post-cartoons thread

That's what's wrong with this country, all the good cartoons are on Cable. Just like the Commies wanted!

╓&xi╖▬▬▬▬▬╓&xi╖

saturday (Crystal Moon 20)

12.19.12.6.17

4 Caban

15 Zotz

»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«

WHITE MAGNETIC WORLD-BRIDGER

»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«

UNIFY in order to EQUALIZE,

ATTRACTING OPPORTUNITY.

seal the STORE of DEATH

with the MAGNETIC tone of PURPOSE.

guided by the SAME power DOUBLED....

»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«

1 cimi ~~ white magnetic world-bridger ~~ kin 066/260 ~~ north

day 1/13 of power of death white world-bridger wavespell 06/20 of 260 day tzolkin

day 2/4 of electric store harmonic ~ 17/65 ~ "Remember Elegance of Service"

day 20/28 of power of cooperation crystal moon 12/13 of 365 day solar year

week 47/52 of power of self-generation blue crystal storm year 8/16 of Tel-ek-ton-on Cycle (AD1997-2013)

»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«

~~ mitakuye oyasin ~~

Gívè †hãñk§...hè㮆£ðvè...íñ £ãk'è¢h...

will the real slim-blogger please stand up.....

remember grandpa's smile: he never paid for it

ROME (Reuters) - A lonely Italian pensioner who was "adopted" by a family last year after his pleas for company in classified ads, has absconded leaving behind a big dentist's bill and bounced checks.

Giorgio Angelozzi, 80, skipped out on the family in Bergamo, northern Italy, before a dentist's bill for 2,360 euros ($2,860) arrived. Two checks Angelozzi sent to cover the costs turned out to have been stolen from another family that took him in.

"He wasn't the granddad we wanted. He got on well with mom, but when we talked to him about our stuff, he got bored," said Dagmara Riva of the retired classics teacher her parents gave a home to.

Angelozzi was inundated with offers from as far away as New Zealand, Brazil and the United States before he opted to live with the Riva family.

Police are now hunting for the man who used to live alone with seven cats. The pensioner's story has also caught the eye of a movie producers who have been in touch with the Rivas.

this would be a great time for text map creativity, IMHO.

or not?

aniother day...

lots to do...

where to start?

Painted pearl unlocks secret of Raphael's love By Clara Ferreira-Marques

Fri Jun 17, 8:09 AM ET

MILAN (Reuters) - The tiny pearl brooch seems an innocuous detail in Raphael's enigmatic "Fornarina" portrait, but for one group of historians it unlocks a scandalous love affair kept secret for centuries.

According to new research published in May, the pearl, pinned onto an elaborate turban, is part of a web of allusions to the Renaissance artist's clandestine marriage to the beautiful sitter, a baker's daughter -- despite a very public engagement to the niece of a powerful Vatican cardinal.

Officially, Raphael died a bachelor at 37.

"It was an impossible love affair," says Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz, editor of specialist journal Stile, who led a year of research into Raphael's romantic riddle.

(...)
The pearl, also included in the "Velata" portrait, suggests the sitter's name was Margherita -- the Latin word for pearl -- and not Maria Bibbiena, the artist's intended bride.

It ties Margherita to a string of nuptial allegories in the "Fornarina," from the band on her arm bearing Raphael's name -- an unusual way to sign a painting -- to a wedding ring on her finger, later covered up by the painter's anxious students.

(...)
"At least until the 18th Century, the allegorical side of painting was extremely important. It was Impressionism that dampened our ability to read a painting like a book."

(...)

"Of course this is not just about the pearl, nor is it just about the documents. The absolute certainty comes from the way everything fits together," he says.

"But the pearl was what tipped us off -- we would have been forcing the allegory if it had been the other way around."

(...)
But Bernardelli Curuz and his team have gone beyond the myth, tracing back the various symbols and uncovering documents to prove the two married in a secret ceremony, a relatively common practice at the time.

The historians say they have also proved conclusively that Marg

what is worse?

slow news day or no other bloggers?

sing along to this tune, chubby

"DEAD FLOWERS" performed by townes van zandt on the big lebowski soundtrack:

yeah, when you're sitting there - in your silk upholsterd chair

talking 2 some rich folks that u know

yeah, i hope u don't see me - in my ragged company

oh u know i could never be alone

.

[chorus]

take me down little suzie.... take me down

i know u think you're the queen of the underground

send me dead flowerrrrrs every morning

send me dead flowerrrrrs by the mail

send me dead flowerrrrrs to my wedding, & i won't forget to put roses on your grave

.

eh, when you're sitting back - in your rose pink cadilac

making bets on kentucky derby day

i'll be in my basement room - with a needle & a spoon

& another gurl to take my pain away

-

the chorus cracks me up

it's repeated 3 times, and each time it has more of a country twang than before

for instance, "mail" becomes "mayyyyy-heee'l" [it's not corny; it's sung with verve]

and wot gives it an extra hokey flavour is that it's accompanied by another guy,

who's slightly out of sync

"it's repeated 3 times, and each time it has more of a country twang than before
for instance, "mail" becomes "mayyyyy-heee'l" [it's not corny; it's sung with verve]
and wot gives it an extra hokey flavour is that it's accompanied by another guy,
who's slightly out of sync"

a little like the Stones?

The Mad Cow disease, which was first spotted in the US in December 2003, could very well affect cattle once again.

With cattle feed being substituted with cheap alternatives like chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers, the disease could once again start infecting the country's livestock.

Though the Bush administration had taken steps to keep the disease under check, it became business as usual when the cameras were turned off and the media coverage dissipated.

John Stauber, an activist and co-author of "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" explained that "the entire US policy is designed to protect the livestock industry's access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed."

The government is now investigating another possible case of the disease in the United States. The beef cow had been tested last November and declared disease-free, but when new tests came up positive, a laboratory in England started conducting more tests.

The Food and Drug Administration promised to tighten feed rules shortly after the first case of the disease was confirmed in the US.

The FDA had promised it would ban blood, poultry litter and restaurant waste from cattle feed and order feed mills to use separate equipment to make cattle feed. But, it has still not done what it had promised.

Unlike other infections, mad cow disease doesn't spread through the air. As far as scientists know, cows get the disease only by eating brain and other nerve tissues of already infected animals. Ground-up cattle remains from slaughtering operations were used as protein in cattle feed until 1997, when an outbreak of mad cow cases in Britain prompted the United States to order the feed industry to stop doing it. Unlike Britain, however, the US feed ban has exceptions.

For example, it is legal to put ground-up cattle remains in chicken feed. Feed that spills from cages mixes with chicken waste on the ground, then is swept up for use in cattle feed.

Cattle protein can also be fed to chickens, pigs and household pets, which presents the risk of accidental contamination in a feed mill.

"John Stauber, an activist and co-author of "Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?" explained that "the entire US policy is designed to protect the livestock industry's access to slaughterhouse waste as cheap feed."

that's just great.

Posted by: Isis Elderbard at June 18, 2005 12:19 PM

hmmm, yeah

i suppose

it is a jagger/richards song to begin with

& i haven't listened to their version for quite a while

"hmmm, yeah
i suppose
it is a jagger/richards song to begin with"

you're kidding, I didn't know this, but you're description reminded me of the way they sang "Girl with Faraway Eyes".

I must have known in the back of my head that the Stones wrote Dead Flowers. I guess it wasn't a cioncidence that I thought of them. Now I have to go search my old LP's for the record.

lol

u'll find it on their "sticky fingers" LP

.

yeah the stones have some mean country tunes; not mere caricatures

they do a country version of honky tonk woman, called "country honk"

have a listen to their "beggars banquet"

around this time richards was hanging around gram parsons (a seminal figure in country rock)

The Hebrews Wiped Out The Goddess.

http://www.orionsarm.com/intro/what_is_OA.html

http://www.illuminati-news.com/ufos-and-aliens/html/nibiru_and_the_anunnaki.htm

Oh brother...

It's like you people just repeat yourselves.

This is why I stopped bothering to blog the last time.

Not that you're not sweet, you're sweet. I love you people, but you've got to learn not to go back to the past. You've got to move forward.

I am.

First of all: the late Townes Van Zant. One of the greats. The Glimmer Twins. Two of the greats. Dead Flowers. A great number.

The Big Labowski? Please. Seen it many times. Can't see it enough. "la - la - la, la - la - la, la - la - la, la la - la... The man in me..." Dylan. Also on that superb soundtrack. A sentimental number fer luvboy.

Ok, now, the other day our fearful leader, Ms. J, was perplexing herself on a question... "why not communism?"

I'd say the question is, does the system of government guaranty individual personal rights? Are those rights inalienable and attached to a citizenship which is accorded to every person born in that nation as a matter of "birthright?"

Then does the system have a way to protect those rights via laws which are respected and adhered to by those in power?

Are the citizens allowed to participate in the make up of the government? This was determined during the period we call "the enlightenment" (put in today's terms) to best be addressed by the "one person - one vote" method. J'concours. I agree.

Call it what you want, but if the system does not respect individual personal rights or derive its powers from a people who achieve their citizenship through "right of birth" and take office via free and fair elections, it ain't worth spit.

(continued)

http://www.otoons.com/politics.htm

If the pen is mightier than the sword, in a duel I'll let you have the pen!

Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

(more rustle bla - bla)

As far as "economic systems" go. In order to cause the least amount of infringement in individual personal rights, in theory, we go by the "Free Market."

Except our market is vastly corrupt and tied into those who govern our nation.

To be brief, we need large and expansive social programs to balance the playing field. Period. Gotta have 'em. We need governmental oversight at varrious levels (state, national, local) to protect the workers and our evironment from short sighted or merely selfish exploitation.

If America were a "democracy" instead of a "corporatocracy" and free of corruption in many seats of power, such as the heads of the "Five Media Families," we'd be a better system than "communism."

Right now, we seem to suffer under a totalitarian fascism. The problem with communism would be the subjigation of our rights to the state codified within the system, which is what I understand a basic tenant of communism to be.

That's not good. One problem, there Ms. Garofalo, (you honey, you sweety, you sexy, sexy, very brilliant woman you), these Neo-Con Rethuglicans and the corporate chiefs of Bush Co. are simply no better! They're just as corrupt as communism turned out to be. Just as totalitarian as communism turned out to be.

What does this country need? Americans who love freedom and democracy for all more than money and personal power. How do we get that? Education and a free, fair media.

England has the BBC. Look into it. We need that here. NPR don't cut it no more. MSNBC don't cut it. ABC cut's it, but it's the cheese.

God I hate repeating myself. Love that Janeane, though.

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 01:33 PM

Hey, I saw that one in a Jackie Chan movie?

Jackie got the pen and proceeded to whip ASS!

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 01:33 PM

If you were just a head, you'd want arms, too.

>>The Hebrews Wiped Out The Goddess.
Posted by: What Sucks. at June 18, 2005 12:42 PM

Any given religion will put it's smell over whatever one it hopes to succeed. That's their job. Just ask Baal how he liked the name change to Jehovah. It's all the same Entity, just a different name. Personally, I prefer calling it The Force.

And BTW, The Goddess can't be wiped out by human machinations. She's there whether anyone likes it or not, recognizes it or not....

My 2 cents.

http://www.illuminati-news.com/ufos-and-aliens/html/nibiru_and_the_anunnaki.htm

Ironically, the Pers-sires are just a different faction of the Anunnaki race. However, the Ducaz (Reptilians) and the Pers-sires (Vulturites) have always been bitter enemies even to this day. The descendents of these two groups are now on Earth vying for supremacy of the world. Many of these are currently in political, financial, scientific, religious, legal, medical (especially in blood banks), entertainment, military, agrarian or commercial positions, and also in the sex industry. Most of these aliens are not consciously aware of their alien origins.

The Hebrews Wiped Out The Goddess.

Posted by: What Sucks. at June 18, 2005 12:42 PM

This is a Joseph Campbell quote.

Posted by: Cathy in Seattle, Nobel Prize Nominated Blogger at June 18, 2005 01:45 PM

Very well put!

God, Godess fine.

Whatever floats yer boat.

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 01:49 PM

so?

Posted by: I am the Lizard King. at June 18, 2005 01:49 PM

so?

nah, you guys are plenty of fun, but I gots to run!

asta

Posted by: rustle of luv at June 18, 2005 01:41 PM

So?

nah, you guys are plenty of fun, but I gots to run!

asta

I love Joseph Campbell, but I would tell him that to his face, if he were still alive.

I think he was trying for a little drama with that quote. But he's also the one who taught that they didn't go away, they just became something else, got renamed. The tribes would like to think they hid the Goddess, but they never did, sucessfully.

Unfortunately this scam still lives on in the hatred the Fundies (who coopted the idea of hatred of the female) have for environmentalists.

errr... I'm dumb.

That was me with the last post~

>>I love Joseph Campbell, but I would tell him that to his face, if he were still alive.

I take Campbell up on his words and say it's perfectly reasonable to call the gods/goddesses The Force, and be done with it.

Posted by: rustle of luv at June 18, 2005 01:54 PM

I'm mocking me here.

just so's ya know.

I mean it now, see ya later!

Posted by: Cathy in Seattle, Nobel Prize Nominated Blogger at June 18, 2005 01:55 PM

zigy - zig, ahh!

already gone.

>>the Ducaz (Reptilians) and the Pers-sires (Vulturites) have always been bitter enemies even to this day.

sounds like a Hatfields/McCoy thingy.

Are we doomed? Is there a blood test available so we can know which side we're suppose to root for?

Bye, rustle~

>>Therefore according to the teaching of Paul, the wives are the footstools and the husbands are the thrones. In one usurping stroke, Paul, on behalf of the Anunnaki, subordinated all Christian women to an inferior status. Many churches equate the teaching of Paul to the teachings of Christ. This is blasphemy!
http://www.illuminati-news.com/ufos-and-aliens/html/nibiru_and_the_anunnaki.htm

Ha! I KNEW IT!!

Paul=Annunaki

Spread the Word!

If that's true, Paul was a jerk

http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=6429

Hey, If it weren't for me, all those menfolk would have poor circulation!

Different religions were set up with doctrines in direct opposition
to one another in order to breed disharmony, distrust, confusion, war
and arrogance.

*

Anunnaki chauvinism has caused women to be subjugated to men and
treated as their "footstools" in many cultures including the Arab,
Asian, Jewish and Western societies. In Isaiah 66:1 is found the
saying "Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth
is my footstool . . .". In Ephesians 5:22-24 Paul, who was an
incarnated Anunnaki, wrote:

Wives submit yourselves onto your husbands, as onto the Lord. For the
husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the
church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the church
is subject onto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in
every thing.

Therefore according to the teaching of Paul, the wives are the
footstools and the husbands are the thrones. In one usurping stroke,
Paul, on behalf of the Anunnaki, subordinated all Christian women to
an inferior status. Many churches equate the teaching of Paul to the
teachings of Christ. This is blasphemy!

I take Campbell up on his words and say it's perfectly reasonable to call the gods/goddesses The Force, and be done with it.

Posted by: Cathy in Seattle, Nobel Prize Nominated Blogger at June 18, 2005 01:55 PM

----------------

Yes, that's true. I am the same way. I hesitate to call it "God". It is more of a force in my opinion.

Our MOTHER who art in heaven?

I don't think it matters what we call it.

Like Cathy said "it's" there no matter what.

Is this new or did I just miss it?

Condi was on about Iraq, 6 months after 9/11

As mentioned earlier the Anunnaki Elite conquered and enslaved the
primitive people who were already residing on Earth. Some claim that
Jesus was a hybrid from Nibiru, which maliciously implies that He was
an Anunnaki. This is patently false. Jesus is in fact, an Avatar of
the Light who "incarnated" here to remind and to re-awaken
the "sleeping" Divine beings of their true Divine origin.

Hey, If it weren't for me, all those menfolk would have poor circulation!

Posted by: God's Footstool at June 18, 2005 02:13 PM

I think you hshould reconsider. Men aren't ON the throne, they ARE the throne.

Laidies, would you rather rest the lords feet?

or bear the full wieght of his ass?

just a thought.

T>>herefore according to the teaching of Paul, the wives are the footstools and the husbands are the thrones. In one usurping stroke.

since when does a chair sit on a footstool?

if you are going to deal in metaphores, try to use them correctly.

Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 9 minutes ago

LONDON - When Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the then-U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida. She wanted to talk about "regime change" in Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year later.

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein.

In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war.

"U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing," Ricketts says in the memo. "For Iraq, `regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."

The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined to go to war as America's top ally, even though his government thought a pre-emptive attack may be illegal under international law.

"The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," said a typed copy of a March 22, 2002 memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press and written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

"But even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or biological weapons) fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up."

It's not the chair/footstool part so much as it is the "Wives submit yourselves onto your husbands, as onto the Lord" business

Posted by: Chubby_Bubba, Rajah of Bhong at June 18, 2005 02:39 PM

-------------

Chubby, is that story new or did I just iss it before?

Posted by: Meg at June 18, 2005 02:40 PM

yeah. what sort of social order would that lead to?

the line said "1 hour, 9 minutes ago" so I assume this is more pre-DSM stuff.

the line said "1 hour, 9 minutes ago" so I assume this is more pre-DSM stuff.

Posted by: Chubby_Bubba, Rajah of Bhong at June 18, 2005 02:49 PM

---------------

Top story at Yahoo and Excite. Good sign. Not holding my breath though

Downing Street Memo, finally a much more comprehensive coverage by those trolls at the AP. About fucking god damn time. This is it. IT's over for those fucking assholes. They need to go to jail. As far as I know, treason is a capital offense. Usually I'm against capital punishment, esp. those in Texas, but this time I'm in favor of it. THough the thought of seeing them suffer in jail and spilling beans is far more favorable. Okay so I take that back. Knowing these racist pricks, if that ever were the case, they'd sellout COlin Bowel, Cunti Rice and Torture Gonzoles. 'Cause you know they be colored.
But you know what we really need is capital punishment for the likes of Richard Mellon Scaith, and Hoch Brothers and other oil financial shitheads who funded these facists so that we never have to go through this shit ever again. We need to seize their financial resources. These fascist money is what needs to disappear.
And change our children's school books to clearly reflect what the fuck just happened here; the fragility of our democracy how despite our genocidal past, we have risen to become the beacon of human rights and civil rights, but in less than 5yrs under a ruthless crime family, a 60 yrs worth of pristine reputation can change in an instant. Okay so we had these assholes working as Economic Assassins for those yrs. But you'll know what I mean.
Folks, we are the only real ambassadors of our nation. Travel more, show the real Americana, not these assholes'. As is, I hear only 13% of us hold passports. There in lies our problem. Cheerio.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20050618/ap_on_re_eu/downing_street_memos_2

I'm doing housework.

I'll be in and out all afternoon?

I agree thzaat after almost 2 months the DM=SM is finally picking up steam.

But it will not mean a thing if America doesn't wake up and reform campaign finance.

The current incestuous relationship between the mainstream media and the Bush Whitehouse is a result of big money corrupting politics.

eya CB - how'd job interview go last week - read about it briefly...hope all went well.

But it will not mean a thing if America doesn't wake up and reform campaign finance.

The current incestuous relationship between the mainstream media and the Bush Whitehouse is a result of big money corrupting politics.

Posted by: Chubby_Bubba, Rajah of Bhong at June 18, 2005 03:34 PM

You and I would have to agree to disagree a bit here.

eya CB - how'd job interview go last week - read about it briefly...hope all went well.

Posted by: -tk at June 18, 2005 03:36 PM

I am waiting for the results of another interview oon monday.

I should know by tuesday at the latest.

I have high hopes!

Posted by: Chubby_Bubba, Rajah of Bhong at June 18, 2005 03:34 PM

You and I would have to agree to disagree a bit here.

That's why we are here!

That's why we are here!

Posted by: Chubby_Bubba, Rajah of Bhong at June 18, 2005 03:46 PM

Indeed! - and I wish you the best :)

Bob's Mob
The secret plot to kill Tom Noe.
By Pete Kotz
Published: Wednesday, June 8, 2005
The scene: At an abandoned warehouse outside Columbus, notorious mob boss Roberto "No-Chin" Taft has summoned his top henchmen to a secret meeting. The Taft Organized Crime Family has been linked to a scheme to defraud the state of $12 million in rare coins. G-Men are swarming Columbus. The family's very survival is at stake.
Taft: My friends, my heart weeps. For many years we have benefited from this thing of ours. With our friends in insurance, banking, energy, and nursing homes, we have earned untold riches. Anyone who wishes to do business in this state, they must first pay us. But now it is all being threatened. Our associate, Mr. Noe, has failed to protect our rare coins and collectibles racket. He has brought unwanted attention to us all.

Consigliere Jimmy Petro: Godfather, my heart sobs too, though mixed with periodic convulsions. Noe has been a good earner for us. His generosity is known to our friends in Washington. But we can no longer offer him our protection. We must make Noe sleep with the fishes before he sings to the feds.

Taft, pounding his fist on the table, his face crimson with fury: Petro! Why must you always speak of fishing? We have pressing business matters --

Petro, interrupting, fear engraved in his face: My deepest apologies, Godfather. It was my desire to employ a traditional criminal euphemism, implying that I wish to make Noe dead. Sadly, I have failed you, Don Roberto.

Taft, regaining composure: Petro, it is I who must apologize. It is a sign of our declining fortunes that we can no longer speak fluent criminal. For this, I am responsible. But I must agree: Noe should sleep in the freezer. How do you propose we do this?

Capo Betty Montgomery, chomping on a cigar: I say we get the lobbyists. They're degenerates. Savages. They'd garrote their own mothers for a day-pass to Cedar Point.

Petro: It is true, Capo Montgomery. The lobbyists, they are beasts from the wilderness. But they are also whores. If the G-Men get to them, they would rat us out for a two-liter of Mountain Dew. They cannot be trusted for suc

This is the cutest rabbit page ever. (link to a japanese snow rabbit. )

http://www.syberpunk.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?page=oolong

Montgomery, as a whimpering Blackwell is taken away: I say we call FirstEnergy. They owe us after letting 'em skim $12 billion on that 'stranded costs' scam. These guys, they got a gift for turning people's lights out, if you know what I'm saying. We could get a two-for-one and whack Blackwell too.

Taft: Worry not about Blackwell. Even the strongest of men cannot survive the Yarborough. But our friends at FirstEnergy, they are weak and foolish. They would blow up most of Toledo and southern Michigan, bringing us unneeded attention. Besides, they require millions in subsidies just to walk across the street.

Montgomery: What about the Chamber of Commerce, Godfather? They will do anything to protect our interests.

Taft, again slamming his fist on the table: Fools! I am surrounded by fools! Do you not remember, Montgomery, the last time we trusted the Chamber Family to do a job? They were supposed to take out the Supreme Court justice, Alice Robie Resnick! All they brought us was shame! Still today, she taunts us from the bench with her presence!

We must accept our fate. Our family has grown weak. There is no one left to handle such important work. Deters is hiding in Cincinnati. Householder? Now there was a man who would arc-weld his own children for a nickel. And where are these men today? Gone! This leaves me no other choice. I must make Noe sleep in the fryer myself!

Petro, looking tentative: Godfather, I'm . . . ah . . . not sure that's such a swell idea. Seeing as how you . . . ah . . . kind of inherited the job from your dad and, ah . . . you're not really used to getting your hands dirty, and, ah . . . you're still kinda struggling to get that whole fishes thing right, and, ah . . . aren't you late for a tee time or something?

Taft, with a self-satisfied air: Nonsense, Petro! I am a man of the street! Why, I once socked a fellow at Yale! I will slay Noe myself and prove to all that the Taft Family is still to be feared!

Petro: But Don Roberto, this man Noe, he is said to be among the most dangerous of the coin and collectibles merchants.

Taft: Petro, I am perfectly capable of sleeping with someone. [Turning to bodyguard] Hand me your

Taft: Petro, I am perfectly capable of sleeping with someone. [Turning to bodyguard] Hand me your weapon, minion! [Examines the gun, then stares down the end of the barrel] How do you operate this thing? Do you pull this little lever like this . . . ?

Downing street memo, help click on that rating!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/18/16237/7773

hey, if you have an avacado pit and you want to get a plant going, are there any rules for that?

like I stuck in three tooth picks and I have it suspended half into my majority report mug filled with water.

does it matter which end is up?

like out of the water?

There is an obvious "stem" end, which is the end currently exposed to the air.

wanda's daily kos link all hyper'd

The missing part

Taft: What about the bankers? Surely the Bank One Family wishes to return a favor for allowing them to wet their beak on that $25 million no-bid child-support contract.

Petro: I agree, Godfather. The bankers have benefited from many sweetheart deals, and we have protected them from predatory lending laws. But they would try to crush Noe to death by selling him a mortgage at 12 points above prime, and he would live to take revenge.

Taft: Capo Blackwell, you are the most streetwise among us. Perhaps we can call on your friends at the Crips and Bloods?

Blackwell: To my regret, Godfather, we have been unable to locate their offices, and they have failed to register articles of incorporation. But there exists a fiercer gang, with many more guns -- Focus on the Family.

Taft, slapping Blackwell hard across the face: Blackwell! This is no time for focus groups! We are bloodthirsty criminals, not politicians!

Blackwell: Well, actually --

Taft, furious, turning to his bodyguards: Take Blackwell outside! Force him to read the works of Chuck Yarborough! We must teach him to respect the family business!

BUSHWHACKING PRIVACY
The administration has delayed privacy-oversight efforts until Bush's pet projects are in place. By then, any oversight will be beside the point.
By David S. Bernstein Art by Joe Bluhm Friday, June 17, 2005

OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS, the U.S. government plans to roll out a series of initiatives to enhance the nation's security, each carrying the potential to strip away more and more of your privacy in the name of protecting your liberty.

In theory, all these projects should have been planned, designed, and launched with input from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which was created last year by near-unanimous congressional assent at the urging of the 9/11 Commission, to protect against overly intrusive security practices in all federal agencies.

In reality, however, the Bush administration has delayed staffing and funding the interagency privacy board while its pet projects have moved to fruition, including the following:

• Secure Flight, a new air-travel passenger-screening system debuting this summer, will put a host of “watch list” information, possibly including criminal records, at the fingertips of airline employees.

• New passports will soon be fitted with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that transmit all the holder's personal information — a desirable target for identity thieves using “skimming” equipment.

• States will now be required to meet national-security standards for drivers' licenses, increasing the amount of information collected and displayed.

• A new Homeland Security Operations Center Database will compile governmental intelligence, law-enforcement files, private-sector data, financial records, media reports, and material from commercial databases, and analyze them for suspicious activity or correlations.

Meanwhile, privacy advocates are already questioning the effectiveness and sincerity behind recent administration moves, which include establishing a weak Department of Homeland Security privacy-advisory board, and halfhearted attempts by other federal agencies to name privacy officers and ad hoc privacy committees. Add to that the current debate in Congress over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which has long angered civil libertarians with its provisions permitting the FBI warrentless access to medical, student and library records.

“This year will pretty much determine whether we have any kind of privacy at all, because all of these things are coming to a head,” says Bob Barr, former Republican congressman from Georgia.

FEW AMERICANS can precisely define what they expect of their government with regard to privacy, but as with pornography, they know an intrusion when they see it. A privacy intrusion happens when you give information to one entity, and it hands it to another without your knowledge. It happens when information you give for one purpose gets used for another. It happens when your name appears on a watch list without a fair chance to prove that it doesn't belong there. And it happens when a government agent looks into your activities without a good reason — one approved by a judge.

All these things have taken place over the last few years, as the federal government, understandably, moves zealously to implement systems and policies to stop potential terrorists. Which is precisely why last July's 9/11 Commission Report recommended the creation of the interagency Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and Congress created it as part of intelligence-reform legislation in December.

But George W. Bush has yet to nominate a single member to the board or provide it with a single dollar. For the 2006 fiscal year, the first when it will be funded, its budget is a pitiful $750,000.

Frustrated by the inaction, four senators sent an open letter of complaint to Bush's chief of staff last month, while other congressmen are seeking to start over by creating a new privacy-oversight board. The administration has given no public reaction to the letter, and would not comment for this article.

But the delay should come as no surprise, because despite claiming publicly to support the idea of privacy protection, the administration has fought against it all along. “I think it's fair to say that this is an administration that doesn't care that much about privacy,” says Fred Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University and author of Privacy in the Information Age (Brookings, 1997). Cate recently served on a privacy-advisory committee for the Department of Defense, which, like the 9/11 Commission, called for the establishment of a government-wide privacy-oversight board. Its final recommendations, presented a year ago, have not been implemented.

In fact, soon after the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, Bush set out to undermine the suggestion, by creating the toothless President's Board on Safeguarding Americans' Civil Liberties by executive order in August 2004. The powerless entity, which never got off the ground, would have consisted only of executive-branch personnel — “the same people the board was supposed to be advising and keeping in check,” says Tim Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, in Washington, D.C.

The leaders of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, demanded something stronger. Several close observers, including Representative Tom Udall of New Mexico, say the negotiations ended with a quid pro quo: the senators agreed to give Bush the interagency-information-sharing powers he wanted in the intelligence-reform bill, and in return he let them create the privacy board — albeit a heavily watered-down version — to oversee the use of those powers.

But when Bush failed to staff and fund the board, the quo never materialized.

“We thought that the bill actually did a good job creating privacy-oversight mechanisms,” says Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based government-watchdog group. “But none of them have been put in place.”

Udall is now co-sponsoring a bill that would recreate the interagency privacy board with its originally conceived powers, including bipartisan nominations and subpoena power. Meanwhile, Collins and Lieberman, along with Democrats Richard Durbin of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, are pressuring the White House to name members to the board and increase its funding. “I think they [the Bush administration] are solely focused on the security issues, with little interest in the protection of civil liberties,” says Udall. “We are trying, in a bipartisan way, to restore some balance, and the Bush administration is opposing us.”

Udall thinks Congress has leverage now, thanks to the upcoming reauthorization of the 2001 USA Patriot Act; many of the law's most controversial portions, including expanded governmental surveillance powers, expire this December. “They want this bill badly,” Udall says.

Privacy advocates are trying to remove some provisions and add judicial oversight to others, including the notorious authority to snoop into library-borrowing records. The Bush administration, for its part, is trying to add even more snooping powers, including granting the FBI access to business records without a court order. “They're trying to push on these other fronts that they know they won't get, so they can act like they're giving something up and still get their whole ball of wax,” Udall says.

Meanwhile, the tug-of-war over the Privacy and Civil Rights Oversight Board is becoming increasingly moot, as privacy-invasive projects get up and running. A perfect example just occurred with the passage of the Real ID Act, signed into law last month. The act requires that every driver's license display the holder's permanent residence. That presents a significant privacy dilemma for the many states that currently exempt certain potential crime targets — judges, law-enforcement personnel, domestic-violence victims — who need to keep their addresses private.

A privacy-advisory group might have caught and avoided that problem — in fact, one was doing so. The Department of Transportation had assembled a committee to help ensure privacy in the new standards, and it was working on solving that exact problem, says Schwartz, who was on the committee. But rather than let the advisory body do its oversight work, Republicans sped the bill into law with the printed-address requirement intact — and dismantled the privacy committee.

THE DEPARTMENT of Transportation and a number of other departments have now been mandated, in their latest budget authorizations, to appoint a chief privacy officer. But most departments, including Transportation, have simply appended that responsibility to the existing chief information officer. No new watchdogs have been added to the process.

One department, however, has had a real chief privacy officer for two years, and it's the division that most needs one: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Cobbled together from more than 20 agencies, DHS has 180,000 employees and produces many of the most controversial anti-terrorism projects.

Congress mandated the DHS privacy office in the wake of one of the Bush administration's most notorious efforts to increase its ability to gather, share, and analyze information about private citizens: the Department of Defense's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project. TIA was supposed to bring together financial, medical, communications, travel and intelligence records, to be sifted through by sophisticated “data mining” software programs in search of suspicious patterns and associations. When the New York Times reported on the program in late 2002, the public was horrified, and less than a year later Congress killed it.

Nuala O'Connor Kelly, 36, was named DHS chief privacy officer by DHS secretary Tom Ridge in April 2003, but for months she and an assistant constituted the entire operation. It is now a $30 million office with staff that includes several people with strong privacy credentials. Kelly herself, previously with the Commerce Department, learned about privacy when she was hired by Internet advertising company DoubleClick to mop up after it was caught tracking and analyzing ordinary people's Web usage.

But despite the budget and personnel, there is little reason to believe that Kelly, a political neophyte and Bush loyalist, has much influence. The DHS privacy office has no real power or authority; even its annual report gets cleared by the department. It has so far mostly produced privacy assessments that focus on technological aspects of project implementation.

Kelly's impotence became apparent during her investigation into the JetBlue scandal. The DHS's Transportation Security Agency (TSA) had asked for, and received, five million customer data profiles from the JetBlue airline company without notifying Congress or the public as required by law. In an internal e-mail obtained by the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, Kelly is seen begging TSA's deputy administrator for help obtaining documents and information she has been requesting from TSA staff. The deputy administrator, Carol DiBattiste, replies dismissively that “TSA Public Affairs has no information in response to your request.”

Now, as the TSA prepares to implement its controversial Sec

“I think the privacy officer serves some useful function, at least as a liaison,” says the ACLU's Edgar. “But at the end of the day, it's just somebody for us to complain to.”

It also took two years to put together a privacy-advisory board that is supposed to provide outside scrutiny of DHS privacy practices for Kelly — and when she finally named the members this February, the selections made clear that privacy advocates shouldn't expect too much. “A lot of these folks work for technology companies that also sell to the government,” says James Harper, a member of the committee and director of information-policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, DC. “There is an instinct among many on the board that we're going to look at implementation of specific initiatives on a technical level,” rather than question the initiatives or policies themselves, he says.

Then in April, at its inaugural meeting, this external advisory board selected Paul Rosenzweig as its chairman. Rosenzweig, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, has in the past publicly defended almost every Bush administration privacy and civil-liberties intrusion, including the TIA project and the denial of legal rights to American citizen and suspected terrorist Jose Padilla.

The DHS privacy office's advisory board meets for the second time on June 15, at Harvard Law School's Pound Hall.

Of course, whatever the influence wielded by Kelly and her new advisory board, their scope is limited to DHS. The electronic-passport initiative comes from the State Department; the driver's-license project began at Transportation (the Real ID Act moved it to DHS). That's why the 9/11 Commission and others said that broader oversight was needed — and why it existed under Bill Clinton. Clinton appointed Peter Swire as the country's first chief counselor for privacy in March 1999. Bush did not maintain the position.

“Nuala Kelly is in one agency, and information sharing happens across multiple agencies,” says Swire, now a law professor at Ohio State University. “Someone should be in the room as programs are being developed, to make sure that they bake in civil libertie

There is an obvious "stem" end, which is the end currently exposed to the air.

Posted by: rustle of luv at June 18, 2005 04:30 PM

The pointed end goes up the rounded bottom goes in the water.

But even with Swire in office, and before 9/11 electrified the atmosphere, government agencies were able to move forward with some of their privacy-busting initiatives. In the summer of 2000, the Wall Street Journal reported on the FBI's Carnivore Project, in which specialized computers would intercept and scan all Internet traffic to and from a targeted suspect. Privacy groups threw a fit. So where was the privacy czar? “My office didn't learn about Carnivore until it was in the papers,” Swire says.

Which makes the current situation of such concern. “It's more likely today that you'll have an unvetted program,” Swire says.

JOHN MCCARTHY, executive director of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Project at George Mason University and a top Bush administration adviser on privacy and security issues, cautions that the public, and even most privacy advocates, don't know what happens inside the meetings where key decisions are made. “I don't see a dismissive attitude about privacy,” he says. “I see a great deal of concern.”

Nevertheless, McCarthy agrees that security-minded government agents need oversight, to help them see the unintended consequences of their projects — the kind of “mission creep” that inevitably leads to the worst privacy intrusions and the loudest protests from the public. McCarthy points to the new Transportation Worker Identification Credential, an electronic identification card meant to improve security at ports. DHS was surprised by resistance to the system among unionized workers in Long Beach, who are concerned that the system will be used to monitor their work hours.

Similarly, the gathering of personal information under CAPPS II — an ill-fated air-traveler-profiling project scrapped due to privacy concerns (computer software would have assigned each passenger a color-coded tag based on collected data) — probably wouldn't have set off the alarms it did, says Cate, “but [Attorney General] John Ashcroft kept saying, ‘We can use this data for all kinds of other things.'”

These security initiatives, once in place, will be with us for many years to come and will not only affect our privacy, but will likely lower our civil-liberty expectations,

As reported in past Corporate Watch news articles, there are plans afoot to build a huge aluminium smelting hydro-electric dam in the highlands of Iceland, cutting off water supplies, drying up plains and spreading dust and pollution far and wide. Icelandic environmentalists have invited people to come over and show their support from June 21st by attending an action camp. For more details go to www.savingiceland.org/

Googling The Truth

Guardian

What does the truth look like? Google, the company last week confirmed as the biggest media firm on the planet, rather hopes that it reads something like this: WO 2005/029368.

That's the number of one of several patents filed in the US recently by the Californian internet giant. According to that patent, Google is for the first time planning to rank news stories according to their accuracy and reliability as well as their topicality.

Google, and its heavyweight competitors, are pouring billions of dollars and thousands of staff hours into trying to ensure that when you search on the internet, you receive not only exactly the information you want, but also information that is true.

During the early days of the internet boom, it was predicted that search engines would gradually lessen in importance as users latched on to their favourite sites. But the opposite has proved true, with Google and its competitors becoming the way into the web for eight in 10 web users, according to Ask Jeeves.

http://www.rescuecharles.org/en/index.php

U.S. citizen Charles Lee has been in illegal detention in China for 878 Days

Charles Is Being Abused in Chinese Prison. Should We Keep Silent While an American Citizen is Slaving Making Shoes & Being Abused?

Recent news from the American Consulate in Shanghai China indicates that American citizen and California resident Dr. Charles Lee has been forced to labor in a shoe factory, since last December. He staged a one-day hunger strike on May 18, to protest the poor working conditions in the factory. In February of this year he felt very ill, due to overexposure to the chemicals used in the glue to make shoes.

A U.S. official said that Dr. Lee appeared tired during their face-to-face meeting, and said that not only did he have to make shoes during the day; he is also being routinely deprived of sleep at night by prison officials who try to force him to admit guilt, which he has refused to do.

From the start of detention in January 2003, Dr. Lee has been beaten, deprived of sleep, force-fed, forced to attend brainwashing classes, and now is being subjected to slave labor. He was sentenced to a 3-year jail term last year for his “intention” to expose the human rights violations against Falun Gong practitioners in China, via state-controlled Chinese television. Friends of Charles Lee urge the Bush Administration to take a strong stand to protest the abuses of our fellow American citizen, and to condemn the severe human rights violations against Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Bush keeps saying that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He's been saying this for years now. Isn't it high time that we started rubbing his nose in this pile of shit?

We hate the lies that link the war in Iraq to 9/11 and the war on terror but by Bush's own logic, the link is extremely damning to his leadership on both fronts.

Despite the greatest army in the world, the insurgency continues to kill our troops and undermine the building of Iraq. So how is it that he can claim to be winning the war on terror?

One more thing: We've been told over and over that fighting terrorism is a war that we will be fighting for generations to come. If we were truly in Iraq to help the Iraqi people live safer, freer lives, why brag about bringing this horrific unending war into their country so that "we won't have to be fighting them in the streets of New York?"

Excusing the suffering of the Iraqi people as a sacrifice for our security is obscene.

Secret Patriot Act II to give Hitler's Powers to Bush
Infowars.com
December 8, 2004
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) told the Washington Times
that no member of Congress was allowed to read the
first Patriot Act that was passed by the House on
October 27, 2001. The first Patriot Act was
universally decried by civil libertarians and
Constitutional SECRET PATscholars from across the
political spectrum. William Safire, while writing for
the New York Times, described the first Patriot Act's
powers by saying that President Bush was seizing
dictatorial control.
On February 7, 2003 the Center for Public Integrity, a
non-partisan public interest think-tank in DC,
revealed the full text of the Domestic Security
Enhancement Act of 2003. The classified document had
been leaked to them by an unnamed source inside the
Federal government. The document consisted of a
33-page section by section analysis of the
accompanying 87-page bill.

The Patriot Act II bill itself is stamped
"Confidential -Not for Distribution." Upon reading the
analysis and bill, I was stunned by the scientifically
crafted tyranny contained in the legislation. The
Justice Department Office of Legislative Affairs
admits that they had indeed covertly transmitted a
copy of the legislation to Speaker of the House Dennis
Hastert, (R-Il) and the Vice President of the United
States, Dick Cheney as well as the executive heads of
federal law enforcement agencies.

It is important to note that no member of Congress was
allowed to see the first Patriot Act before its
passage, and that no debate was tolerated by the House
and Senate leadership. The intentions of the White
House and Speaker Hastert concerning Patriot Act II
appear to be a carbon copy replay of the events that
led to the unprecedented passage of the first Patriot
Act.

There are two glaring areas that need to be looked at
concerning this new legislation:

1. The secretive tactics being used by the White House
and Speaker Hastert to keep even the existence of this
legislation secret would be more at home in Communist
China than in the United States. The fact that Dick
Cheney publicly managed the steamroller passage of the
first Patriot Act, insuring that no one was allowed to
read it and publicly threatening members of Congress
that if they didn?t vote in favor of it that they
would be blamed for the next terrorist attack, is by
the White House?' own definition terrorism. The move
to clandestinely craft and then bully passage of any
legislation by the Executive Branch is clearly an
impeachable offence.

2. The second Patriot Act is a mirror image of powers
that Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler gave themselves.
Whereas the First Patriot Act only gutted the First,
Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously
damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot
Act reorganizes the entire Federal government as well
as many areas of state government under the
dictatorial control of the Justice Department, the
Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCOM
military command. The Domestic Security Enhancement
Act 2003, also known as the Second Patriot Act is by
its very structure the definition of dictatorship.

I challenge all Americans to study the new Patriot Act
and to compare it to the Constitution, Bill of Rights
and Declaration of Independence. Ninety percent of the
act has nothing to do with terrorism and is instead a
giant Fede

Here is a quick thumbnail sketch of just some of the
draconian measures encapsulated within this tyrannical
legislation:

SECTION 501 (Expatriation of Terrorists) expands the
Bush administration'?s enemy combatant definition to
all American citizens who may have violated any
provision of Section 802 of the first Patriot Act.
(Section 802 is the new definition of domestic
terrorism, and the definition is any action that
endangers human life that is a violation of any
Federal or State law. ) Section 501 of the second
Patriot Act directly connects to Section 125 of the
same act. The Justice Department boldly claims that
the incredibly broad Section 802 of the First USA
Patriot Act isn?t broad enough and that a new,
unlimited definition of terrorism is needed.

Under Section 501 a US citizen engaging in lawful
activities can be grabbed off the street and thrown
into a van never to be seen again. The Justice
Department states that they can do this because the
person had inferred from conduct that they were not a
US citizen. Remember Section 802 of the First USA
Patriot Act states that any violation of Federal or
State law can result in the enemy combatant terrorist
designation.

SECTION 201 of the second Patriot Act makes it a
criminal act for any member of the government or any
citizen to release any information concerning the
incarceration or whereabouts of detainees. It also
states that law enforcement does not even have to tell
the press who they have arrested and they never have
to release the names.

SECTION 301 and 306 (Terrorist Identification
Database) set up a national database of suspected
terrorists and radically expand the database to
include anyone associated with suspected terrorist
groups and anyone involved in crimes or having
supported any group designated as terrorist. These
sections also set up a national DNA database for
anyone on probation or who has been on probation for
any crime, and orders State governments t

SECTION 312 gives immunity to law enforcement engaging
in spying operations against the American people and
would place substantial restrictions on court
injunctions against Federal violations of civil rights
across the board.

SECTION 101 will designate individual terrorists as
foreign powers and again strip them of all rights
under the enemy combatant designation.

SECTION 102 states clearly that any information
gathering, regardless of whether or not those
activities are illegal, can be considered to be
clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign
power. This makes news gathering illegal.

SECTION 103 allows the Federal government to use
wartime martial law powers domestically and
internationally without Congress declaring that a
state of war exists.

SECTION 106 is bone-chilling in its
straightforwardness. It states that broad general
warrants by the secret FSIA court (a panel of secret
judges set up in a star chamber system that convenes
in an undisclosed location) granted under the first
Patriot Act are not good enough. It states that
government agents must be given immunity for carrying
out searches with no prior court approval. This
section throws out the entire Fourth Amendment against
unreasonable searches and seizures.

SECTION 109 allows secret star chamber courts to issue
contempt charges against any individual or corporation
who refuses to incriminate themselves or others. This
sections annihilate the last vestiges of the Fifth
Amendment.

SECTION 110 restates that key police state clauses in
the first Patriot Act were not sunsetted and removes
the five year sunset clause from other subsections of
the first Patriot Act. After all, the media has told
us: this is the New America. Get used to it. This is
forever.

SECTION 111 expands the definition of the enemy
combatant designation.

SECTION 122 restates the government?s newly announced
power of surveillance without a court order.

SECTION 123 restates that the government no longer
needs warrants and that the investigations can be a
giant dragnet-style sweep described in press reports
about the Total Information Awareness Network. One
passage reads, thus the focus of domestic surveillance
may be less precise than that directed against more
conventional types of crime.

SECTION 126 grants the government the right to mine
the entire spectrum of public and private sector
information from bank records to educational and
medical records. This is the enacting law to allow
ECHELON and the Total Information Awareness Network to
totally break down any and all walls of privacy.

The government states that they must look at
everything to determine if individuals or groups might
have a connection to terrorist groups. As you can now
see, you are guilty until proven innocent.

SECTION 127 allows the government to takeover
coroners? and medical examiners operations whenever
they see fit.

SECTION 128 allows the Federal government to place gag
orders on Federal and State Grand Juries and to take
over the proceedings. It also disallows individuals or
organizations to even try to quash a Federal subpoena.
So now defending yourself will be a terrorist action.

SECTION 129 destroys any remaining whistleblower
protection for Federal agents.

SECTION 202 allows corporations to keep secret their
activities with toxic biological, chemical or
radiological materials.

SECTION 205 allows top Federal officials to keep all
their financial dealings secret, and anyone
investigating them can be considered a terrorist. This
should be very useful for Dick Cheney to stop anyone
investigating Haliburton.

SECTION 303 sets up national DNA database of suspected
terrorists. The database will also be used to stop
other unlawful activities. It will share the
information with state, local and foreign agencies for
the same purposes.

SECTION 311 federalizes your local police department
in the area of information sharing.

SECTION 313 provides liability protection for
businesses, especially big businesses that spy on
their customers for Homeland Security, violating their
privacy agreements. It goes on to say that these are
all preventative measures â?? has anyone seen Minority
Report? This is the access hub for the Total
Information Awareness Network.

SECTION 321 authorizes foreign governments to spy on
the American people and to share information with
foreign governments.

SECTION 322 removes Congress from the extradition
process and allows officers of the Homeland Security
complex to extradite American citizens anywhere they
wish. It also allows Homeland Security to secretly
take individuals out of foreign countries.

SECTION 402 is titled Providing Material Support to
Terrorism. The section reads that there is no
requirement to show that the individual even had the
intent to aid terrorists.

SECTION 403 expands the definition of weapons of mass
destruction to include any activity that affects
interstate or foreign commerce.

SECTION 404 makes it a crime for a terrorist or other
criminals to use encryption in the commission of a
crime.

SECTION 408 creates lifetime parole (basically,
slavery) for a whole host of crimes.

SECTION 410 creates no statute of limitations for
anyone that engages in terrorist actions or supports
terrorists. Remember: any crime is now considered
terrorism under the first Patriot Act.

SECTION 411 expands crimes that are punishable by
death. Again, they point to Section 802 of the first
Patriot Act and state that any terrorist act or
support of terrorist act can result in the death
penalty.

SECTION 421 increases penalties for terrorist
financing. This section states that any type of
financial activity connected to terrorism will result
to time in prison and $10-50,000 fines per violation.

SECTIONS 427 sets up asset forfeiture provisions for
anyone engaging in terrorist activities.

There are many other sections that I did not cover in
the interest of time. The American people were shocked
by the despotic nature of the first Patriot Act. The
second Patriot Act dwarfs all police state legislation
in modern world history.

Usually, corrupt governments allow their citizens lots
of wonderful rights on paper, while carrying out their
jackbooted oppression covertly. From snatch and grab
operations to warantless searches, Patriot Act II is
an Adolf Hitler wish list.

You can understand why President Bush, Dick Cheney and
Dennis Hastert want to keep this legislation secret
not just from Congress, but the American people as
well. Bill Allison, Managing Editor of the Center for
Public Integrity, the group that broke this story,
stated on my radio show that it was obvious that they
were just waiting for another terrorist attack to
opportunistically get this new bill through. He then
shocked me with an insightful comment about how the
Federal government was crafting this so that they
could go after the American people in general. He also
agreed that the FBI has been quietly demonizing
patriots and Christians and those who carry around
pocket Constitutions.

I have produced two documentary films and written a
book about what really happened on September 11th. The
bottom line is this: the military-industrial complex
carried the attacks out as a pretext for control.
Anyone who doubts this just hasn?t looked at the
mountains of hard evidence.

Of course, the current group of white collar criminals
in the White House might not care that we?'re finding
out the details of their next phase. Because, after
all, when smallpox gets released, or more buildings
start blowing up, the President can stand up there at
his lectern suppressing a smirk, squeeze out a tear or
two, and tell us that See I was right. I had to take
away your rights to keep you safe. And now it?s your
fault that all of these children are dead. From that
point on, anyone who criticizes tyranny will be
shouted down by the paid talking head government
mouthpieces in the mainstream media.

You have to admit, it?s a beautiful script.
Unfortunately, it?s being played out in the real
world. If we don?t get the word out that government is
using terror to control our lives while doing nothing
to stop the terrorists, we will deserve what we get -
tyranny. But our children won?t deserve it.

Senator Appoval Ratings: (UPDATED 6/14/05 TO INCLUDE SUB-SORT)

http://www.surveyusa.com/

Excusing the suffering of the Iraqi people as a sacrifice for our security is obscene.

Posted by: wanda at June 18, 2005 05:04 PM

---------

Not if you never think about it.

Or give a fuck.

oh man.. Majority has so much shit to talk about money...

Bush latest radio address is a disaster.

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2005/6/18/16857/0912/60#60

So He Admits He Lied....

In this statement, Bush just admitted that he lied to the American people and Congress:

1. Bush admits that he decided to remove Saddam Hussein from power. So, it wasn't about disarming him after all. Trouble is, neither the Congressional resolution nor the UN resolution 1441 authorized regime change.

2. Bush admits that Iraq is now a central front in the war on terror, meaning that it was not so before. Not only did he falsely tie Iraq to 9/11 and terrorism, he created the very situation needed to make us less safe.

Who Lost China's Internet?

China Telecom is considering purchasing software ...which surfs along just ahead of you, learning as it censors in real time. It was built to filter "gambling, shopping, job search, pornography, stock quotes, or other non-business material," but the first question from the Chinese buyers is invariably: Can it stop Falun Gong?

"Michael was hired in 1996 by the Chinese government and Global One (a Sprint-France Telecom-Deutsche Telekom joint venture) to build the first network in China providing public access to the Internet. One day sticks in his mind. The Chinese engineers working with him suddenly convened a special meeting, demanding to know if it would be possible to do keyword searching inside e-mails and web addresses on the Chinese Internet. Not really, Michael replied; all information that travels the Net is broken up into little packets. It's hard to "sniff" packets of information, particularly coded packets. You would need to intercept packets as they travel, and then there's the problem of collating the information they contain, actually making sense of it. Yes, yes, they said, but can you do it?

On the third go-round, it dawned on Michael that his fellow computer geeks wanted to end the meeting, too. But at a higher level, someone required assurance. Before Internet construction proceeded further, they would need to monitor what Chinese users did with it. For the engineers, this was just cover-your-ass stuff. As long as the foreigner assured them that down the road the Chinese would be able to build an Internet firewall against the world and conduct surveillance on its own citizens, the engineers could continue working with him. Yes, yes, it can be done, Michael told them, and they went back to work."

MORE

http://www.fofg.org/persecution/persecution_story.php?doc_id=180&PHPSESSID=9e010f3b46e8139891af924ee6818436

Yeats died Saturday in France.

Freedom from his animal

Has come at last in alien Nice,

His heart beat separate from his will:

He knows at last the old abyss

Which always faced his staring face.

No ability, no dignity

Can fail him now who trained so long

For the outrage of eternity,

Teaching his heart to beat a song

In which man's strict humanity,

Erect as a soldier, became a tongue.

*

Delmore Schwartz - Yeats Died Saturday In France

Happy Saturday Blog...

See ya after work.... :)

Hope you get your job Chubby.

Bush's Missing WMD 'Joke': Is the Media Still Laughing?

Bush's Missing WMD 'Joke': Is the Media Still Laughing? A brief comment at a forum in Washington this week resurrects one of the most shameful episodes in recent media history: The night a roomful of journalists laughed along with a president making fun of the bogus threat that led to a costly war.

By Greg Mitchell

(June 18, 2005) -- Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, in an article Friday, suggested that the congressional forum the previous day on the Downing Street memos was something of a joke. In his opening sentence he declared that House Democrats “took a trip to the land of make-believe” in pretending that the basement conference room was actually a real hearing room, even importing a few American flags to make it look more official.

Oddly, he seem less interested in the far more serious “make-believe” that inspired the basement session: the administration’s fake case for WMDs in Iraq that has already led to the deaths of over 1,700 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. No, Milbank used the valuable real estate of the Post to mock Rep. John Conyers, who arranged the meeting, and his “hearty band of playmates.”

This fun-loving “band” included a mother who had lost her son in Iraq.

The debate over the Downing Street memos has been covered elsewhere at E&P Online, going back to our first story on May 5, and including a new column on this site by William E. Jackson. So allow me to focus, instead, on one brief moment in the Thursday forum, which took me back to a connected, equally brief, Washington moment last year. It represents one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the American media, and presidency, yet is rarely mentioned today.

It occurred on March 24, 2004. The setting: The 60th annual black-tie dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association (with many print journalists there as guests) at the Hilton. On the menu: surf and turf. Attendance: 1500. The main speaker: President George W. Bush, one year into the I

Bush keeps saying that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He's been saying this for years now. Isn't it high time that we started rubbing his nose in this pile of shit?

We hate the lies that link the war in Iraq to 9/11 and the war on terror but by Bush's own logic, the link is extremely damning to his leadership on both fronts.

Despite the greatest army in the world, the insurgency continues to kill our troops and undermine the building of Iraq. So how is it that he can claim to be winning the war on terror?

One more thing: [re: fighting terrorists in Iraq so] ... "we won't have to be fighting them in the streets of New York."

Excusing the suffering of the Iraqi people as a sacrifice for our security is obscene.

Posted by: wanda at June 18, 2005 05:04 PM

-----------

Very good points all.

It's called going on the offensive.

Bitch-slapped Dems need to be introduced to the fucking concept.

The Bush Admin. is rife and riddled with unreconcilable contradictions just like those you've astutely cited.

Call him on it.

Call the fucking bluff.

Put our boy-king under the microscope and let him explain himself.

If nitwit Dems start banging the drum loudly and in concert, it gives the press cover to write critical stories.

If Dems don't, the press by and large doesn't write critical stories. Happens over and over.

If ever there was a easy case to be made for incompetence and deceit, our war president is it.

Dems got to make it -- strong and unrelentingly.

Keep the pressure on and the Bushies start fucking up. Lose track of talking points. Contradicting e/o.

Call the fucking bluff.

Just watched the Conyers hearing again. What came to mind is this, that if the Conyers hearing on Wednesday represent an official beginning of an impeachment inquery and other hearings are going to be held, who else may testify in future impeachment investigatory hearings?

Paul Oneill, Richard Clarke, Anthony Zinni, members of Diplomats and Military Commanders for change, Brent Scrowcroft, William Odom, CIA and other intelligence analyst...

We got a pre-view of the latest batch of leaked papers:

_________________________________________

******************** ZIP file of 6 leaked documents from Downing Street!!

http://www.edwardsdavid.com/media/iraq/reports/leaks-brief.zip ********************

Posted by: Jassy at June 9, 2005 01:44 PM

________________________________________

No one commented on them on the blog until 13ben asked if anyone had opened up the zip files yet. The files are still there to download. The PDFs contain scanned copies of some of the documents that are starting to be written about.

michael jackson can help the children of america by
spending his millions to put all welfare cases on
birth control. the one lesson these familys did not
learn at neverland is that you do not have kids when
you are on welfare. you wait until you are older if
at all. if we put all these familys on birth control
we would not have to have charitys or waste taxpayer
dollars on this narcisstic self absorbed nonesense
that jackson loves to pander to. all jackson did was
touch the kid. is that worth taxpayers spending 5
million to try him ? anyone who sends there kid to
his bedroom shows that they already knew he was a
freak. if the county was so concerned that neverland
was so bad for kids they could have told jackson no
more guests. jackson is a control freak who was
married to a woman named lisa marie presley. what
does she have to say to all of this ? the best
thing we can do is to not allow kids to be alone with
adults. read the rolling stone article on bakersfield
prosecutions , it is a few months ago and weezer is
on the cover. it will shock you how what a waste our
legal system is. jackson was not even convicted of
supplying wine to the kids. the mother was a selfish
narcisstic abusive bitch and her attitude is typical
of many welfare queens. you have to tie their tubes
because they will not respect the taxpayer' because
they think it is their right to use uncle sam as a
daddy. why breed at all these days ? we have too
many in foster care, just have our welfare cases adopt
them.

Join Nurses, Teachers, and Firefighters to 'Greet' Schwarzenegger at Major Silicon Valley Corporate Fundraiser

Corporate Donors Funding 'Special Election' to Cut Social Service & Silence Workers

Registered Nurses from the California Nurses Association (CNA), as well as teachers, firefighters, and other working people from across Northern California will lead a protest against Gov. Schwarzenegger’s corporate fundraising and pro-corporate ballot initiatives next Wednesday, June 22.

The protest will start at 4 pm, while inside the fundraiser (at $2,500 per ticket) runs from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. At 6:30, Schwarzenegger will travel to a fundraiser hosted by Cisco and Yahoo executives (tickets for that one run a whopping $25,000!)

Wednesday, June 22, 4 p.m.

Stanford Park Hotel

100 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA

Gather at 4:00 pm in front of the hotel

Ample parking across the street at the Stanford Shopping Mall

Matthew Rycroft - aide to Manning, wrote up the minutes of the meeting?

Foreign Policy Advisor - David Manning

Director of SIS (aka MI6) - Sir Richard Dearlove, identified as 'C' in the meeting minutes, heads the UK's foreign intelligence service?

Would they testify in future impeachment investigative hearings?

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/memo.html#cast

Excerpt -

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

Googling The Truth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1509381,00.html

snip

Posted by: Kevin at June 18, 2005 04:48 PM

____________________________________

Reminds me:

Eipc 2015 (future history)

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic

Is Hastur... I mean, Hastert, up for replacement in 06?

If so, that document is his political death warrant. Might be wise to make sure whoever runs against him, not just the democrat, but in his own party, gets copies.

The drafting of Patriot Act II is in itself an impeachable offense, it's high treason. Those people swore oaths to protect and uphold the constitution, and this is a clear effort to destroy it and turn the US into a dictatorship. It's the single most treasonous thing any american has ever attempted, and they must answer for this as well as numerous other crimes.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 06:02 PM

Wish I wasn't on a dial up. It's taking forever to watch this.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/18/141744/926

From a column in today's Arizona Republic

John Tod of Mesa had been prepared to face Father's Day worrying about his son's pending date with the war in Iraq.

Then Uncle Sam stepped in with more disappointing developments.

Marine Pfc. Jeremy Tod called home with news that his superiors were urging him and fellow Marines to buy special military equipment, including flak jackets with armor plating, to enhance the prospects of their survival.

The message was that such purchases were to be made by Marines with their own money.

"He said they strongly suggested he get this equipment because when they get to Iraq they will wish they had," Tod said.

Total estimated cost: $600.

Hmm. $600 x 135,000 troops = $81,000,000. But we can afford to enrich Haliburton/enlarge Gitmo? Got it.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/18/141744/926

Are ya'll lefies still tryin to figure out what happened last November? Well what happened was President Bush was re-elected. Now what that means is... President Bush will be President of the United States for 3 and 1/2 more years! Ya see, he just got started on this 4 year term.

So your popularity polls, and you silly accusations don't change any of that. Have you ever heard the term "fartin in the wind?" Well folks that is what you are doin here! You are just wastin your time.

But you go right ahead and keep fartin in the whirlwind, just don't shit your pants!

It's the single most treasonous thing any american has ever attempted, and they must answer for this as well as numerous other crimes.

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 06:10 PM

--

Oops.. Now see there. This'un done shit his pants!

Wish I wasn't on a dial up. It's taking forever to watch this.

Posted by: Kevin at June 18, 2005 06:13 PM

Oy! Sorry. It's a dial-up busting 12 MB. I wish I'd remember to note that when I post links. Sometimes I do, mostly I don't. :/ Apologies again.

The Laura Flanders Show 06-18-05

The truth about how W. took America to war in Iraq is coming out, even if much of the media ignored the Downing St. memo and Thursday's hearing on it by House Judiciary Committee Democrats. People know and W.'s poll numbers keep falling.

What do you call it when a president lies about threats and takes a nation to war? We'll focus on that and other questions from John Conyer's hearing. Ambassador Joe Wilson, who testified, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, who announced the formation of an Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus, with 41 members, will join us. We'll also get an update other the Judiciary Dems other big issue, voting rights and election reform, from Bob Fitrakis, who spent last weekend with Conyers, Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean & others. Then an activism update with Alternet's "Start Making Sense" editor Lakshmi Chaudhry and writer Adam Werbach of Common Assets.

DOH!

It is hard to believe you are wasting you lives struggling against an election that has been over for 6 months. How about your life? Do you think you are going to live forever? What will you give to have this wasted time back when you are about to die. Shit, get out there and get ya some pussy. Ride horse. Invite someone to dinner. Go to a play. Start livin, your dieing here!

Stars and Stripes

By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes

Pacific edition, Friday, June 17, 2005

Leo Shane III / S&S

Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., left, speaks to members of Military Families Speak Out about his experience at a soldier’s funeral last month. With him are, from left, Dianne Davis Santorello, Celeste Zappala and Bill Mitchell. All three had a son killed serving in Iraq.

Leo Shane III / S&S

Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., listens to members of Military Families Speak Out.

WASHINGTON — Several parents of soldiers killed in Iraq visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ask for congressional hearings on the Downing Street memo, which one mother called President Bush’s “Watergate.”

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=28991&archive=true

Mr. Kevin,

Don't you have any life at all? There are lots of ways you can meet real people. You are sadden me to think of you all alone, making this priority in you life. It is just too short.. and this is nothing!

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 06:42 PM

anonymous crocodile tears...

at least Kevin is spending his free time in communication with people who like him.

what's your excuse?

Obviously, there are at least two anonymousies here. I am the one that is not a total asshole. I am only slightly an asshole. :D

bb later

"Oh, I say you've been misled, you've been had, you've been took." - Malcolm X

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/malcolm-x/

Do the families of the uncounted know??

The Ultimate Deception?
A Bush-watcher website identified as TBRNews.org claims that an internal pdf. from the D.O.D. establishes that nearly 9000 Americans have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, but that the official number has been held to 1713 by designating as Iraq deaths only those who perish on Iraqi soil. The remainder, it says, are military personnel who have died en route to Germany or in German hospitals -- casualties of the war, but not listed in the official death toll.

Do the families of the uncounted know??

The Ultimate Deception?
A Bush-watcher website identified as TBRNews.org claims that an internal pdf. from the D.O.D. establishes that nearly 9000 Americans have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, but that the official number has been held to 1713 by designating as Iraq deaths only those who perish on Iraqi soil. The remainder, it says, are military personnel who have died en route to Germany or in German hospitals -- casualties of the war, but not listed in the official death toll.

"your dying here."

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 06:32 PM

We're all dying. Our hope is you go first and show us the way.

SACRED GROUND: The Inhumanity of Those Who Would “Save” Terri Schiavo

------

The hospice called the two weeks of extremist lunacy "The Siege".

But to "sane, rational" "moderates" like SYNA, the administration wasn't siding with extremists. No, they were siding with the culture of life.

Imagine: doctors who diagnosed Schiavo actually knew more about her condition (blind, irreversable brain damage according to her autopsy) than an idiotic senate doctor who would say and do anything to appease the religious bloodlust of the fire-breathing extremists: even pawn off a diagnosis based solely upon biased hearsay and video footage.

That is about as fucking low as it gets. Frist, of course, has not apologized nor acknowledged his cowardly bad judgment.

And guess who didn't use his fucking brain: again? You bet: the reverse anonymous, SYNA.

Ah, but that's what being a "sane, rational" "moderate" is all about, is it not?

As such, you listen to the supposed grown-ups b/c the neoradicals bluff you and roll you and play you for a chump, and you, being the "sane, rational" "moderate" that you are, listen to the neoradical grown-ups and nod approvingly b/c you utterly lack the capacity to distinguish a "sane, rational" moderate point of view from huckstering charlatans who merely ignore reality and say what you want to hear.

And you accept this b/c you are either too stupid or too lazy to think it through.

You have a good brain, SYNA.

You just don't use it much.

You might also bear in mind the distinction between being knowledgeable (anyone can acquire knowledge) and being intelligent (harder, but still no great feat) and displaying good judgment (much harder yet).

Your judgment, almost unerringly, SYNA, is for shit.

That is part of what makes you a "sane, rational" "moderate".

SYNA, meet your philosophical soulmate, Tom Friedman.

Two peas in a pod, you two.

Ride horse.

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 06:32 PM

Fly a kite!

anonymousies!!!!!!!!

you know whats funny? that anonymouse who is telling Kevin to go get a life, yet that anonymouse is thinking its his job in life to get on a blog and tell people what to do.

i dunno. sorry. this blog has gotten me through
some rough times.

#

Fly a kite!

Posted by: Ben Franklin at June 18, 2005 07:13 PM

-------

Go milk a horse.

President Bush will be President of the United States for 3 and 1/2 more years! Ya see!

Posted by: Billy Joe at June 18, 2005 06:19 PM

You Shore Got a Pretty Mouth.

http://www.wavsource.com/snds_2005-06-18_291805644350178/movies/deliverance/pretty_mouth.wav

Squeal.

http://www.wavsource.com/snds_2005-06-18_291805644350178/movies/deliverance/squeal_a.wav

Frist, of course, has not apologized nor acknowledged his cowardly bad judgment.

Posted by: SYNA = Tom Friedman at June 18, 2005 07:13 PM

----

Tut, tut.

Neither/nor, not not/nor.

sincerely,

your friendly neighborhood blog editor

Go milk a horse.

Posted by: Laura Bush at June 18, 2005 07:27 PM

Gimme a minute George.

Gimme a minute George.

Posted by: Mr. Ed at June 18, 2005 07:33 PM

-------

About all your good for.

*sigh*

Oh, well.

More C-cell batteries, I guess.

Go milk a horse.

Posted by: Laura Bush at June 18, 2005 07:27 PM

What can I say, she's insatiable.

"I hate anonymieces to pieces!"

Bush rejects Iraq pullout, defends mission
By Caren Bohan
Sat Jun 18, 1:06 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Saturday rejected calls for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and tried to counter growing impatience with the war by calling it a "vital test" for American security.

"The mission isn't easy, and it will not be accomplished overnight," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

Oregon Resumes Medical Marijuana Program By CHARLES E. BEGGS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jun 17, 9:26 PM ET

SALEM, Ore. - Oregon resumed issuing medical-marijuana cards Friday, deciding the program could continue despite a Supreme Court ruling allowing federal prosecution for possessing the drug.

But the state warned that registration in the state program won't protect patients or caregivers from federal prosecution for drug possession if the federal government chooses to take action against them.

The Human Services Department stopped sending out the cards — but continued processing applications — after the Supreme Court held last week that federal authorities can prosecute marijuana possession under federal drug laws, even in states like Oregon, where medical use of the drug is legal.

The department was awaiting a review of the Supreme Court's ruling by Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers. Myers concluded that the ruling did not invalidate the state's program, and the department on Friday began mailing about 550 registration cards that had been held up, said Grant Higginson, a department administrator.

Madeline Martinez, Oregon director of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, said the court ruling caused many patients to dismantle their gardens.

She said her group tried to assure patients that medical marijuana users also weren't protected from federal prosecution in 1999 after the program began "and that now we are right back where we were."

More than 10,000 patients have registered for the state's medical marijuana program, one of 11 in the nation. Patients qualify if a state-licensed physician states that they suffer from certain conditions including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS or severe pain, and may benefit from marijuana use.

Andrew Taylor
Associated Press
Washington - Yes, the government can make a federal case out of medical marijuana use, the House said Wednesday.

Less than a week ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the government can prosecute medical marijuana users, even when state laws permit doctor-prescribed use of the drug. In response, the House rejected a bid by advocates to undercut the decision.

By a 264-161 vote, the House turned down an amendment that would have blocked the Justice Department from prosecuting people in the 10 states where the practice is legal.
Advocates say it is the only way that many chronically ill people, such as AIDS and cancer patients, can relieve their symptoms.
"It is unconscionable that we in Congress could possibly presume to tell a patient that he or she cannot use the only medication that has proven to combat the pain and symptoms associated with a devastating illness," said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, Democrat of New York.
Opponents of the amendment said it would undercut efforts to combat marijuana abuse.
They said Marinol, a government-approved prescription drug that contains the active ingredient in marijuana, offers compa rable relief.
"Marijuana has never been proven as safe and effective for any disease," said Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican.
"Marijuana can increase the risk of serious mental health problems, and in teens, marijuana use can lead to depression, thoughts of suicide, and schizophrenia."
The vote came as the House debated a $57.5 billion bill covering the departments of Commerce, Justice and State.
Proponents of medical marijuana had hoped to gain momentum following the high court's ruling.
A poll commissioned by the Marijuana Policy Project found that respondents, by a 68-18 percent ratio, believe that medical marijuana users should not face federal prosecution.
The poll, conducted June 8-11 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, also found that 65 percent of those surveyed favored doctor-prescribed medical marijuana, with 20 percent opposed.
A similar amendment last year was defeated by a comparable margin.
"A lot of these guys voting against it are jus

"A lot of these guys voting against it are just afraid because it's a 'drug issue,' " said Rep. Sam Farr, a California Democrat.

Myself.....I have been smoking grass since 1958. When I started toking, posession of even a small amount of muggles was a felony. In all those years I have never...ever...paid even a little bit of attention to anything any of these crazed maniacs in politics and the law have to say about weed. I have known the truth for half a century. These morons have no credibility on this issue. I have always been and I will always be until I die, a total scofflaw on the issue of weed. I will continue to smoke grass in my home when I feel like it.

There was a young man from Glenglozle

Who found a remarkable fossil

He deduced from the bend

And the wart on the end

'Twas the peter of Paul the Apostle

--

Does anyone know what the sculpture of "Leda and the Swan" has to do with RAWilson? Sunshine?...maybe you know...hope you see this... :)

i'm here too. thought you should know.

Thresholds

-------

... The United States of America -- as a matter of official policy conducted with our money, in our name -- tortures and abuses prisoners and detains people indefinitely without charge or due process.

Defenders of this practice point out that:

A) these prisoners are suspected of being very, very bad people; and

B) America’s torture regime is nowhere near as widespread, systematic or brutal as the worst examples of such regimes.

Point A is factually suspect, but even if 100 percent true, irrelevant. I’ll get back to that point in a future post. I want here to deal mainly with point B.

In an earlier post, I described this as the “NABA defense” -- Not As Bad As. The NABA defense is, for what it’s worth, arithmetically accurate.

The American prison camps in Guantanamo, Bagram, Afghanistan and elsewhere are, in fact, not as vast or as brutal as Stalin’s gulags. The American camps are also Not As Bad As the contemporary torture facilities that the U.S. occasionally subcontracts in places like Uzbekistan.

But such comparisons are beside the point.

The threshhold has been crossed and conventional arithmetic no longer applies.

The only relevant and meaningful comparison is between those regimes that countenance torture and those that do not.

Once a nation crosses that line any difference between it and other torture regimes is inconsequential in comparison to the difference between it and those nations which have refused to cross that threshhold.

The NABA defense correctly insists that Guantanamo is different in degree from Stalin’s gulag.

It is different in degree, but not in kind.

And that difference of kind is the only difference that matters.

America has entered the wrong category.

We have crossed a threshhold.

Laura Flanders..

Laura Flanders....!!

*

eya Gang!

afternoon all!

sure some good news posts

upbloggie, thanks to all for posting em.

been cruising around a lot up here in BC lately.

lotta folks really concerned about water rights

and preemptive US sales scams, where if

one province sells water the rest

have to as well. (who goes

along with this crap?)

i see increased

awareness and

resistance

here in

BC to

"Bushshit"

Two Top Guns Shoot Blanks

By FRANK RICH

TO understand how the Bush administration has lost the public opinion war on Iraq it may be helpful to travel in H. G. Wells's time machine back to Oct. 30, 1938.

That was the Sunday night that Orson Welles staged the mother of all fake news events: his legendary radio adaptation of another Wells fantasy, "The War of the Worlds." The audience was told four times during the hourlong show that it was fiction, but to no avail.

A month after Munich, Americans afflicted with war jitters were determined to believe the broadcast's phony news flashes that Martians had invaded New Jersey. Mobs fled their homes in a "wave of mass hysteria," as The New York Times described it on Page 1, clogging roads and communications systems.

Two days later, in an editorial titled "Terror by Radio," The Times darkly observed that "what began as 'entertainment' might readily have ended in disaster" and warned radio officials to mind their "adult responsibilities" and think twice before again mingling "news technique with fiction so terrifying."

SS is making fun of dubious buckley.

shorter William F. Buckley: That we were lied into the war does not invalidate the real reasons for it, which you were not given at the time. These may be outweighed by an unpopular number of military deaths, but only if a conservative says so.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/jmhm/1346398.html?mode=reply

Does anyone know what the sculpture of "Leda and the Swan" has to do with RAWilson? Sunshine?...maybe you know...hope you see this... :)""

Posted by: ♥ at June 18, 2005 08:15 PM

hmmmm first time i've been on all day, but i felt a greeting in the force.

how bout more detail? where does this question arise? who was asking? where does it show up on the bloggie?

SS is making fun of dubious buckley.

Posted by: wanda at June 18, 2005 08:21 PM

--------

social security?

Schutzstaffel?

shit-storm?

(Help me out: I feel like I'm rolling the rock of Sisyphus uphill here.)

*shrug*

http://www.onceinoticediwasonfireidecidedtorelaxandenjoythefall.org/merkabah/archives/000860.html

.

Spread the word about Laura Flanders!

...

I feel like I'm rolling the rock of Sisyphus uphill here.)

Posted by: Sisyphus Shrugged at June 18, 2005 08:32 PM

--------------------------------------------

There ain't much call for folks willing to roll it downhill.

Majority Report - Sam Seder and Janeane Garafalo. Sometimes first impressions are wrong. Janeane isn’t a leftwing airhead. Seder isn’t boring. On the stupid left-right political continuum, these two are the “lefties” of the day/evening line-up. They are also the ones with the most integrated political orientation and philosophy. This gives them an advantage over the other hosts because they can most easily and quickly cut through new GOP bs and propaganda. Sam doesn’t cut people like Friedman any slack unlike other hosts and Democrats do. Janeane is blunt. She easily lapses into rants that sound like far leftwing rambling diatribes that don’t effectively communicate or demonstrate the richness of her thought and knowledge. This is hopefully just inexperience talking, and with her talent, more experience will serve her well. Sam is my favorite of all the hosts. He’s easy to listen to and demonstrates good taste in reading material by quoting people like Steve Soto and other quality bloggers, many of whom make frequent guest appearances (Kos is part of the Wednesday line-up). Juan Cole is a regular guest and it doesn’t get better for some of us than hearing more from Juan. Sam has been following the Ohio GOP corruption that the Toledo Blade is investigating, and his call to the OH Worker’s Comp office to see if they would be interested in investing in his baseball cards was funny. This show is also more about political issues and less about the hosts than the other shows. This is a plus for me, but for those who like following Al’s obsessions, Ed’s fishing and Randi’s hot flashes, this would be a negative.

One shortcoming of all of the hosts except Seder and Kennedy is their interview skills. Granted they have neither the time nor expertise to be Terri Grosses, but they could do much better. They would all benefit from a defined Air America interview structure. One that allows them to maximize the reason for having a guest. One that reduces the tendency for many of the hosts to talk over and needlessly interrupt the guests. Franken does this so often that it borders on being obnoxious. And he can be better than that as he demonstrated in a recent interview with Alterman. Randi’s interview with Barbara Boxer was delightful, but Babs knows a thing or two about talk radio and she more than Randi controlled that interview. Whenever possible, they should try to hold the best guests for at least one more segment than they currently give them. Randi needs more guests and Springer needs guests.

It's slower in here tonight than Billy Graham's urine stream.

Janeane is blunt. She easily lapses into rants that sound like far leftwing rambling diatribes that don’t effectively communicate or demonstrate the richness of her thought and knowledge. This is hopefully just inexperience talking, and with her talent, more experience will serve her well. Sam is my favorite of all the hosts.

Well..I somehow found a photo of that sculpture and put it on my blog. It comes from here: http://www.rawilson.com/images/leda_neon.jpg

Today a woman emailed me and among other questions, asked what the photo has to do with wilson since it's on his site. I went to find out the answer and there's no search feature that I could find on that website...so as much as I want to answer her I can't so far...I thought you might know or someone here because wilson's name has been on the blog here lotsa times...This woman said that she's writing a poetry book and would like to get rights to publish that photo...

Democrats Hold Rep. Sensenbrenner Accountable

It's slower in here tonight than Billy Graham's urine stream.

Posted by: Weird Homer at June 18, 2005 08:43 PM

-----------

Billy Graham?

You sure?

Maybe it's just Rusty prostrating himself.

http://www.rawilson.com/images/leda_neon.jpg

Posted by: ♥ at June 18, 2005 08:43 PM

404 Missing Page
SORRY:

That URL could not be located on this server.
Please try again or try a Google search above.

Democrats Hold Rep. Sensenbrenner Accountable

make sure to watch all the way to the end

Air America Considered

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004668.php#more

It's slower in here tonight than Billy Graham's urine stream.

Posted by: Weird Homer at June 18, 2005 08:43 PM

------------------------------------------------

Slower than a War Dog panelist on a human rights quiz show?

Posted by: I was made Anonymous at June 18, 2005 08:48 PM

--------

That's what you got tattoed on your forearm?

It's OK, I guess, but doesn't quite have the self-pitying zing of "Mother Never Loved Me."

I found this much already..."Leda and The Swan, 1996, street sculpture (steel, neon, laser beam), Hotel Estrel, Berlin."

-

Posted by: Kevin at June 18, 2005 08:49 PM

That doesn't surprise me even though I just saw it on that link less than 1/2 an hour ago...I noticed that a lot of links that are posted here don't work for very long...either their bandwidth gets exceeded or they are just plain old gone... I don't know what that means...I just noticed that it happens more than a little imo..

"Hey, I'll have what Florida Governor Jeb Bush is drinking.."

Slower than a War Dog panelist on a human rights quiz show?

Posted by: Crank Bait at June 18, 2005 08:51 PM

---------

Slower than a SYNA who is made up his mind he ain't gonna believe his own eyes cause they must be lyin'.

Posted by: I was made Anonymous at June 18, 2005 08:54 PM

---------

No one can make you feel anonymous w/o your consent.

░▒▓█▓▒░

That's what you got tattoed on your forearm?

It's OK, I guess, but doesn't quite have the self-pitying zing of "Mother Never Loved Me."

Posted by: And Daddy Was Overfond, signed Jacko at June 18, 2005 08:51 PM

I'm not Janeane, what made you think I was Janeane?

"Hey, I'll have what Florida Governor Jeb Bush is drinking.."

Posted by: I was made Anonymous at June 18, 2005 08:54 PM

----------------------------------------------

With a little luck, ol' Jeb will climb aboard that corpse and ride her all of the way to ruin.

I don't know what that means...I just noticed that it happens more than a little imo..

Posted by: ♥ at June 18, 2005 08:52 PM

Damn Commies screw up everything!

HI Shell

8-)

Visit beautiful Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Prices have never been lower.

Call your travel agent today!

Governor George W Bush, speaking in 1999 on the campaign trail about Kosovo:

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."

-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

Oops.

Meg Made Another DSM ALL-STAR CARD

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/nut-meg/tradecards/lee.jpg

Damn Commies screw up everything!

HI Shell

8-)

Posted by: Kevin at June 18, 2005 08:58 PM

HAHAHAHA!!

Here. Now what will they do...? hee hee! :)

http://communism.org/

With a little luck, ol' Jeb will climb aboard that corpse and ride her all of the way to ruin.

Posted by: Crank Bait at June 18, 2005 08:57 PM

-----------

Jeb hops aboard the B&O on The Necrophilia Express, heading straight to Political Putrefaction.

Hey, don't lean on me man, cause you can't afford a ticket, back from reactionary city.

http://www.mysticalinternet.com/

http://www.mysticalinternet.com/links/oldwebpages.htm

Visit beautiful Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Prices have never been lower.

Posted by: Noodles Jefferson at June 18, 2005 08:58 PM

--------

obvious tag: "With prices so low and bungalow boys so buff, you'll positively shit yourself."

retrovsmetro video

Faces of Leda - A Myth Through the Ages - Click on any image to view at full size and quality

BBL

http://www.maps.org/mmj/

ever notice that "maps" is "spam" spelled backwards?

Would seem that War Dog has backed the wrong pussy. His "Beloved President" is sinking fast and will likely at some point in time be sitting in the dock at the Hague facing a war crimes tribunal. Then again there is a possibility his Svengali has committed treason which I'm sure everyone knows is a capital offense.

Posted by: Anonymous at June 18, 2005 09:10 PM

Thank you!

As difficult as it may be, there will likely be a point in the history of the nation when one of it's "leaders" is convicted of treason against the people. Treason is a capital offense. Is this the time? Will the execution be broadcast?

http://www.gracefulspiral.com/neal'c/

Governor George W Bush, speaking in 1999 on the campaign trail about Kosovo:

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."

-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

Oops.

Posted by: wanda at June 18, 2005 09:02 PM

-----------

iokiyar

"it's OK if you're a Republican"

this is why Dems must go after neoradical hypocrisy and contradictions and bullshit-peddling

it's only "OK" b/c the press doesn't call the Repubs on it, and the press doesn't call the Repubs on it (no excuse, but it is reality) b/c the Dems don't hammer the Repubs on their blatant hypocrisy and bullshit platitudes, or if they do, the Dems wilt just as soon as the Repubs start whining and blaming them and turning up the noise on the right-wing noise machine

this is all about going on the offensive and keeping the pressure on, and using verbal judo when Repubs inevitably clutch their collective pearls and pull their patented "fake-outrage" bullshit whine sessions

call the fucking bluff

expose the fucking sham

this ain't rocket science and the case is easy to make

Dems just need to do it

...

Noooo Laura.

The problem with progressive movement it.. It doens't have the timing. It cannot make coordinated effort. So as a result instead of greate wave, it's turns into bunch of small spurts.

One thing: It doesn't have core media that everybody can set their movement watch on. Everybody is running around on their own time zone.

as a result, Bushies can pick off the attack one by one.

http://whalesong.net/index.htm

The Road to Serfdom

scrolling required.

I'd Just Like To Say Hello To My Uncle!

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

How can anybody, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins, engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

......

Niceee....music

Laura Flanders

Peoples Video Network: Voices from Bolivarian Venezuela

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez cancelled his trip to the U.S. and the U.N. and was not able to speak to the people of Harlem, activists and labor organizers gathered to discuss the U.S. attacks on the new government of Venezuela. They also discribed the new Bolivarian movement and why it is a threat to the established order.

"Leda and the Swan" Robert Anton Wilson

poke around here for a bit, possible leads here:

http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=web&cs=utf8&q=%22Leda+and+the+Swan%22++Robert++Anton++Wilson&rys=0&itag=crv&_sb_lang=pref

Noooo Laura.

The problem with progressive movement it.. It doens't have the timing. It cannot make coordinated effort. So as a result instead of greate wave, it's turns into bunch of small spurts.

One thing: It doesn't have core media that everybody can set their movement watch on. Everybody is running around on their own time zone.

as a result, Bushies can pick off the attack one by one.

Posted by: wanda at June 18, 2005 09:30 PM

----------

it's a good point

building media will help, but the political message coordination is doable right now

now more than ever, dems need a coordinated response

be good to get reid, pelosi, boxer, dean et al. beating the same drum and focus/sharpen their rhetoric

dems can go back to their customary circular firing squad post-bush, but for now, i'd damn sure like to see a lot more party coherence and discipline

it's the political equivalent of trench warfare right now and it's way past time for them all to get their shit together

Hugo Chavez