There's a new independent newspaper/blog coming out of Baghdad, written by university students. It offers a viewpoint you're not going to get in the regular media, and it's well written too. Check it out: Baghdad IMC
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May 28, 2003
There's a new independent newspaper/blog
May 27, 2003
Krugman tells it like it is
Krugman tells it like it is again. The fascists want to bankrupt the country, and we're letting them do it.
Stating the Obvious How can this be happening? Most people, even most liberals, are complacent. They don't realize how dire the fiscal outlook really is, and they don't read what the ideologues write. They imagine that the Bush administration, like the Reagan administration, will modify our system only at the edges, that it won't destroy the social safety net built up over the past 70 years.But the people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need. The Financial Times, it seems, now understands what's going on, but when will the public wake up?
May 26, 2003
Something special for Memorial
Something special for Memorial Day, as a way of showing gratitude to the investment partners of Prescott (i.e. Granpappy) Bush.
Hmmm...secret arrests, secret trials, death camps? Wake up, sheeple!
The Courier Mail: US plans death camp [26may03]
THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.
Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday.The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians.
The suspects have been held at Camp Delta on Cuba without charge for 18 months.
May 21, 2003
Spiderman Disturbs Graduation
As you may know if you've visited Jon's site recently, the durned fool has upped and graduated from CalArts. And I was there to videotape it all! The best moment I will share with you. CalArts graduations are unlike any other. Being artists, there are no cap'n'gowns, no Pomp 'n' Circumstance. There is, however, a lot of weirdness. Take for example the goings on of this fellow right here. I don't know him, by the way.
May 19, 2003
One hundred lives, one hundred
One hundred lives, one hundred deaths. Much like the New York Times slowly memorialized those who died in 9-11 with a collection of stories/memorials, the Guardian is telling the stories of those who died in Iraq. However, these people are of all nationalities, civilian and soldier.
What do they all have in common? They were all killed by the Fascist War Criminals, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and all the rest.
May 15, 2003
Music Animation Machine
Call it synchronicity or two great minds thinking alike, but I was checking out this site by Edward Tufte on the same day that Scott Rosenberg blogged it in Salon. Hmm, maybe it was because my friend Jon Crow had been there before me and then told me about it all. Ahhhh. I see.
Anyway, Edward Tufte is the "Da Vinci of data," as his press blurb says, a statistician who also thinks long and hard about the graphical representation of data. There's a lot of depth to the site, place to go explore, and I'm a sucker for graphs.
Perusing the site led me to a link to The Music Animation Machine, created by Stephen Malinowsky. There's a few videos you can download, a cross between Oskar Fischinger and the Atari 2600. The graphical representation of pitch and time creates patterns that scroll horizontally and can add to a greater understanding of music composition. They're also great to watch. Highly recommended!
May 13, 2003
Here's the infamous "socks" photo.
Here's the infamous "socks" photo. And for this, the soccer moms think the Smirk is hot?
Release the harness, you idiot! Didn't you learn that in the Air Force?
The lead story in Salon
The lead story in Salon is on "the Left's Rush Limbaugh" Mike Malloy. I went over and checked out his most recent (5/12/) broadcast at MikeMalloy.Net and it is quite good, especially the quotes he runs from the MonkeyChimpFascist on his photo-op in Nebraska. One was so delicious I had to transcribe it for you. See if you can make this out:
“This principle it says if you’re worried about people finding work…in other words, one of the problems we have is we’re such a productive economy, we have the best workers in the world, by the way, the productivity rates are way up in America, the more productive you are means there’s better output per worker which means you better increase demand if you’re trying to create new jobs. In other words if one worker can do more work you gotta create the need for more work.”
Of course, you need to hear it to believe it. The sheeple applaud him too, as they lose a day's pay.
Fun Flash presentation that demonstrates
Fun Flash presentation that demonstrates once and for all that Bush is not a Nazi (he's a Fascist). Plus you get to hear a good ol' Spike Jones song while you watch.
Take Back The Media! Our Sponsors
Rather than allow a Fascist-friendly
Rather than allow a Fascist-friendly redistricting plan in Texas, the Democratic side of the legislature has...run off! Absolutely bizarre story that shows just how loonball things are getting here (or at least in Texas). What will happen next, forcing Democrats for vote for evil schemes by gunpoint?
Texas House seeks arrest of truant Democrats
By Connie Mabin
May 12, 2003 | AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- State troopers and the elite Texas Rangers were ordered to track down and bring in 59 Democratic lawmakers who brought the Texas House to a standstill Monday by going into hiding.The quorum-busting boycott capped months of tension between Democrats and the newly-in-control Republicans, and occurred as the chamber was scheduled to debate a congressional redistricting plan opposed by Democrats.
The parties also have clashed over a bill to limit lawsuits and a GOP budget that would avoid new taxes but make deep spending cuts.
GOP House Speaker Tom Craddick locked down the House chamber so lawmakers who did show up Monday morning could not leave. After a roll call, he ordered the missing lawmakers arrested and brought back to the chamber.
May 12, 2003
Never been too convinced that
Never been too convinced that the Monkey didn't know about 9-11 until he sat down at the elementary school? This meticulously researched page tries to put together the Rashomon-like timeline of the events of that day in regards to Bush's whereabouts. This is the kind of research that the official 9-11 commission doesn't have the money to do!
An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11
More utter chaos and death
More utter chaos and death in the streets of Iraq. Thanks, "liberation forces"! A quote later (not below) is especially ripe: ""I'm sorry," he says he tells Iraqis, but it's just too early to expect reliable utilities or supplies of food and water."
Yes, especially since America destroyed them so they could be rebuilt by Halliburton and Bechtel.
For Crime Victims in Iraq, No Place to Turn
The shop didn't require armed guards in the past, when Saddam's government swiftly caught and punished thieves. Now her husband, Hasham Hussein, is armed with a pistol. Another male relative brandishes a Kalashnikov. The men say a jewelry store owner around the corner was robbed and killed 10 days ago.In a cobbler's shop nearby, proprietor Samir Gul reports what happened a week ago. Right out front, at 2 p.m., two girls -- about 17 -- were stuck up by men with large knives. A car came by, its driver offering to rescue the women. It was a ruse. When the teenagers got in, the kidnappers did too.
The men in the cobbler's shop, fearing they'd be shot, did nothing. Ordered earlier to disarm by American soldiers, the men had no guns.
"They promised us security," Gul says of the soldiers. "We're asking for it now."
Three U.S. Army Humvees roll past, escorting a military trailer carrying a large white Iraqi missile, evidently discovered in the neighborhood. He's also seen more soldiers on patrol lately. How many?
"Not enough."
Is this why the administration
Is this why the administration decided to announce yesterday that the Baath Party was no more? So perhaps nobody would notice this story?
Hussein Backers Regain Role in Government By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer MOSUL, Iraq -- The U.S. Army has allowed several once-forceful supporters of Saddam Hussein's regime back into power here, including a religious leader who just weeks ago ordered Muslims to fight American troops to the death.Convinced that sweeping out all officials associated with Hussein would result in a government too weak to hold Iraq together, U.S. forces in Mosul hope to win over their enemies by allowing them to sit on a new interim city council.
It is a risky gamble that some say may undermine the long-term goal of a stable democracy. And it already has left some longtime opponents of Hussein in the northern city feeling left out of a new government that they say is shaping up as a reincarnation of the regime they struggled to overthrow.
"We're afraid the dictators left and the smugglers took power -- and the liars with them," said Sheik Bader Hilaly, an imam previously jailed for speaking out against Hussein.
A powerful member of the new council is Sheik Saleh Khalil Hamoody, who also heads the Mosul region's council of Islamic scholars. Several days after U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq began, Hamoody issued a fatwa, or edict, declaring that it was the religious duty of all Muslims to fight U.S.-led forces.
"Our valiant Iraq is facing a noble and faithful battle against imperialist and Zionist attackers who hate us," said the fatwa, which was approved by the Islamic scholars council. "They aim to destroy Islam and its existence to achieve their goals of world domination and to guarantee security for Zionism and its future."
Hamoody is widely known in northwestern Iraq for his close ties to the former Baath Party regime. He is a cousin of Hussein's former defense minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai, who is on the U.S. military's list of most-wanted fugitives.
May 11, 2003
Remember that kooky little oil
Remember that kooky little oil war we had last month? Apparently those ungrateful brown people keep dying! Why aren't they sipping lattes at a Baghdad Starbucks?
Shia mullahs take charge of hospitals to halt chaos
Sunday May 11, 2003
The ObserverTen minutes pass and the gates of Chuwada hospital are again flung open by guards with machine guns slung over their shoulders. A rusting truck heaves through, and the latest bloodied arrival is hauled out.
This time it is Abdel Hussein, aged seven, injured by explosives he was playing with at the food market, which in Iraq's first month of freedom has expanded to include an arms bazaar. All morning there has been the crack of small arms fire cutting the distant heat haze.
'We're taking in about 150 casualties a day,' said hospital director Dr Mofawa Gorea, 'the same as during the war.'
This is the midday hour of impenitent sun at one of only two hospitals in a vast throbbing sprawl of four million people on Baghdad's edge that used to be called Saddam City, now reverted to its old name, Thawra City.
Gorea's morning rounds are a narrative of Iraq's war, and now its phoney peace. In ward 115, there is Basia Zukheir who was ripped open by a US cluster bomb; Abudi Kalim, shot when bandits came for his car, and little Fadel Kathem Khlef, caught in crossfire between looters and American troops.
Yet Commander Bunnypants is busy swaggering around with socks down his trousers while the majority of the sheeple think it's all over. Oh well, onward to Syria!
The irony of this is
The irony of this is almost too much! And still some of those workers will probably vote for the Chimp...
Bush Visit Could Cost Some Omaha Workers a Day's Pay (washingtonpost.com)
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 11, 2003; Page A09
SANTA FE, N.M., May 10 -- About 340 workers at an Omaha plastics factory will lose pay or have to work next Saturday to make up for time lost during a visit by President Bush on Monday to promote his "jobs and growth plan," their boss said today.Brad Crosby, president of Airlite Plastics Co., said about 170 of his workers will lose a full day's pay and another 170 will be docked for part of their pay for Monday unless they make up the time they spend attending Bush's speech.
May 10, 2003
You'll be next... Jessica says
You'll be next... Jessica says we're getting close to mainland China.
Secret Service Questions Students Even worse, they say, is the fact that the students were grilled by federal agents without legal counsel or their parents present, just the principal."When one of the students asked, 'do we have to talk now? Can we be silent? Can we get legal council?' they were told, 'we own you, you don't have any legal rights,'" Felson says.
Coming Soon: The End of
Coming Soon: The End of a Free Press. Just like Powell's son wishes! Next stop: shutting down the Internet.
I Want My BBC
Dyke, who is generally seen as an ally of Blair, admitted that he was "shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during the war." He added that, while in the US, he was "amazed by how many people just came up to me and said they were following the war on the BBC because they no longer trusted the American electronic news media."Sincere criticism from abroad - along with the unprecedented abandonment of US news outlets for foreign sources - ought to make this a point at which US journalists, regulators, politicians and citizens pause to reflect on whether too few owners are running too much media in too greedy and irresponsible a manner.
Instead, with a strong push from the Bush White House, Federal Communications Commission chair Michael Powell is moving to enact ownership rule changes that will allow big media companies to get dramatically bigger. Promising the Newspaper Association of America convention last month that the FCC would eliminate the 1975 rule that prevents owners of newspapers from buying up radio and television stations in the towns where they publish, Powell told the newspaper executives, "We have finally taken this by the reins."
If Powell and the other commissioners pull those reins tight and enact the proposed rule changes - a step the chairman wants the FCC to take by June 2 - the vast majority of American newspapers could become as vapid and unquestioning as American television and radio. If that happens, Americans who want to know what is going on in the world will have to import British newspapers to read while listening to their morning BBC reports.
May 08, 2003
Just one more way the
Just one more way the fascists will steal 2004.
Jim Crow Revived in Cyberspace
By Martin Luther King III and Greg Palast
Originally published May 8, 2003At the heart of the ethnic purge of voting rights was the creation of a central voter file for Florida placed in the hands of an elected, and therefore partisan, official. Computerization and a 1998 "reform" law meant to prevent voter fraud allowed for a politically and racially biased purge of thousands of registered voters on the flimsiest of grounds.
Voters whose name, birth date and gender loosely matched that of a felon anywhere in America were targeted for removal. And so one Thomas Butler (of several in Florida) was tagged because a "Thomas Butler Cooper Jr." of Ohio was convicted of a crime. The legacy of slavery -- commonality of black names -- aided the racial bias of the "scrub list."
Florida was the first state to create, computerize and purge lists of allegedly "ineligible" voters. Meant as a reform, in the hands of partisan officials it became a weapon of mass voting rights destruction. (The fact that Mr. Cooper's conviction date is shown on state files as "1/30/2007" underscores other dangers of computerizing our democracy.)
You'd think that Congress and President Bush would run from imitating Florida's disastrous system. Astonishingly, Congress adopted the absurdly named "Help America Vote Act," which requires every state to replicate Florida's system of centralized, computerized voter files before the 2004 election.
I have yet to experience
I have yet to experience a talk by Molly Ivins in person, but I'd love to. Hey Molly! Why don't you come to sunny S.B.?
News: Y'all don't despair, Ivins tells UW crowd
By Chuck Nowlen
May 6, 2003
Scared of your government under George W. Bush? Worried by the wartime notion "that we'll make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free?"Firebrand author and columnist Molly Ivins had the antidote for a decidedly liberal UW-Madison audience Monday night:
"I can tell you guys are really desperate and you need some cheerin' up," Ivins deadpanned at one point, bringing the packed Wisconsin Union Theater house down - seemingly with her irreverent, Texas-drawl delivery alone.
"Well, just be happy that you don't wake up every mornin' in Texas, where the price of gas is so high that women who want to run over their husbands have to car pool."
May 06, 2003
Again, Senator Byrd is one
Again, Senator Byrd is one of the few with any guts to call the Chimp on his chicanery.
Yahoo! News - Byrd Rips Bush's Aircraft Carrier Use
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON - Questioning the motives of a "desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior," Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd on Tuesday reproached President Bush for flying onto an aircraft carrier last week to declare an end of major fighting in Iraq.
"I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw," Byrd said on the Senate floor.
Greg Palast probably wishes he
Greg Palast probably wishes he broke this story. Just another cell in the organism called "Outrage Overload."
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Firm in Florida election fiasco earns millions from files on foreignersOliver Burkeman in Washington and Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Monday May 5, 2003
The GuardianA data-gathering company that was embroiled in the Florida 2000 election fiasco is being paid millions of dollars by the Bush administration to collect detailed personal information on the populations of foreign countries, enraging several governments who say the records may have been illegally obtained.
US government purchasing documents show that the company, ChoicePoint, received at least $11m from the department of justice last year to supply data - mainly on Latin Americans - that included names and addresses, occupations, dates of birth, passport numbers and "physical description". Even tax records and blood groups are reportedly included.
Excuse the long gap in
Excuse the long gap in blogs. I've been busy shooting a new video, as well as designing a Stekki Daiyo! DVD, revamping the web page (nearly set to premiere), learning After Effects, experiencing outrage overload, and securing a few more writing gigs to pay the rent. Satisfied?
Anyway, one of the more stomach-churning events of the past week was the totally staged landing of the Top Gun monkey fascist on the aircraft carrier, where essentially he said that the war had been fought with--according to how he phrased it--barely any civilian casualties. Really?
There's been lots of words spent on this, but Paul Krugman again keeps it short and pointed.
Man on HorsebackSome background: the Constitution declares the president commander in chief of the armed forces to make it clear that civilians, not the military, hold ultimate authority. That's why American presidents traditionally make a point of avoiding military affectations. Dwight Eisenhower was a victorious general and John Kennedy a genuine war hero, but while in office neither wore anything that resembled military garb.
Given that history, George Bush's "Top Gun" act aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln -- c'mon, guys, it wasn't about honoring the troops, it was about showing the president in a flight suit -- was as scary as it was funny.
May 01, 2003
While Rummy puts on his
While Rummy puts on his "happy old folkie" mask to talk down to his colonial subjects (read about his Iraqi TV broadcast, seen by almost nobody, here), the ArabNews paints a different picture of the invasion's legacy. It offers some striking images and doesn't bode well for the future.
ArabNews: What Kind of a Plain-Jane Victory Is This? Throughout the bombing campaign, many young Iraqis were seen being led away in a line with green canvas bags pulled over their heads, one man's arm on the shoulder of the man in front, to a wrecked compound taken over by the British Army. Till now, Iraqi civilians are humiliatingly being forced to squat with both hands on their heads at military checkpoints in Southern Iraq. People's life savings have been systematically confiscated on the pretext that it might be used to help terrorists.In another sinister development, Jay Garner, the pro-Likud, pro-Sharon American viceroy of Iraq, arrived in Baghdad and went straight to Yarmuk Hospital to visit patients, or should I say victims of US terror. Let's just hope he visits the children's ward where mutilated and heavily bandaged children lie crying to be comforted by anguished parents and where deaths from US missiles and a range of hitherto unseen cancers are common. Would he care to see the bodies of children maimed by the explosion of cluster bombs and other unexploded munitions that litter the cities? Let's just remember that each round fired by US tanks contains 4,500 grams of solid uranium whose particles, breathed or digested, can cause cancer. Let's just hope Jay Garner knows these facts the next time he makes his rounds of Iraqi hospitals. Let us remind him that according to the World Health Organization, Baghdad hospitals were seeing 100 combat casualties per hour after the initial US thrust into the city, and that amputations were being performed without sufficient anesthesia or morphine.
Unlike Bush, what we will never forget is not the image of Saddam Hussein's statue falling, but rather the countless images of dead and injured children littering the streets and highways and hospitals of Iraq, images that have been likened to scenes from the Crimean War. What can ever erase the sight of severed heads, incinerated corpses, scattered brains on bloody pavements, and the horror of a woman and her three children being burned alive inside their car in front of stricken pedestrians and motorists? What can ever blot out the screams of a three-year-old Iraqi girl desperately trying to endure the agonizing pain of the surgeon's needle as he sewed up the rest of her disfigured stitched-up face?
How can we forget missiles slamming into crowded apartment complexes, into family homes, market places, restaurants, roadside cafes and hospitals in Al-Mansour, Al-Shaab, Al-Nasr, and Al-Dora? How can we forget the grizzly scenes in Hilla, 160 kilometers from Baghdad, where TV footage showed an angry father piling a burned and mangled infant onto a truckload of dismembered women and children? Roland Huguenin, one of the six International Red Cross workers in Iraq, described the horrific scene at Hilla Hospital to Canadian TV: "In the case of Hilla, everybody had very serious wounds and many, many of them small kids and women. We had small toddlers of two or three years of age who had lost their legs, their arms. We have called this a horror."
Oh, and by the way, the BushJunta still doesn't want us to know what happened on 9/11. Read about the increasing coverup .