"When we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

Let's hope this 4 years, and not the next, is really the nadir for this country.

A story. From my new personal site. Let's see how it goes . . .

"RFID tags are tiny transponders that send out radio signals and some experts predict they will become commonplace over the next decade or so." (RFIDs are obviously used in security tags for consumer goods and in machinery, and the uses are likely to increase.)

"The use of the technology in credit cards has been tested by Mastercard. Last year it ran a nine-month pilot in the US, involving some 15,000 consumers. People could pay for goods by waving their cards near special tills, which would receive the information transmitted by the cards. (That's already been used by petrol co.s for years, mind you.)

"'Wouldn't it be great if we could get the protection of having a personal identification number, without having to have a pad to type it into?' asked Prof Selker, who heads the Context Aware Computing group at the MIT's Media Labs. 'Wouldn't it be nice if something better than my signature would be transmitted without me having to use an external device?'

(Wouldn't it be nice if we just gave ourselves over to technology? Wouldn't it be great to be reduced to an indexed conduit of consumption?")

Of course, here comes my quasi-contradiction -- another device that the Media Lab has cooked up: The I/O Brush. You know, for kids!

Ah ha ha ha ha . . .

As the 9-11 Commission continues its focus on why more wasn't done to prevent the terror attacks, a public inquiry set to begin in the next few weeks in Canada may reveal long-hidden secrets about the abuses of America's war on terror. Headed by a judge, it will investigate why Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was flying home to Montreal in 2002, was detained by the U.S. authorities at JFK Airport, and then escorted through Jordan to Syria, where he said he was tortured and kept in a grave-like cell for 10 months. Arar was finally cleared by a Syrian court and sent back to Canada, where he hasn't been charged with any crime. [more]

Join tens of thousands of others across the country and world and wear a brown armband or ribbon to symbolize all the BS coming out of the White House.

"In 1995, Kiyoshi Amemiya, president of Yamanashi Hitachi Construction Machinery, set up a six-member project team within the company to begin the development of a mine clearing machine. The company is to ship the new machine to Afghanistan at the end of {March} and Amemiya is scheduled to visit the country in June to instruct Afghan mine clearers in using it.

An estimated five to seven million mines are scattered throughout Afghanistan, according to the United Nations -- while an estimated 110 million landmines are strewn in more than 70 countries, killing and maiming 20,000 each year.

"For Afghanistan, we made the blades strong enough to resist sand and rocks while in Nicaragua we had to adjust the blades so that they could work in mud."



The machine has a one-man cab, protected by special tempered glass but it can also be operated by remote control. After the mine explodes, the metal fragments are collected with a magnet. The machine can also plow the ground and even sprinkle fertilizer.

The mine clearer's reputation for doing its vital task well eventually reached the Indian Defense Ministry, which asked to buy it, with the US Defense Department also inquiring about it.

But Amemiya rejected both offers. "I have no business with the military," he said.

While searching for some supporting links, I found out about Kohei Minato's magnetic/electric motor, which consumes 20% of the energy needed by conventional motors.

"The short summary of what is really a thread that runs through [Worse than Watergate] is that when you have a presidency that has no regard for human life, that develops and implements all (not just national security) policy in secrecy, and is driven by political motives and a radical philosophy, it is impossible not to conclude that they will overreact -- and at the expense of our constitutional safeguards. Bush and Cheney enjoy using power to make and wield swords, not ploughs. They prefer to rule by fear. We've had three years to take the measure of these men. I've done so and reported what I found in a book I never planned to write, but because others were not talking about these issues, I believed they needed to be placed on the table.

"Bush and Cheney have exploited terrorism ever since 9/11. Now they are exploiting it to get reelected. Should there be an even more serious threat, they have found that when Americans are frightened they can be governed like sheep, which suits Bush and Cheney perfectly. Rather than taking the terror out of terrorism by educating and informing Americans, they have sought to make terrorism as frightening as possible -- using terrorism to launch a war of aggression that is breeding a new generation of terrorists and getting the Congress to pass the most repressive new laws imaginable and calling it an act of patriotism."

--John Dean, White House Counsel to Richard Nixon

"The steadily deteriorating security situation in the Falluja area, west of Baghdad, has become so dangerous that no American soldiers or Iraqi security staff responded to the attack against the contractors. [Just read: "The four Americans killed in Fallujah were civilians who worked for a private company named Blackwater Security Consulting based in Moyock, North Carolina."]

There are a number of police stations in Falluja and a base of more than 4,000 marines nearby. But even while the two vehicles burned, sending plumes of inky smoke over the closed shops of the city, there were no ambulances, no fire engines and no security.

Instead, Falluja's streets were thick with men and boys and chaos."

There's nothing to celebrate, no one to blame or counterattack. This is simply a terrible manifestation -- a collision -- of exploitation and resentment, fear and distress. None of these people needed to put into this situation. This is a complete degradation of humanity, and I want people to see that this is a crisis to which we are all bound.



from Major Barbara's Arms and The Man:

"More than 15,000 contractors work in Iraq -- about one for every 10 U.S. soldiers, {the Brookings Institution's Peter} Singer estimated. "More than $20 billion, one-third of the U.S. Army's operating budget in Iraq and Afghanistan, goes toward contractors, he said.

""They are playing a whole range of mission-critical roles," Singer said. "That's in spite of our doctrine which says you don't turn over mission-critical roles to private contractors."

"The Pentagon does not track the exact number of contractors or their casualties. Singer estimates at least 30 have been killed in Iraq, and about 180 have been wounded. That total does not include missionaries or contractors handling reconstruction projects.

""They are very clearly going after civilian contractors, and today is absolutely tragic," said Singer. "It's chilling."

President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time.

Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.

Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak.

It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington's top policymakers.

"Two and a half years into the 'war on terror' it is apparent that the winners are the terrorists -- while Al Qaeda's finances are still intact, the US is running the highest budget deficit in history. What can be done? Start by treating terrorism for what it is: a global business. Force our Muslim allies to act immediately to curb terror funding and concentrate our efforts to hunt terror money in our countries, even if that implies putting under investigation the strongholds of Western capitalism: Wall Street, the City of London and the thousand offshore centres linked to them."

--Loretta Napoleoni is an economist who has worked for banks and international organizations in Europe and the US. She developed the idea to research and write a book on the economics of terrorism while interviewing the leaders of the Red Brigades. Napoleoni's latest book, published September 2003, is Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks

There is no "war on terror," says Mike Whitney. It's really "just a shabby public relations ploy to achieve an alternate political objective."

"Step 9.(b.) Air transport: Cover the wood casket with a paper casket cover and the metal with a plastic cover. Pull out all of the straps from around the casket and make sure they are straight and not twisted. Get a folded, plastic-covered flag and tape it to the cover on the head end of the casket..."



"Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments
use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then
as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead."
--Arundhati Roy, 18 September 2002

Today, gunboat diplomacy seems like a phrase from some antiquated imperial past (despite our thirteen aircraft carrier task forces that travel the world making "friendly" house calls from time to time). But if you stop thinking about literal gunboats and try to imagine how we carry out "armed diplomacy" -- and, as we all know, under the Bush administration the Pentagon has taken over much that might once have been labeled "diplomacy" -- then you can begin to conjure up our own twenty-first century version of gunboat diplomacy. But first, you have to consider exactly what the "platforms" are upon which we "export force," upon which we mount our "cannons."

What should immediately come to mind are our military bases, liberally scattered like so many vast immobile vessels over the lands of the Earth. This has been especially true since the neocons of the Bush administration grabbed the reins of power at the Pentagon and set about reconceiving basing policy globally; set about, that is, creating more "mobile" versions of the military base, ever more stripped down for action, ever closer to what they've come to call the "arc of instability," a vast swath of lands extending from the former Yugoslavia and the former SSRs of Eastern Europe down deep into Northern Africa and all the way to the Chinese border. These are areas that represent, not surprisingly, the future energy heartland of the planet. What the Pentagon refers to as its "lily pads" strategy is meant to encircle and nail down control of this vast set of interlocking regions -- the thought being that, if the occasion arises, the American frogs can leap agilely from one prepositioned pad to another, knocking off the "flies" as they go. [more]

There are nearly 150 dead zones across the globe, they are increasing, and they pose as big a threat to fish stocks as over-fishing, the United Nations Environment Program (Unep) said in its Global Environment Outlook Year Book 2003, released at a meeting of environment ministers in Korea.

Palestinians in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip have marked the 28th anniversary of Land Day with renewed demands for equality and an end to Israel’s occupation.

Land Day marks the 1976 Israeli killing of six Palestinians in northern Israel as they protested the confiscation of large swathes of Arab land.

The Arab community in Israel has always been subjected to de-facto discrimination since the creation of Israel in 1948. They are in many respects subjected to the same discrimination and brutal treatment experienced by their brethren across the Green Line since 1967.

This includes excessive land confiscation, rampant home demolitions, violent repression of peaceful demonstrations and arbitrary arrests. According to the Israeli Arab Centre Musawa, the Israeli authorities demolished as many as 340 Arab homes throughout Israel in 2003 and another 72 in the Negev region and 269 in the Triangle and Galilee regions.

A few weeks ago, Israeli planes sprayed large areas of Arab crops with pesticide, a recurrent measure aimed at driving farmers away from their land.

Gun battles and bombings continued for a third straight day in the Uzbek capital Tashkent. [For background see the EurasiaNet insight archive]. The broad scope of the violence, the full extent of which is difficult to determine due to government press restrictions, suggests that the episode may be a home-grown insurgency, rather than a strike by international terrorists. Casualty figures for the clashes on March 30 were not immediately available, but it is clear that there are significant casualties among both insurgents and state security forces, along with civilians caught in the crossfire.

The government has claimed that Islamic radicals, with international terrorist connections, are behind the violence. Radical groups operating in Uzbekistan, including Hizb-ut-Tahrir, have not claimed responsibility. Scattered bits of information coming to light raise questions about an international terrorist connection, lending credence to the notion that the violence is a popular reaction to government repression.

"President Bush and Ms Rice said that her appearance would contravene the constitutional separation of powers. The offer has been made on condition that it would set no precedent."

What?! Man, as soon as she enters that hearing room, the precedent (for her and anyone else in the administration) will be set! This is like the posturing I'd watch first-graders pull in Seattle: "We're just playing a game right now, so we'll pretend that I'm doing this for you or that I'll treat you a certain way."
+

"Rice's Big Reversal"

"Just last week Condoleezza Rice told Sean Hannity that her decision not to testify in public before the committee was "not a matter of preference. It is a matter of long-standing constitutional principle." She repeated the claim two days ago on CBS 60 minutes. But her statements turned out to be false, with no basis in legal reality. Facing a political firestorm over her refusal, it is now the preference of the White House to have her testify publicly under oath -– and she will do so.

"Her appearance is "conditioned on the Bush administration receiving assurances in writing from the commission that such a step does not set a precedent." But, of course, obtaining such an assurance was always an option. Moreover, no [new] precedent will be set -- national security advisors have already appeared before Congress and the 9/11 commission is an independent committee, whose chairman was appointed by the President, not a congressional committee."

And then on Wednesday:

Fmr. FBI Translator: White House Had Intel On Possible Airplane Attack Pre-9/11

FBI informant revealed 9-11 plot in April 2001-- 2 D.C. agents filed report that al-Qaida planned suicide attacks involving planes

Senator demands hearings on translator crisis at FBI -- Leahy warns al-Qaida wiretaps piling up, asks bureau for full audit of backlogs

From yesterday's Guardian. Excerpts:

Little noticed in the west as yet, the Bush administration's latest Middle East adventure has been making furious waves in the Arab world. Dubbed the Greater Middle East initiative, the plan aims to press democracy on one of the world's least democratic regions . . .

The initiative is a neo-conservative brainchild, a follow-up to the toppling of Saddam Hussein by force, and an effort to use his removal as the first in a line of Middle Eastern dominoes. The notion of pressing reform on the Arab world has wide support in Washington. As long as it is predicated on generational change which is accepted by Arab rulers themselves, rather than being hastily imposed by sanctions or military might, its fans include the secretary of state, Colin Powell, as well as Democratic party liberals such as John Kerry . . .

The rejectionist camp is led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. "If we open the door completely before the people, there will be chaos," Mubarak put it recently. But these two states' leaders are being careful not to confront the United States outright. They claim to agree that domestic reforms are needed, but say these should be home-grown.

They put forward their own reform agendas with vague calls for people to have a greater say in running their political, social and economic affairs. It offers no specifics on opening up authoritarian political systems or women's rights, the two most glaring gaps in Arab public life.

Ah, yes .. . neoliberalism marches on, bolstered by the neoconservative "successes" in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yeah, whenever Bush Party Loyalists like James Lileks spout on about how we're uh, giving Iraq FREEDOM (cue your own version of his flowery, flatuatory gusts of 'freedom' paens here replete with hyperlink nods to pro-ethnic cleansers like LGF) just remember stories like these about the US shutting down Iraqi papers. For what? For LIES? Hm, so by this standard wouldn't the New York Times itself be shut down for all it's shameless Chalabi tall-tales-passed-off-as-stories, it's Bush admin tall-tales-passed-off-as-stories, and so on? (Here Lileks trots out some photo of a protestor at some rally holding up a retarded sign--"See! See! This is the 'Peace Movement' right here! Let's just look at this, and expound upon this, and forget everything else shall we! Look, ma, verbal hula-hoos!")

Yea, what the fuck ever Jimmy.

id: drmenlo
password: samizdat

"Thousands of former soldiers and police officers from Britain, the US, Australia and South Africa are earning wages as high as 600 pounds a day to protect Western officials, oil company executives and construction firm bosses in Iraq."

"With the casualty toll ticking ever upward and troops stretched thin on the ground, the Bush administration is looking to mercenaries to help control Iraq. These soldiers-for-hire are veterans of some of the most repressive military forces in the world, including that of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and South Africa's apartheid regime.

"The rate of growth in the security industry is phenomenal," said Deborah Avant, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington. "If you had asked a year ago whether there would be 15,000 private security in Iraq, everyone would have said you're nuts."

(The author notes that because these "agents" are employed by private firms, their injuries and deaths are not subject to release. The same could be said about their deployment and tactics.)



"In February, Blackwater USA, a North Carolina-based Pentagon contractor, began hiring former combat personnel in Chile, offering them up to $4,000 a month to guard oil wells in Iraq. The company flew the first batch of 60 former commandos to a training camp in North Carolina. These recruits will eventually wind up in Iraq where they will spend six months to a year.

"We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals -- the Chilean commandos are very, very professional and they fit within the Blackwater system," Gary Jackson, the president of Blackwater USA, told the Guardian."




I read this story about worldwide US troop deployment in Sunday's Plain Dealer: "The US has more than 150,000 soldiers and Marines either on combat or other high-risk duty in the far-flung tinderboxes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and the Balkans. Overall, the US military has about 2.7 million active-duty and reserve troops with more than 400,000 of them deployed in various concentrations in 135 countries...

"A wholesale rotation is under way in Iraq, with 100,000-plus U.S. troops leaving while others are rolling in to replace them. As best can be determined the U.S. force in Iraq and environs in coming weeks will total at least 120,000. Unlike the current makeup, which consists overwhelmingly of active-duty GIs, the new force will comprise about 40 percent reserve and National Guard troops."

That last sentence hit me for some reason. Perhaps it was the story I had read in the Cleveland Free Times about the controversial deaths of two Ohio Guardsmen in December. Perhaps it reminded me of the restrained emotion and tears at a farewell dinner for a 40-some-year-old King County Metro driver who was about to ship out to Iraq in November. Or maybe it was a line I read somewhere about how the influx of so many unexperienced reservists could result in higher casualties.

In any case, as I searched for the Scripps story above, I found this one in the SeaTimes: "To meet the demand for troops in Iraq, the military has been deploying some National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers who aren't fit for combat. More than a dozen members of the Guard and reserves said they were shipped off to battle with little attention paid to their medical histories...

"How many soldiers are unfit is unclear. Each soldier interviewed said he or she knew of others who -- like themselves -- were sent to Iraq despite health problems ranging from allergies requiring refrigerated medications to heart disease.

[A medical command] memo said the problem was a "KEY medical issue" and went on to say, "Frankly, we are burning out a lot of time and effort on shipping back folks who never should have come in the first place. Also runs a high risk of damaging folks."

Also: "More than two dozen suicides by U.S. troops in Iraq, and hundreds of medical evacuations for psychiatric problems, have raised concerns about the mental health of soldiers in Operation Iraqi Freedom. An Army Medical Department after-action report obtained by UPI suggests that the Army sent some soldiers to war who were mentally unfit in the first place."




There are so many other ways in which human energy and material resources can be used... and so many human needs that go unmet. This situation in Iraq will not bring more peace or happiness or democracy into the world. We have to be the agents of such change.

from Al Jazeera
"On [Mar 29], a US military official said an investigation into the deaths [of two Al-Arabiya reporters] showed troops were responsible, but they had acted 'within the rules of engagement.'

US soldiers were aiming at a different car, a white Volvo that had driven through the checkpoint at high speed, the investigation said. Al-Arabiya's grey Kia car was 50 to 150 metres down the road, trying to turn when it was accidentally hit, the military said.

Al-Arabiya cameraman Ali Abd al-Aziz died on 18 March from a gunshot wound to the head. Correspondent Ali al-Khatib died from his wounds in hospital the next day. Both were Iraqis."



from Alternet
"While he was interviewing people at the scene, U.S. troops who had previously taken photographs of [Salah] Hassan at other events arrested him, took him to a police station, interrogated him and repeatedly accused the cameraman of knowing in advance about the bomb attack and of lying in wait to get footage. "I told them to review my tapes, that it was clear I had arrived thirty or forty minutes after the blast. They told me I was a liar," says Hassan.

From Baquba, Hassan says he was taken to the military base at Baghdad International Airport, held in a bathroom for two days, then flown hooded and bound to Tikrit. After two more days in another bathroom, he was loaded onto a five-truck convoy of detainees and shipped south to Abu Ghraib, a Saddam-built prison that now serves as the American military's main detention center and holds about 13,000 captives.

Once inside the sprawling prison, Hassan says, he was greeted by U.S. soldiers who sang "Happy Birthday" to him through his tight plastic hood, stripped him naked and addressed him only as "Al Jazeera," "boy" or "bitch." He was forced to stand hooded, bound and naked for eleven hours in the bitter autumn night air; when he fell, soldiers kicked his legs to get him up again. In the morning, Hassan says, he was made to wear a dirty red jumpsuit that was covered with someone else's fresh vomit, and interrogated by two Americans in civilian clothes. They made the usual accusations that Hassan and Al Jazeera were in cahoots with "terrorists."

While most Abu Ghraib prisoners are held in large barracks-like tents in open-air compounds surrounded by razor wire, Hassan says he was locked in a high-security isolation unit of tiny cells. Down the tier from him was an old woman who sobbed incessantly and a mentally deranged 13-year-old girl who would scream and shriek until the American guards released her into the hall, where she would run up and down; exhausted, she would eventually return to her cell voluntarily. Hassan says that all other prisoners in the unit, mostly men, were ordered to remain silent or risk being punished with denial of food, water and light."



from Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders has called on the US Army to open an immediate investigation into the death of Iraqi cameraman Bourhan Mohammad al-Louhaybi, who was shot in the head while working for the American ABC television network. The cameraman was killed while covering clashes between US forces and groups of armed Iraqis in Falluja, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad on 26 March.

ABC News confirmed the death of al-Louhaybi, 34, on its website. The cameraman had reportedly wanted to go on filming the clashes against the advice of some of his colleagues. Four other Iraqis were killed during the combat...

Elsewhere, the US weekly Time Magazine has confirmed the death of one of its Iraqi interpreters, Omar Hashim Kamal, who died in Baghdad on 26 March after being shot in circumstances that are still unclear."

Eight of 16 media professionals killed this (short) year lost their lives in Iraq. Most if not all were Iraqis who were documenting their country's U.S.-managed freedom/occupation. Will it be a surprise if resistance and anger toward Westerners increases, not just in Iraq, but in some of the places where the work of these reporters was distributed?

"Protesters poured out of one school bus after another, piercing an otherwise quiet, peaceful Sunday in Rove's Palisades neighborhood in Northwest, chanting, "Karl, Karl, come on out! See what the DREAM Act is all about!"

Rove obliged their first request and opened his door long enough to say, "Get off my property."

...After about 30 minutes of goading by protesters in English and Spanish, Rove agreed to meet with two members of the coalition on the condition that the rest of the protesters board their buses and leave his street. The group obliged.

Rove opened his garage door and allowed Palacios and Inez Killingsworth to enter. The meeting lasted two minutes and ended with Rove closing the garage door on Palacios while she was still talking. Palacios said that Rove was "very upset" and was "yelling in our faces" and that Rove told them "he hoped we were proud to make his 14-year-old and 10-year-old cry." A White House spokesman said one of the children was a neighbor.

Palacios, trembling and in tears herself, said, "He is very offended because we dared to come here. We dared to come here because he dared to ignore us. I'm sorry we disturbed his children, but our children are disturbed every day.

"He also said, 'Don't ever dare to come back,' " Palacios said. "We will, if he continues to ignore us."

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped abruptly, raising fears that global warming may be accelerating out of control.


Measurements by US government scientists show that concentrations of the gas, the main cause of the climate exchange, rose by a record amount over the past 12 months. It is the third successive year in which they have increased sharply, marking an unprecedented triennial surge.


Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but fear that it could show the first signs that global warming is feeding on itself, with rising temperatures causing increases in carbon dioxide, which then go on to drive the thermometer even higher. That would be a deeply alarming development, suggesting that this self-reinforcing heating could spiral upwards beyond the reach of any attempts to combat it. [more]

FBI documents about FBI surveillance of John Kerry in the early 1970s have been stolen, according to their owner, a historian who lives near San Francisco, California.

Gerald Nicosia, who spent more than a decade collecting the information, said three of 14 boxes of documents plus a number of loose folders containing hundreds of pages were stolen from his home Thursday afternoon.

Nicosia reported the theft Friday to the Twin Cities Police Department, which covers Larkspur and Corte Madera in Marin County, where he lives. The police report found no sign of forced entry.

"It was a very clean burglary. They didn't break any glass. They didn't take anything like cameras sitting by. It was a very professional job," Nicosia said.

"Was it a thrill-seeker who wanted a piece of history? It could be," Nicosia said. "You'd think there was a very strong political motivation for taking those files. The odds are in favor of that." [more]

Our only deliciously guilty evangelical trait is spreading the gospel of Brother Void, otherwise known to savvy connoisseurs of pop-internet-anti-self-help-gurus as Andrew Boyd of the adroit dailyafflictions.com.

Boyd recently dragged down from the mount this current post on why politics matters....

Visualizing the Worst Possible World—A Guided Meditation

"Learn to hate your enemy well." --John Heartfield

Many of us are alienated from politics. It seems like a big ugly mess and you wonder why you should care. When you're feeling this way, it can help to visualize the worst possible world.

Identify the politician who represents the extreme opposite of what you believe. Now use your imagination to transform the world according to his agenda. Acknowledge any stunned disgust or violent repulsion that arises. Imagine your loved ones caught in such a nightmare. Deepen and accelerate these feelings until the full horror of what could befall everything you cherish appears plainly before you.

As you play out these monstrous visions of dystopia and apocalypse, cultivate a fine-grained hatred for the barbaric world your nemesis wishes to bring into being. Feel it seething around you, menacing you, as you wonder why you should care.

"My enemy's monstrous nightmares remind me why politics matters."

"Afghanistan housed Al Qaeda, and thus it was crucial to attack the country. But that was less a case of a state's sponsoring a terror group and more one of a terror group's sponsoring a state. Consider the situation today. Al Qaeda has lost its base in Afghanistan, two thirds of its leaders have been captured or killed, its funds are being frozen. And yet terror attacks mount from Indonesia to Casablanca to Spain. "These attacks are not being directed by Al Qaeda. They are being inspired by it," the official told me. "I'm not even sure it makes sense to speak of Al Qaeda because it conveys the image of a single, if decentralized, group. In fact, these are all different, local groups that have in common only ideology and enemies."

"This is the new face of terror: dozens of local groups across the world connected by a global ideology. Next week [Fareed Zakaria] will explain how best to tackle this threat. But first we need to see it for what it is."

from MeFi

Big thanks to new Harbingers!!! (in order of acceptance): Citizen Daryl of This Is The Shit, Joe Leftist of American Leftist, John Walz of Jon's Mind, Tim of Misplaced Aggression, and Damon Taylor of nmazca.blog! Thank you all!

"[On 3.25], Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) introduced a bill that would allow the Justice Department to pursue civil cases against file sharers, again making it easier for law enforcement to punish people trading copyright music over peer-to-peer networks. They dubbed the bill "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004," or the Pirate Act (yaar!).

"The bills come at a time when the music and movie industries are exerting enormous pressure on all branches of government at the federal and state levels to crack down on P2P content piracy. The industries also are pushing to portray P2P networks as dens of terrorists, child pornographers and criminals -- a strategy that would make it more palatable for politicians to pass laws against products that are very popular with their constituents. (Ah yes... "Sociopathic jihadis with candy and webcams are going to defile our children if we can't pass this bill!")

"In defending the Pirate Act, Hatch said the operators of P2P networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography. With these "human shields," the P2P companies are trying to ransom the entertainment industries into accepting their networks as a distribution channel and source of revenue."

from Blogdex

The central allegation - that Mr Bush was so obsessed with going after Saddam Hussein that he openly challenged his counter-terrorism adviser to find a link between September 11 and Iraq the day after the attacks took place - is serious.

[snip]

The White House did not let a single news cycle go by before questioning that the alleged encounter between the president and Clarke had ever taken place, assigning dark motives to a man who has served four presidents, three of them Republicans.


  But you don't have to be Bob Woodward to check Clarke's story out. There were other witnesses to this meeting, one of whom spoke to me.


  "The conversation absolutely took place. I was there, but you can't name me," the witness said. "I was one of several people present. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the president had Iraq on his mind, first and foremost."


  This former national security council official was too terrified to go on the record - he knows how vengeful this administration can be.


  He remembers the late night phone call former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill received just before he published The Price of Loyalty, his account of how the Bush White House set its sights on Iraq from day one. He was about to discover the price of disloyalty to this administration.

Congratulations to the brilliant Jerry "Politex" Barrett of BushWatch fame, creator and editor of the soon to be published (May 1, 2004) Big Bush Lies: 20 Essays and a List of the 50 Most Telling Lies of George W. Bush. (Full Disclosure: I'm proud to be one of the book's 19 contributors, having used the lawyer side of my recovering lawyer brain, to write the education lies chapter.)

As you can see from Big Bush Lies' front and back covers, it features twenty original essays by academics, activists, legal experts, financial leaders, and journalists. The essays document Bush lies and inconsistencies about Iraq and WMD's, foreign policy, the environment, energy, health and science, religion, education, women and minority policies, national security, 9/11, campaign lies, and other topics.

I've posted links to all the contributors here.

America is in danger of someday not being at war. Neo-conservatives have criticized the incoherent restrictions placed upon the ruling class by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They have also resisted civil libertarian and peacemaking impulses from within their own ranks. But neo-conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision for corporate and military dominion over the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for shifting arguments. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on crying havoc and let slip the dogs of war. And they have not fought for a Death Star that would enable America to destroy Alderaan and crush the Rebel Alliance once and for all. [more]

. . . via Wiley Wiggins

Burundi’s ethnic civil war is nearing a conclusion, according to the country’s president, Domitien Ndayizeye. Now entering its 11th year, the conflict has killed at least 300,000 people and forced more than 1 million to flee their homes.

Speaking to journalists in Paris on Jan. 16, Ndayizeye said his country has reached “the point of no return on the road to peace and security.” He heads a transitional, power-sharing government that comprises both the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi people.

This AP report is worth reading in full to get an overall impression of just how much Iraqi "democracy" will be formulated under the auspices of American domination.