Umm-Basel, his wife, says she tried to stop the driver of the heavy machine by shouting, but he paid her no heed. The IDF termed the act "a mistake that shouldn't have happened," and the incident was noted in passing in Israel. The country's largest-circulation paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, didn't bother to run the story at all. The blood libel in France - a woman's tale of being subjected to an anti-Semitic attack, which later turned out to be fiction - proved a great deal more upsetting to people. There we thought the assault was aimed against our people. But when the IDF bulldozes a disabled Palestinian to death? Not a story. Just like the killing, under the rubble of her home, of Noha Maqadama, a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy, before the eyes of her husband and children, in El Boureij refugee camp a few months earlier. [more]

. . . Maybe she can get some work over in Iraq, I hear we're installing "freedom of speech" over there at the point of a barrel . . .

PRESIDENT George Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.

Bush named Iran as part of the Axis of Evil along with North Korea and Iraq almost three years ago. A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership.

The official said: “If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran.” [more]

Now, we here at the Samizdat, of course, have known for a while that Iran and Syria were next on the Bush admin's Hit List . . . but which type of leak is this? Four More Wars: Confirmed!

. . . someone on Air America--I don't remember who--recently voiced an idea I've had since participating in the original 1999 WTO protests in Seattle: Wear Suits! Talking to the Bush/Operation Enduring War (Mass Murder)/Operation Enduring Caryle Group-Halliburton Profits protestors, y'understand: Wear Suits! Nothing would confuse the Fox propagandists et al. more . . . it would be especially (ahem) suitable when confronting these young fascist punks. They can have their Brooks Brothers; we'll take Prada.

(or wearing the most humanist uniform of all, would also be nice . . . )

Troops, returning home with untreated and little-understood mental health issues, put themselves and their families at risk for suicide and domestic violence, experts say. Twenty-three U.S. troops in Iraq took their lives last year, according to the Defense Department — an unusually high number, one official acknowledged.

On patrol, however, all that is available is talk.

"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill," Hall says. "It's like it pounds at my brain. I'll figure out how to deal with it when I get home." [more]

Stephen Zunes explores the unusual alliances behind U.S. policy in the Middle East, particularly towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"A watchdog group has removed documents from its website that detail military research into knockout gases similar to the one used in the deadly 2002 Moscow theater siege after the Marine Corps warned they could pose a threat to Defense Department employees.

"The group, the Sunshine Project, claims the documents indicate that early 1990s Army research into knockout gases, which was canceled because of the Chemical Weapons Convention, was revived by the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate in the early 2000s.

"The Sunshine Project posted an e-mail on its site Thursday from Zachary J. Stewart, a lawyer with the Marine Corps Systems Command, saying the three documents were inadvertently sent to the group after it requested them through the Freedom of Information Act."

After absorbing nearly half of humankind's industrial emissions of carbon dioxide for the past 200 years or so, the Earth's oceans are becoming more acidic -- a chemical change that could significantly harm sea life and speed up global warming. [more]

Ralph Nader brought his independent campaign for president to a San Francisco rally Friday night and warned nervous Democrats that he's in the race to stay.

"I want to beat Bush, and I don't want to rely on the Democratic Party," he said in an interview Friday with the Chronicle. "The Democrats have become very good at electing very bad Republicans."

Nader promises to shift the nation's tax burden "from work to the wealthy,'' revising the system so that businesses, investors and the rich pay more. He would boost taxes on capital gains and dividends and repeal Bush's tax cuts.

He would increase the federal minimum wage to $8.20 an hour from the current $5.15 and quickly move it to $10. Nader also backs a universal health care plan and vowed to remove all U.S. forces from Iraq in six months, which he calls the most important issue in the 2004 election.

Nader also wants to change the election system, calling for public funding of campaigns, same-day voter registration, free television time for qualified candidates, instant runoff voting and proportional representation in Congress for minor parties.

And this is what I want. The last time I had to declare party affiliation, I chose Green. So why do I feel frustrated with Nader's position/role in the federal process? Have I been seduced by the spoiler hype?

The Army dropped legal actions against Staff Sergeant Georg-Andreas Pogany who was arrested and charged with cowardice in Iraq last year when he had a panic attack upon seeing a dead body. The charges were apparently dropped because an Army malaria drug made Pogany sick. This according to a report by UPI. He is one of 11 service members diagnosed in the past few weeks with damage to the brainstem and vestibular, or balance, system after being given mefloquine while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. A number of soldiers from Pogany's base in Fort Carson, Colorado say the drug caused severe mental and physical problems -- including suicidal feelings and homicidal rage. The Army developed mefloquine, also known as Lariam, in the 1970s and it was cleared for use in the United States in 1989. It has been taken by 5 million Americans.

I looked into this a bit when I prepared to go to Mali in 2000. The incidence of severe side effects is higher in women, by something like 3 or 4 to one, if memory serves.

I noted that the cowardice charge can be punishable by death, which reminded me of the actual focus of the New Yorker article to which I linked yesterday:

"In 1947, in a slim volume entitled 'Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War,' S.L.A. Marshall took the military by surprise. Throughout the war, he declared, only about fifteen per cent of American riflemen in combat had fired at the enemy. One lieutenant colonel complained to Marshall that four days after the desperate struggle on Omaha Beach he couldn't get one man in 25 to voluntarily fire his rifle. 'I walked up and down the line yelling, "God damn it! Start shooting!" But it did little good.'

"These men weren't cowards. They would hold their positions and willingly perform such tasks as delivering ammunition to machine guns. They simply couldn't bring themselves to aim a rifle at another human being -- even an armed foe -- and pull the trigger. 'Fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure in the individual,' Marshall wrote. 'At the vital point, he becomes a conscientious objector.'"

I recommend naming the bills designed to fight this the "Economic Patriot Bill." When advocating, repeat the phrase, "Rebuild America First."

"I will never allow any other country to veto what we need to do, and I will never allow any other institution to veto what we need to do to protect our nation."

- JFK 2.0, "Kerry Backs Much of Pre-Emption Doctrine"

I read the intro to a news story that highlighted the role that values have begun to play in the federal election. I didn't read the piece because the values that candidates speak of are often just emotional triggers or handy keywords for applause.

What truly matters is the prominence of denial and destruction (and divisiveness, but that doesn't relate to the story that follows). These seem to be the federal government's preferred vehicles of policy and progress. I think that contemplation of the consequences of such activity -- for ourselves, for our relations, and all that we claim to cherish and cling to in this world -- will continue to move people, regardless of political ideology, to see that institutions, "leaders" and agents that invest in and act through denial and destruction only denigrate and undermine the common values, needs and concerns of all the world.

We can and must assert ourselves, and require those who act in our name, to be human. And to value humanity. --D to the T


Carl Cranston joined the Army in 1997, when he was still a junior at Sebring McKinley High School, not far from Canton, Ohio. He and his girlfriend, Debbie Stiles, had just had a baby, and they thought the Army offered the easiest path to job security. The country was enjoying what President Clinton liked to call "the longest peacetime expansion in history," and Carl's duties as an infantryman, they thought, would largely be a matter of his getting into shape, shooting awesome weapons, and learning skills like rappelling and land navigation...

The attacks of September 11 changed everything. The Cranstons were moved to Fort Benning, in Columbus, Georgia, so that Carl could join the 3rd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade, a mechanized unit known as the Sledgehammer Brigade. He and his men were assigned to accompany Bradley fighting vehicles -- the fast, heavily armed personnel carriers that became the backbone of the attack on Iraq. Seven soldiers, or dismounts, would squeeze into the Bradley's stifling rear compartment, and Carl, by now a sergeant, was their team leader.

The Sledgehammers were among the first units to cross into Iraq after the war started, in March, 2003, and Carl was involved in eleven firefights, seven of them "major," by his reckoning. They fought from the Kuwait border to central Baghdad, and finally rotated back to Fort Benning last July...

I met Carl and Debbie in February, at a Red Lobster restaurant in Columbus. He's a big man of 24 years, with a high-fade military buzz cut and a well-padded face that relaxes into a wide smile. She is small and blond, with a sharp chin and a quick, alert look honed by rimless glasses. Carl tends to be guileless and cheerful, Debbie more clipped and wary.

Carl still marvels at the lethality of the Sledgehammers. Iraqi soldiers, believing they were concealed by darkness or smoke, would expose themselves to the Bradley-s thermal sights and the devastating rapid fire of its 25mm cannon. Carl and his squad would tumble out the back of the Bradley and attack Iraqi soldiers who had survived. "We killed a lot of people," he said as we ate.

Later, Carl and his men had to establish roadblocks, which was notoriously dangerous duty. "We started out being nice," Carl said. "We had little talking cards to help us communicate. We'd put up signs in Arabic saying 'Stop.' We'd say, 'Ishta, ishta,' which means 'Go away.'" But people would approach with white flags in their hands and then whip out AK-47s or rocket-propelled grenades. So Carl's group adopted a play-it-safe policy: if a driver ignored the signs and the warnings and came within 30 metres of a roadblock, the Americans opened fire.

"That's why nobody in our whole company got killed," he said. Debbie stopped eating and stared into her food. "You're not supposed to fire warning shots, but we did," Carl said. "And still some people wouldn't stop." He went on, "A couple of times -- more than a couple -- it was women and children in the car. I don't know why they didn't stop." Carl's squad didn't tow away the cars containing dead people. "You can't go near it," he said. "It might be full of explosives. You just leave it." He and his men would remain at their posts alongside the carnage. "Nothing else you can do," he said.

Debbie watched the waitress clear our plates, then she leaned forward to tell about a night in July, after Carl's return, when they went with some friends to the Afterhours Enlisted Club at Fort Benning. Carl had a few drinks, Debbie said, and started railing at the disk jockey, shouting, "I want to hear music about people blowing people's brains out, cutting people's throats!" Debbie continued, "I said, 'Carl. Shut up.' He said, 'No, I want to hear music about shit I've seen!'"

Carl listened to Debbie's story with a loving smile, as though she were telling about him losing his car keys. "I don't remember that," he said, laughing. Debbie said, "That was the first time I heard him say stuff about seeing people's brains blown out. Other times, he just has flashbacks -- like, he sits still and stares." Carl laughed again. "Really, though, I'm fine," he said. Beside him in the booth, Debbie shook her head without taking her eyes from mine and exaggeratedly mouthed, "Not fine. Not fine..."

"When he was coming home, the Army gave us little cards that said things like 'Watch for psychotic episodes' and 'Is he drinking too much?'" she said. "A lot of wives said it was a joke. They had a lady come from the psych ward, who said -- and I'm serious -- 'Don't call us unless your husband is waking you up in the middle of the night with a knife at your throat.' Or, 'Don't call us unless he actually chokes you, unless you pass out. He'll have flashbacks. It's normal.'"

Her comments were then stricken from the record.

Dictatorship, anyone?

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.  [more]

Allawi sure is making a name for himself.  So far we know he's been a longtime CIA asset who helped facilitate terrorist attacks in Iraq during the 1990s and, according to Sy Hersh, ran a hit squad in Europe during the 1970s that knocked off political adversaries of Saddam Hussein, helping him rise quickly through the ranks of the Ba'ath party.
 
Now this.  Helluva nice guy to be ushering in Iraq's "transition to democracy," eh?

So said Seymour Hersh in a speech to an ACLU convention last week, also noting that the Bush administration has been trying to cover up such war crimes.
 
You can read a summary of, listen to, or watch streaming video of Hersh's speech via Eschaton. 
 
What I also find interesting is how this story fell down the memory hole for a few months.  Remember this piece of news from May?:

U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images [of abuse at Abu Ghraib] showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

No? Doesn't look too familiar? Perhaps that's because it got edited out of NBC's report soon after it was first published.

This is Joe here from American Leftist ... I recently put together a new piece of political artwork ... it's no 'War President' but I hope some of you find it amusing. The text is from Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, U. S. Prosecutor at Nuremberg:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. ... If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

The image is my vision of what it would look like if the gang that couldn't shoot straight got arrested by the feds. I call the image "Perp Walk" Here's" the full-sized version. And here's a thumbnail:

. . . most likely because of efforts like this?

Call SlimFast and tell them how you feel about that: 561.833.9920. Oscar-winning actor and all-around great guy Tim Robbins already called them this morning . . . (via Unfiltered.)

"In the new post-Barcelona politeness era, the [15th Int'l AIDS] conference chair, Joep Lange, and Helene Gayle from the Gates Foundation -- who will chair the next one in Canada in two years time -- asked the activists to get it out of their system quickly and let Randall Tobias have a hearing. So they went quiet, but as Tobias stood at the podium they persisted in holding up placards bearing just two little words: 'He's lying.' Tobias gave the impression of a man on the verge of apoplexy, walked back to his seat and refused to budge until Lange and Gayle had persuaded the demonstrators to stop. He then gave his speech to a modicum of heckling and made a swift exit.

"Oh, and the content? Lots of admirable stuff about working together, fighting Aids not each other, and giving money to local groups in the worst-hit countries who know what they need to do to fight the disease. But he also defended abstinence, the focus on faith-based groups, and 'high quality drugs,' and he called the Global Fund a young -- ergo immature and not to be trusted with too much cash -- organisation. He did promise, however, to buy generics if the US regulators approved them and they were the cheapest available. At a conference where all the UN organisations have been loudly and clearly stating that abstinence doesn't work for women without the power to say no, he is yet to win any new friends...

"Tobias [had] a slight image problem. He was chief executive of the huge US drug company Eli Lilly before his retirement. Lilly actually makes Prozac, not anti-retrovirals, but you can imagine how a former pharmaceutical fat cat goes down at a conference where the Indian generic companies that ripped-off the big name companies to produce cheap, lifesaving Aids drugs are heroes and saints."

I've figured out why Republicans refused to condemn Dick Cheney's four-letter word Senate outburst. It's because Republicans view Democrats as so evil, that anything goes. Especially those Democrats who are liberal and/or trial lawyers, both of which condemnations must be said with curled lip and a disapproving hiss.

Note, however, that trial lawyers are perfectly fine and upstanding individuals, if they happen to be Republicans seeking a Senate seat, like Mel Martinez. Which brings me to my latest song parody, "Ode To John Edwards" a/k/a "The Trial Lawyers Song." I hope you enjoy singing it to "Moon River," by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, using this midi link.

Ode To John Edwards (The Trial Lawyers Song)
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Trial lawyers
Go that extra mile,
To see that all those vile
Guys pay.

They're risk takers
And rain makers.
They're able and knowing.
Wrongdoers they slay.

Corp grifters
Ripping off the poor.

The rest of my
Ode To John Edwards is here.

[What I'd be interested to know (and I'm sure one of can tell me) is which companies use no animal ingredients. I'd heard of this potentiality before, but never considered how widespread it might be]


The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is announcing the availability of a risk assessment regarding the potential for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in humans from exposure to cosmetics containing cattle-derived protein infected with the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) agent.

Cosmetics may be made from a variety of cattle-derived ingredients. These ingredients include: Albumin, brain extract, brain lipid, cholesterol, fibronectin, sphingolipids, collagen, keratin, and tallow, and tallow derivatives. Tallow derivatives, particularly fatty acids and glycerin, are the predominant cattle ingredient used by the cosmetic industry. Cattle-derived ingredients serve many functions and may be used as skin conditioning agents, emollients, binders, and hair and nail conditioning agents...

There are several routes through which cosmetics contaminated with the agent that causes BSE could transmit disease to humans. Transmission of the BSE agent to humans through intact skin is not likely; however, cosmetics may be ingested or applied to cut or abraded skin or to mucosal tissues, particularly in the eye, which could provide direct routes for infection.

Submit written requests for single copies of the risk assessment to the Office of Plant and Dairy Foods (HFS-365), Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration, 5100 Paint Branch Pkwy., College Park, MD 20740. Send one self-addressed
adhesive label to assist that office in processing your request, or include a fax number to which the document may be sent. Alternatively, you may request a copy of the document by calling 301-436-2367, or you may fax your request to 301-436-2632.

New Bucky Stamp

. . . speaking of Buckminster Fuller, who is, of course, the unofficial mascot to AmSam, can I take a minute to thank the latest new Harbingers?

Thank you: Michelle Fierro of Life In The Present and Life In Seattle, Northstar of The People's Republic of Seabrook, Harry MacDougal of scratchings, Rick Pietz of Radically Inept and Inspector Lohmann! Thank you all!

See also:

This pic of Bruce Sterling standing in front of a couple geodesic domes entitled, poetically, "Found Future."

And, finally, a big thanks to all AmSam linkers past and present!

Who is Tom Mauser? The father of 15-year-old Daniel Mauser (pictured above), who was one of the 13 students killed at Columbine High School with an illegal assault weapon.

I'm not, of course, a proponent of hunting in the first place--but do the big, tough men who chase down Bambi with a bullet really need an AK47 to do so?

Nine days after making the names of more than 47,000 potential felon voters public, state officials have scrapped the entire list, saying it was too flawed to be trusted.

County supervisors of elections were told Saturday not to use the list of people the state believed had committed felonies and illegally registered to vote. [more]

Tom Engelhardt of the indispensable Tomdispatch.com peers behind last week's release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on faulty Iraq intelligence, which reserved nearly all of its criticism for the CIA, conveniently letting the Bush administration off the hook for the role it played in driving the nation to war.

Police forces in Britain and the US have ordered tests of [a] new system that delivers a blast of radio waves powerful enough to knock out vital engine electronics, making the targeted vehicle stall and slowly come to a stop.

When the radio waves hit the targeted car, they induce surges of electricity in its electronics, upsetting the fuel injection and engine firing signals. "It works on most cars built in the past 10 years, because their engines are controlled by computer chips," said Dr Giri. "If we can disrupt the computer, we can stop the car." A prototype is due to be ready by next summer.



Time enough to save my pennies...

Character Fantasizes Bush Assassination
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page C01

In Nicholson Baker's new novella, "Checkpoint," a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush.

It's a work of the imagination and no attempts on the president's life are actually made, but the novel is likely to be incendiary, as with Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Flush with the headline-generating success of "My Life," by Bill Clinton, Alfred A. Knopf is planning to publish Baker's work Aug. 24, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. "Checkpoint" is 115 pages long and will sell for $18.

In the book, two men -- Ben and Jay -- meet at the fictional Adele Hotel and Suites in Washington. It is midday. They eat a bag of bagel chips and order lunch from room service. They talk into a tape recorder.

Ben: Obviously you have something on your mind.

Jay: That's true.

Ben: You could begin with that.

Jay: Okay. Uh. I'm going to -- okay. I'll just say it. Um.

Ben: What is it?

Jay: I'm going to assassinate the president.

Though it is against the law to threaten the president in real life, a work of fiction is usually protected by the First Amendment.

via Arthur Magazine (blog)

American counterterrorism officials, citing what they call "alarming" intelligence about a possible al-Qaida strike inside the United States this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack, according to Newsweek magazine.

The success of March's Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections -- as well as intercepted "chatter" among al-Qaida operatives -- has led analysts to conclude "they want to interfere with the elections," says one official.

The prospect that al-Qaida might seek to disrupt the U.S. election was a major factor behind last week's terror warning by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Ridge and other counterterrorism officials concede they have no intelligence about any specific plots, though.

Also see:

FBI seeks help to thwart terror threat (CNN)

Terror Threat Spurs Planning for Election Delay (NY Post)

A convenient terror alert (Capital Times)

Could Terror Threat Cause US To Cancel Election? (Newsweek)

"What kind of moral schizophrenia is it that allows us to shout at the top of our national voice for all the world to hear that we live up to our commitment when every page of history and when all the thirsty, starving, humiliating days and nights of the last 100 years in the lives of the American Indian contradict that voice?

"It would seem that the respect for principle and the love of one's neighbor have become dysfunctional in this country of ours, and that all we have done, all that we have succeeded in accomplishing with our power is simply annihilating the hopes of the newborn countries in this world, as well as friends and enemies alike, that we're not humane, and that we do not live up to our agreements."

Marlon Brando's prepared statement for the Academy Awards Ceremony, March 30, 1973

"An al-Mahdi Army fighter I know named Muhanned, a young man I met two months ago in a Sadr City safe house, had told me how he was fighting the Americans in the area around the Hekma mosque, the central meeting place for the Mahdi Army leaders. Muhanned is the leader of a cell of young men in his neighborhood who move around, mostly at night, waiting for U.S. patrols and then ambushing them. Muhanned's technique is to attack and then disappear into the alleyways. When I learned about Butler's routes through Sadr City, it was clear that there was a connection -- Muhanned and his cell were attacking Butler's company. Butler patrols the area around the mosque, as he has done for months, and Muhanned lives inside Alpha Company's area of operations, planning and executing ambushes. The two men are joined by the invisible current of the war but they do not know each other. In coming to know both men I cannot shake the feeling that the conflict in Sadr City is nothing more than an unnecessary machine for mass-producing grief."

...this is one archive of the documents used to set policy for interrogation and torture of foreign prisoners.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are looking at an emergency proposal on the legal steps needed to postpone the November presidential election in case of an attack by al Qaeda, Newsweek reported on Sunday.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned last week that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network may attack within the United States to try to disrupt the election.

The magazine cited unnamed sources who told it that the Department of Homeland Security asked the Justice Department last week to review what legal steps would be needed to delay the election if an attack occurred on the day before or the day of the election. [more]

"The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks are a bit of a sore subject with me. I’d been over at the Locks earlier in the quarter, back at the beginning of April, taking photos of the picturesque landscape surrounding this prominent [Seattle] landmark.

"Within a half an hour of my returning home, I found myself confronted by two uniformed police officers, both of whom had their hands casually resting on their sidearms. (This is definitely not something you want to see at the door of your home.) I was sincerely surprised and alarmed to learn they were looking for me!"

This story made me ill and edgy... because the same thing could happen to me tomorrow.
 

(via)

AlterNet posted this review of Robert Greenwald's new documentary, "OutFoxed", yesterday. Matt Drudge seems to think its impact may be important enough, that he's run a 'developing' story on it the past three days.

According to Drudge, FOX has been spying on the other networks for blackmail in case this eventuality had ever come to pass. Cover the documentary, and Murdoch's trolls will hit the airwaves with their own exposé.

Will the media finally eat itself in a what appears to be the culmination of their backstabbing orgy of one-upmanship?

I, for one, can only hope so.


If you didn't already know, Disinfo has the video for sale in their online store.

After waiting around for about 45 minutes, the motorcade passed by us again. A few police cars, followed by a van or two, drove by. Then, a Bush/Cheney bus passed, followed by a second one going slower. At the front of this second bus was The W himself, waving cheerily at his supporters on the other side of the highway. Adam, Brendan, and I rose our banner (the More Trees, Less Bush one) and he turned to wave to our side of the road. His smile faded, and he raised his left arm in our direction. And then, George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States of America, extended his middle finger. [more]

Plus:

"You can run images of a decapitated mutilated body on a front page or on the evening news, but run a photograph of a naked woman, and you go to court," he said.

. . . although that decapitated, mutilated body can only be the 'enemy' and never one of ours . . . there are rules to showing the real dead, y'understand--but the fake dead, why, bring 'em on! And the ritualized war games involving pigskin--why, bring 'em on, too!

. . . And yet images of sweet suckles of life will cause children's eyes to bleed. I don't agree with everything Flynt says--for instance, his anti-feminist stance (I love women who are strong and smart as well as unrobed, on occasion . . . ), but he certainly does give eloquent homage to truth on many topics . . .

"A couple of years ago, we were the only band on Warped going, and I'll be blunt, 'Fuck George Bush and fuck politicians who like George Bush,' " says charismatic bassist-singer Chris #2, calling from a sunbaked Phoenix tour stop. "That time was so bizarre for us. We had people inside the punk movement, that we considered friends, giving back our T-shirts, sending back our records, and totally buying into the nationalism movement. I don't know if they thought George Bush had suddenly taken genius pills, but people who'd previously been demanding a recall were giving him their blind faith."

That's not the case today, and not just because Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has given Americans something to seriously think about. As the casualties--and the wartime atrocities--mount on both sides, a whole lot of people have become outraged at what's transpired in Iraq over the past year.

"We've been saying all along that on September 10 George Bush was an asshole and on September 12 he was an asshole," Chris #2 says. "This year on the Warped Tour there isn't a band that's not saying that same kind of thing, which I think is awesome. I'm glad that popular sentiment on the tour is a progressive one." [more]

The ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague that the ”security wall” Israel is building in the West Bank is illegal marks a major victory for Palestinians.

The ruling is not binding. Officially it is termed only an ”advisory opinion” offered by the court. Israeli officials briefing media while the court was delivering its opinion declared the judgment would find its way to the ”garbage can of history.”

But the ”advisory opinion” marks a major moral and diplomatic win for Palestinians. And it further weakens the diplomatic case both of Israel and the United States.

The decision will bring a significant setback to the United States in the Arab world; a U.S. judge was the only one among 15 who delivered a contrary opinion. [more]

. . . of course, Israel won't listen to the "International Court of Justice" . . . Israel listens to no one but it's own fundamentalist belief in their own God, who also tells them it's OK to murder Palestinians and keep stealing their land because they're sub-human anyway, right? God's chosen people can murder and steal all they like--that's the problem with those fucking religious fundamentalists: they are and always will be a cancer on the body politic--most especially when they have guns and nukes in their hand. (When an old homeless man walks down the street muttering about being talked to by God, he is dismissed as crazy; when the US and Israeli presidents talk and act like it, both with armies and nukes at their disposal, they are given moist french kisses on the ass.) As I've said often before: religious fundamentalism is the true enemy of mankind. And Israel today is the most blatant and unapologetic example of that (with the possible present exception of Sudan, in numbers and not hubris). How much land will Israel have to steal before they're done? How many Palestinians will still be alive--if any--before Israel has killed enough? Since it is obvious that Israel bows to no one--including, most obsequiously--the United States, why is it so absurd to wonder who really wears the pants in the Israel/US relationship?

How strenuously must I hold my nose when I vote for Kerry?

Remember the Mossad motto, and repeat it often:

"By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt Make War."

Afghan government officials raided a rented house in the capital late Sunday where the three Americans lived. They found a private prison inside the building that contained eight prisoners, a Ministry of Interior official said Friday.

. . .

Idema [one of the American men living in the house] and his colleagues told Afghan authorities they were operating the prison because they wanted "to take part in the war on terror," the Afghan official said.

The Americans did not torture their prisoners, but did administer "some beatings," the official added.

via American Street, which also follows up with this post:

Who are these private citizens who kidnapped Afghans with long beards and tortured them in a private prison in Afghanistan? Well, the one identified as Jonathan Idema, appears to be "Jonathan "Keith" Idema," a fine patriotic paintball enthusiast, former Green Beret, ex-con, "father" of a someday-to-be-cloned dog (I'm not making any of this up), a "civilian" military advisor to the Northern Alliance and the "finder" of all those Al Qaeda videotapes liberated from an Afghan house awhile back.

Yes, this is the patriot who provided one of the greatest intelligence successes of the Afghan War, or at least one of the greatest public relations successes of the war--remember, under Our Leader, perception is at least as, if not more, important than reality. Of course, our government has to distance itself from him now, but there's little doubt that he served as a CIA contractor in the early stages of the war--It was a CIA operation.

Then comes Kos:

In some Zeligesque twist of stranger-than-fiction truth, Idema has made headlines over the years as:

*the subject of Dan Rather interview about fighting al Qaeda,
*a manufacturer of military and paintball (yes, you read that right -- PAINTBALL) vests,
*the primary source for the book Hunt for bin Laden,
*expert on weapons smuggling out of the former USSR,
*documentary filmmaker who made a film about Soviet nuclear smuggling, KGB double agents in the FBI and CIA, and "how one US Army Green Beret went to prison for trying to expose it,"
*man who found "al Qaeda's videotapes on how to massacre schoolchildren",
*very man who got Geraldo River in trouble for revealing the locations of sniper-hunting US troops in the mountains of Afghanistan, and
*the guy who [sued] Stephen Spielberg over rights to the movie The Peacemaker.

all ultimately via digby

Rainbow Warrior Expedition 2004: A Successful Mission

Just before the weekend, the Rainbow Warrior docked in Wellington, New Zealand, at the end of our trip to the Tasman Sea. It was strange arriving back, after all those weeks at sea. We hadn't seen land in three weeks. As the harbour pilot guided us in, we watched planes take off and cargo ships coming alongside us. As the sun set, car headlights twinkled in the distance, and lights came on in the warren of office buildings that face Wellington's seafront. [more]

See also:

New Cases of Scientific Abuse by Administration Emerge

 
 CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 8—Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists released new evidence that the Bush Administration continues to suppress and distort scientific knowledge and undermine scientific advisory panels. The number of scientists calling for an end to these practices and restoration of scientific integrity in federal policymaking now totals more than 4,000, including 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences. [more]

Now, I would call that last sentence the most winning one in this new UCS endeavor . . . so, if you take a conservative paper like the Seattle Times and look at their slant on it, you will see that they bury that part about this UCS report being signed by more than 4,000 scientists including 48 Nobel laureates, etc. in the last paragraph. Plus, unlike the New York Times (id: drmenlo, pw: samizdat) or the LA Times (registration required), they don't even use the word 'Scientist' in their title: they say 'Group' instead, no doubt to diminish the effect of the accuser--'group' could be anybody, while the word 'scientist' still carries some credibility today . . . (not that the NYT or LAT are not necessarily conservative . . . )

Speaking of Sunday shows, did anyone see that hilarious CNN Unreliable Sources show this morning? It's hosted by this knucklehead from the Washington Post who's been raggin' on me since "Roger & Me." I wasn't half awake while it was on but I think he had some blow-hards on who said, in no particular order of priority, that I was in cahoots with the Taliban, supported Al Qaeda, and dreamed of a day gone by when Uncle Saddam brought peace and joy to the world. This thing was so whacked, and they were trying so hard to repeat Karl Rove's talking points, I thought, "Damn -- the box office from last night must have busted through the roof if these guys are that pissed!" So I immediately called up the studio and, sure enough, in just our second weekend, "F9/11" had shot past $50 million! Whoa! More than double what it was last Sunday! No wonder foam is coming out of these guys' mouths! [more]

Good stuff!

"If John Kerry is going to praise last night's star-studded hate fest and characterize it as the 'heart and soul' of America, he should share these values with voters everywhere," Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman said Friday in a statement. "We call on Kerry to release the video of this event so that all Americans can see what John Kerry has called America's 'heart and soul."'

Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill told reporters in a conference call that Kerry and Edwards did not agree with everything the performers said during the concert. She did not respond directly when asked why the candidates did not repudiate from the stage the harshest language directed at Bush and noted that the Bush-Cheney campaign didn't release recordings of its fund raisers and neither did they. [more]

. . . ah, so the Bush-Cheney team won't release their recordings, but they want Kerry to release his: typical. I like this quote best:

John Leguizamo: "Latins for Republicans. It's like roaches for Raid."

( . . . See also: Log Cabin Republicans and Black Republicans.)