seems like only yesterday in 2003 donald rumsfeld was complaining that iraqis were violating the geneva conventions by showing footage of american soldiers. it still seems like only yesterday in the hype to go to war media outlets would frequently report how saddam hussien violated the geneva conventions, making him and the whole country of iraq even more evil and thus worthy of invasion and american freedom. those were the days! the habeus corpus days, which are looong behind us now (along with the geneva conventions too). with that gone, the popular form of torture known as waterboarding is making a comeback! but really, what could go wrong? sad sad sad. i can watch stephen colbert’s report for actual insight and almost laugh. but the fact that this is really happening is really not that funny. see, congress just approved bush’s detainee interogation bill, which is a polite way to word the gutting of our right to a trial by jury and the legalization of torture and permanent detention. more information on george bush’s vast new presidential powers and the detainee bill voting record on glenn greewald’s blog. this is really really awful. our nation is under attack from religious extremists allright. the trouble is - they are in the white house.
Archive for the 'politics' Category
while traveling to chicago this last weekend, i saw first hand our government’s true commitment to passenger safety. during TSA baggage screening, i had two items pulled from my shoulder bag: my deodorant and a phillips head screwdriver. the danger my deodorant posed was clearly obvious - it was confiscated. whereas the non-gel screwdriver was okay and i was allowed to bring it on board. wow. once that happened, all i could see on the plane were phillips head screws that begged to be toyed with. and while i am not sure how much damage i could do to someone with a stick of gel deodorant, i’m pretty sure the screwdriver would be the preferred weapon given the choice. but because gel deodorant is officially a danger, the screwdriver made its way to chicago. i feel safer!
so, yeah, liquid explosives. how is everyone handling that notion? doesn’t sit well with me. why would DHS & airport security dump out all potential and suspect liquid explosives into the same garbage cans and do so out in public? seems to be more of a spectacle than a safety measure. actual liquid explosives (note: this does not include breast milk) are extremely volatile. mixing them up in a garbage can in the middle of an airport would also strike me as being more volatile and outright dangerous. doesn’t make sense. and of the twenty four muslims arrested so far, none were in possession of any explosives nor any explosive devices, only the ‘precursors’ for possible liquid explosives: baked beans, peanut butter, and sugar solutions. yup. no joke (read page one of the previous link). so this ban on liquids & gels doesn’t make sense to me. unless it’s meant to simply panic, inconvenience, or distract people. why would the people of the UK or the USA need to be distracted right now? oh, yes, the israel-lebanon war, right. and now while at the airport you can be detained for having a mean face or just exhibiting possible hostile intent. but with all that’s going on, how can you not have a mean face? so much paranoia - it’s just absurd. a better perspective to the liquid explosive hype & plot comes from craig murray, UK ambassador to Uzbekistan. please read the article The UK Terror plot: what’s really going on? i hope more media outlets actually look into this story and not just regurgitate talking points and headlines. meanwhile, i have to go re-pack my bags for airport travel.
UPDATE: another important read via the register, UK: Mass Murder In The Skies: Was The Plot Feasible? goes into the very real difficulties of obtaining & making real liquid explosives.
youtube clip of the fiesty george galloway VS a talking head from UK’s sky news. teleprompter-reading skills don’t come in too handy with the out spoken george galloway (see previous clip of galloway speaking before the US senate). despite getting his microphone turned down halfway through the interview, it’s galloway by a landslide …
i keep watching this clip from the daily show segment called snakes on a plame and laughing. so good. novak is such a pet reporter for the white house, but combined with the rove and the cheney, it’s deadly. just watch. thanks crooks and liars for the post! & thank you jon stewart and crew for the laughs.
good read on counterpunch titled: The Veep’s Curious Investment Portfolio: Is Cheney Betting On Economic Collapse? it gets the most of it’s data from a kiplinger’s article titled Are Dick Cheney’s money managers betting on bad news? (see also the kiplingers article on msn with more details on the investments). analysis of the investments show that Cheney is counting on a steadily weakening dollar and interest rates to rise within the US. point being it that it’s going to get much harder to make financial ends meet. of course, Cheney’s economic planners could be making those investments to not make any money (just for funsies!), which means all will be easy. but somehow i doubt that’s the case. good to see the existing wealthy folks who benefit a great deal from the bush administration tax cuts, or rather ‘tax relief‘ as it’s been branded, take their money and re-invest it back in the US economy (note: this last sentence was unfiltered sarcasm).
sometimes you read quotes from people and are inspired - moved even. well, no such quote is going to come from the highly uninformed ted stevens, republican senator from alaska. you may recall senator ted stevens (R-Alaska), who as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, directed millions of dollars to the state of alaska for important projects like the gravina island bridge, known as the embarrassing bridge to nowhere. this was during a national crisis too. good thing a clear thinking & rational man like senator ted stevens also had an important say on the recent net neutrality legislation. in a colluded and completely uninformed speech by senator ted stevens, the giant old fart senator ted stevens got everything completely wrong about the important net neutrality bill - and the internet for that matter. unbelieveable. here’s a sample of the magic (quoting senator ted stevens):
Ten of them (movies) streaming across that internet - and what happens to your own personal internet?
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
what? are you serious? mr. stevens - is your internet email actually a little note strapped to tiny little mouse scurrying through a tangled maze of wires and cats (cats = streaming movies) in an effort to reach you? i don’t know why you would give a speech like that. maybe if you say it outloud you’ll have a better time believing it. RIP real net neutrality. here’s what did pass - the COPE act, with the important markey amendment to the COPE act failing. the major telecommunication companies must be thankful that their interests are cared for by folks like senator ted stevens. but with all that said, there is still hope for net neutrality with the internet freedom and non-discrimination act.
perhaps one of the most succint, well worded, and incredibly informative essays i have read covering election fraud in the 2004 election is some might call it treason: an open letter to salon written by mark crispin miller. mark crispin miller’s letter was also published on the huffington post, which has more outgoing links to relevant topics. whichever you choose, it’s a great read. why people are afraid to talk about this (and the 2000 election) is really baffling.
i guess political posts are back. dammit. so, everyone at this point should start assuming that what they email they send can and will be read by a government agency. i’m going back to old fashioned letter writing after reading this article: treasonous devices - weapons of mass surveillance. and there’s more links here under bush’s warrentless domestic surveillance. for the life of me, i can’t believe our country is doing this to it’s citizens. yet it is. it really is. and it’s being excused by our representatives and no investigation is going forward. none. fucking ridiculous. if nothing is wrong, why is everyone getting and gearing up for preemptive pardons? sad sad sad.
hey, here’s some fun news for those of you who like the idea of every search engine inquiry you make, every web page visit you vist, and every email you send retained as a record for the US government to review: In a radical departure from earlier statements, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that requiring Internet service providers to save records of their customers’ online activities is necessary in the fight against terrorism. exactly how it is necessary or how this would translate to catching terrorists or thwarting terrorism is not explained. does just the term ‘terrorism’ or suspected terrorist give a probable cause for such interference? where do you draw the line in the name of safety & security? i think this quote from the news article is a good perspective in terms of government regulation:
“A monumental data trove is a crazy thing from a privacy perspective,” said one person familiar with Friday’s discussions. “It’s crazy that the U.S. government is going to retain more data than the Chinese government does.”
UPDATED / RELATED:
great follow up/tie-in article titled how to protect yourself from big brother posted on the website traveling forever. in depth with ‘how to’ charts from the electronic frontier foundation. found via the mighty digg.
and now on wired, read crashing the wiretapper’s ball, where wired sneaks in a reporter to the ISS World Conference, a no-press-allowed conference for companies that sell wiretapping equipment to law enforcement, ISPs, telcos, and repressive governments. be sure to check out the photos of evil internet/cellular spyware gadgets from the conference. via boingboing.
cocaine. heroin. LSD. marijuana. PCP. opium. synthetic opiates. mescaline. peyote. psilocybin mushrooms. amphetamines. methamphetamines. what so special about these drugs? they may soon all be legal in mexico. the law allows for personal use only, which grants one person of age 18 years or older to legally possess half a gram of coke, a couple of Ecstasy pills, several doses of LSD, a few marijuana joints, a spoonful of heroin, 5 grams of opium and more than 2 pounds of peyote. under the proposed mexican bill, selling drugs or using them in public still would be a crime. and anyone possessing drugs still could be held for questioning by police, and each state could impose fines even on the permitted quantities. still, it’s pretty amazing legislation to counteract the huge profits of drug dealing and trafficing. if anything, this may save the giantmonster office staff thousands of dollars in flights to the netherlands.
UPDATE: to good to be true. under pressure from the united states, vincente fox pussies out backs down on the proposed drug law, one day after his office declared that he would sign the bill into law.
i am done with political posts here. they may come back someday. but right now i am no longer posting politically related info. why? i am tired of the state of politics really. and politics is divisive. pointing out how retarded and greedy the republicans & GOP pundits are behaving is too easy anyway (is that divisive of me?). also, there are plenty of sites for good political information - such as the great crooks and liars, daily kos, the huffington post, on lisa rein’s radar, and media matters to name a few (those sites should be on your daily blog rounds if you stay up on politics anyway). looking to focus more on art, events, the weird, the wonderful, and the whatever. there you go.
i think the ‘W’ in george w. bush now must stand for ‘wiretaps.’ or maybe ‘wow - wiretaps? wonderful!’ it used to stand for ‘worst’ as in ‘worst president ever.’ using the picture to the left, you can play a neat game called ‘find the liar in this picture’ or just click on this link right here (links to quicktime movie). rest assured america, those illegal wiretaps were only used to eavesdrop on terrorists and evil-doers. what’s more disturbing to me is that the new york times actually sat on the wiretapping story until after the 2004 presidential election. more on that time-delayed story in a washington post article. so, um, is that liberal bias? then remind me to cancel my NYT subscription.
yeah for sanity! i’m happy to read that the senate has rejected extension of the patriot act. basically, the majority of the republican robots failed to reprogram or lull into ‘not-thinking mode’ enough of the semi-free thinking senators (both democrat & republican) to block a filibuster promised by senators (also both democrat & republican) who oppose the patriot act. they needed 60 votes, but only got 52. though touted as necessary for making our country safer, the patriot act and it’s campaign has produced little results. so now without the sentate approval, the more controversial provisions of the patriot act - the expanded roving/multipoint wire taps (which were already expanded in 1998) and the ability to obtain secret warrants to confiscate records from hospitals & libraries & such - will expire december 31st of this year. that means the government cannot spy on you and violate your freedoms and civil liberties! oh wait, nevermind.
interesting article in the village voice titled Open And Shut: Four Years Later We Still Have Ten Big Questions covering 10 questions regarding the twin towers and september 11th, 2001.
some lovely and accurate billboard re-interpretation of a mcdonalds ‘mcgriddles’ ad in sacramento. thanks via one of the best sites around - wooster collective.
even though the 4th amendment to the U.S. constitution prohibits searches without probable cause, a federal judge has ruled that police have a constitutional right to randomly search passengers’ bags on the new york city subway.
looking for some funding? how about 1 billion dollars? no problem! you can apply for just that amount and some change right now. check out the Strategic City Stabilization Initiative grant for Iraq, or ‘SCSI’ for short. no joke here. $1,020,000,000.00. this is clearly a sign that you did not have a well thought-out exit strategy (nor any plan really) for your last invasion. 1-beeeellion-dohllars could do a lot of good if spent on schools or any number of social issues in the US. or even for some levee repair.
there’s an eeexxcellent interview with phil donahue on time out out new york titled Out In Left Field. it covers when his MSNBC show was cancelled for it’s anti-war stance, the news and media, liberals, conservatives - lots of good stuff. pretty upbeat too. please give it a read. here’s a good quote:
What’s surprising to me is that NBC News had been taking surveys to determine what people watched and what people liked. I mean, the news division is doing focus groups to determine what people like? The news division is supposed to gather the news, whether it makes people happy or not. But we’ve become so corporatized.
well said. speaking of well said, did anyone see phil donahue on that fair & balanced show called the factor with bill o’reilly? you can watch the clip thanks to crooks and liars (quicktime link). it’s a shame more journalists aren’t as intellectually prepared and intelligent as donahue to sift the truth out of all the massive bullshit (.wmv link) and propaganda.
ironically, this post is not about fake iraq intelligence. does anyone remember the unprovoked attack that led us into vietnam? the gulf of tonkin incident? this was what led to the escalation of U.S. involvement in vietnam - it became the gulf of tonkin resolution and was the basis for the war. a lot of people came out and said that incident and what took place was fabricated. of course, like anyone else who disagreed with the vietnam war, those people were called liars, traitors, communists, and enemy sympathisers. so now with the secret papers on the episode in vietname finally released, it does turn out that the gulf of tonkin intelligence was deliberately skewed (that means faked). and the second attack in the gulf of tonkin never occurred. this post could very easily be about iraq as the lies about the two are so similar. what is it with presidents hailing from texas who feel the need to fabricate lies and deceive the american public about going to war? and how can you trust authority, much less respect it, if it openly lies to you for it’s own greedy, selfish, short term interests?
when i can’t find anything funny to regurgitate, there’s always politics. how about this: the United States is secretly paying Iraqi press to run favourable war stories & news.
Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents, and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.
so is that how to teach iraq about democracy and freedom? by controlling the press and planting in the media only the stories that benefit those in control? sounds like the fox news network to me.
great read in th new york observer on media coverage prior, during, and up until now. the six page article is called While We Were Sleeping: Where Was the Media Between Invasion and Murtha? very true. the article points out that the average monthly war coverage on the ABC, NBC and CBS evening newscasts, combined, has been cut in half—from 388 minutes in 2003, to 274 in 2004, to 166 in 2005.
“I don’t think the networks have been able to create a narrative or mythology for the war,†said Ron Simon, the television curator for the Museum of Television and Radio. “For a narrative, you have to have an answer to Norman Mailer’s famous question, ‘Why are we here?’ Two years later, they’re still struggling to ask that question.â€
to me, i think the answer to that question is quite glaringly obvious. and no one wants to say it.
two british civil servants are on trial for leaking a memo that reveals bush intended to bomb the al-Jazeera offices in the allied region of qatar. al-Jazeera is the main news and information source for most of the arab world. that is serious, especially since the united states has ‘accidentally’ bombed different al-Jazeera offices twice now - once in 2001 and again in 2003.
are you prepared for the second coming? no? well now you can be - with jesus thongs, silly! there’s lots to choose from. like ‘jesus was a liberal‘ and ‘jesus was a liberal jew.’ makes a good stocking stuffer! i’m filing this under art and politics.
man, this is crazy, but you know you’re a terrible leader when the socialist neighbor you always fight with outclasses you. president hugo chavez of venezuela is moving forward on a promise to help poor communities in the united states (!) by selling heating oil at discount prices to communities in the cities of Boston and New York.
it’s been 13 weeks since hurricane katrina. so as new orleans and katrina fade from the media & public attention, you might be wondering: what’s going on with new orleans these days. alarmingly it’s still not good. volunteer relief workers are still being harrassed. over a 1,000 children still missing. and even though the official body recovery efforts in New Orleans were called off on October 3rd (despite over 100 homes in the Ninth Ward unsearched) and then again reinstated after much public outcry, people returning are still finding bodies, many of them loved ones. side note: the governmnt contract for counting/recovering bodies in NOLA was given to a friend of the Bush family.
i’m really liking the words and action by congressman John Murtha. granted, yes, he was retarded enough to vote in favor of the iraq war resolution. that’s not good (doesn’t anyone remember we were bombing iraq for 11+ years prior?). but, what i am liking about John Murtha is his brave stance on calling for pulling US troops out of iraq, that he is speaking up with ideas and solutions for getting out of iraq (where others remain conveniently silent and complacent), and how he fights for veterans & veterans rights - on both public and personal issues. it is sad that republicans are playing politics and rewording Murtha’s resolution (to guarantee it’s failure). and hearing dick ‘i got 5 deferments to avoid serving in the military‘ cheney attack murtha is pathetic. but that is the right wing neoconservative christian corporate chickenhawk republican party for you.
you can’t make this stuff up. you just can’t make this fucking stuff up. this is not a spoof. how about a rock song by a group called the right brothers titled ‘bush was right!‘ to show america that, well, bush was right. no - it’s really real. here’s the mp3 file. and keith oberman put together a quick video for it too. repeat: it’s not a spoof. they meant to do this. wtf? has andy kaufman returned as a two man act? no - wait, i forgot - it’s real! it’s real!!
dark photo of graphs chronicling 30 months in iraq. sad but accurate. soldiers still have to buy their own body armor. disgusting. but hey, i may be off track. when it comes to honestly and concern for this country, dick cheney is someone america can totally trust. right?