Culture of Life Media News

CENTCOM Wasting Taxpayer Dollars Trolling Liberal Blogsites

2006-03-03T09:44:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The military is boasting about how they are going after antiwar bloggers, trolling their blogs. They also spend a lot of taxpayer time high fiving pro-military web sites, heaping praise on each other over the great job they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From Defense Link.mil:

"We were given the mission to do electronic media engagement," Flowers said. "The idea was put forth that so many people are getting their news from online sources that we would be remiss if we neglected that audience."

Flowers is one of three people who read blogs and try to drive Internet readers to the CENTCOM Web site, where readers can learn more about operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.

"We needed to do something to make people aware of the fact that we had this clearinghouse of photos and information," Flowers said. "We can get the whole story out there. We let them know we have a Web site."

OK. Instead of fighting in Iraq, these right wingers can sit at headquarters and troll the net. Isn't that fun? People can learn all about the military's doings in Iraq by reading the news. If the sole function of these trolls is to get victims to read fake propaganda churned out by neo-cons, well, I think this is a total waste of taxpayer dollars.

We are paying for all this and the military is wasting billions of dollars playing games as if they were little boys sitting in mom's basement, eating Cheetos. Half a trillion dollars wasted a year and we don't have even the skeleton crew needed to pluck people off of roofs during floods! We don't have alert troops protecting America from attackers on 9/11. We don't have many things but we do have trolls.

For years, we liberals suspected both the GOP and the government paid trolls to harrass or annoy us at our websites. We clock their hours, the 9-5 pattern is pretty obvious. We examine their "post by rote" propaganda which is both uninspiring, insipid and identical. Namely, they seem to all be using the same template, the same rhetoric.

And it is pure Limbaugh who is still, despite being unmasked as a drug abuser who broke the law, is broadcast daily within the miltiary. This is also why most of the military staff still erroneously believes that Saddam has something to do with 9/11, a completely false idea and one that lies at the root of our inability to find bin Laden and win hearts and minds.

Being totally insane, our military can't negotiate through the shoals of reality.

This part of the article is a direct hit at me:

In another blog contact, the team wrote a blogger who had written untrue information about U.S. military tactics. The blogger stated that the U.S. military routinely used children in Iraq and Afghanistan as human shields during their operations by using candy to entice and lure kids near them. The team posted a comment on the writer's blog stating that the U.S. military did not use human shield tactics and explained the full circumstances of the incident where Iraqi children died in 2004 when insurgents attacked U.S. forces in Baghdad.

Most blogs ordinarily have a feature that enables readers to contact the writer or allows readers to post comments. When the team "reaches out" to a blogger, the team members do not conceal their identity. They fully disclose that they are public affairs personnel and identify themselves accordingly. And, McNorton said, they are there to correct information, no more.

OK. I wrote several articles about children being blown up after fully armed troops wearing bullet proof vests entered dangerous neighborhoods and then, in order to protect themselves, handed out candy and toys to kids so they would be surrounded by a cloud of children and thus, able to go about the place, arresting older brothers and fathers and uncles. The other purpose of this is to feel better about stealing oil. "See, we are Santa Claus!" our troops can say to each other.

Third is the propaganda. "See, the children love us even if their parents hate us!". When, during a bomb attack alert, the troops announced they were handing out toys at a hospital, a whole bunch of children were blown up along with our troops.

According to CENTCOM's trolls, they saw my outraged article about this and they successfully argued with me. I googled and web explored for other stories like mine and found only pro-military tales attacking the insurgents and praising the handing out of candy and luring children into fire fights.

Here is one article I wrote. I note that there is no CENTCOM trolling in the comments section but I did receive email from them. They didn't identify themselves, it was a rather crude email and I don't want to bother digging for it. The main thing is, there was no other blogger talking about how this practice of luring children to our soldiers should be stopped, I went through 100 articles seeking one and over and over again, it came up "Culture of Life News" articles. So, either they were lying about posting comments or they were just lying but my articles needled them so much, they had to pretend they won an argument with me, concerning this issue.

If the situation is such that our soldiers were walking around with no more than a light sidearm if even that, fraterizing with friendly children, then they could indulge in displays of charity and fun. But they are target number one in an insurrection that is very serious, very effective and very obvious. Luring children to surround our troops in this hostile situation is insanity.

The Pentagon last year should have put out a directive forbidding this. The sole reason is to protect the children from the battlefield which is all of Iraq. Of course, the urge to win the hearts and minds of tots by bribing them is very strong. We hoped they would go home and lobby mommy and daddy to stop fighting us and let us pump Iraq dry and leave them with nothing at all.

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Washington Pest

New York Times Loves Brutal Police State Tactics

2006-02-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

As the official mouthpiece for the ruling elite, it comes as no surprize that the New York Times blacks out the story of Riverbend, in Bagdad, suffering from the horrors of a masked paratrooper invasion of her home, terrorizing herself and her younger sisters. Instead, they publish an article praising these same thugs, approving of their violent suppression of Iraqis, innocent or guilty. Welcome to our future police state they plan to run here, too.

From the New York Times:

It was the kind of smash-and-grab mission that not many months ago was conducted solely by American forces in Iraq. But this time, only one-third of the troops were American, there to observe and advise. Kicking down the door and seizing the suspect were members of the new Iraqi Counterterrorism Force.

The Bush administration has anchored its plans for troop withdrawals from Iraq on the promise of increasingly capable indigenous security units: the army, the police, border patrols and a facilities-protection service, currently totaling 227,000, although they are trained to vastly different levels of proficiency.

Now, as part of that program, American Special Operations forces commanders say they have shifted their own efforts from carrying out raids and attacks to training elite Iraqi teams to take over the most challenging missions.

The war on drugs has spawned an amazing police state here. In our collective eagerness to make Americans "healthy" and "strong" our culture has decided this requires passing laws concerning the use of medicines and foods the state wants to control. To do this, they have to invade homes quite violently. So we have developed, over time, sophistocated methods of turning our homes, which were formerly called "our castles" into prisons.

Of course, sex and drugs are favorite targets of these privacy invasions but there are many other reasons to invade homes. A zillion excuses.

Before we illegally invaded Iraq, we told the world that the Iraqi people had no freedom and Saddam terrorized and oppressed them by breaking into their homes and taking away people to be tortured and then we did exactly the same thing. And now we are "training" troops to do what we claim they did in the first place is the height of madness and if there is a god somewhere, he better have a hell ready for the people responsible for all this.

Nigeria, another oil/slave state we terrorize, is devolving into rebellion and revolution because American oil/slave states are hideous affairs that have no freedoms, no rights, no democracy and no social services. The sole function of the police state powers is to keep the populace terrorized so they don't interfer with our looting of all natural resources. Burp.

We have terrorized Central and South America for many years. This is where we perfect our police state tactics. Note how these same tactics end up being used on Americans.

For you can't run police states far away without them leaching back home to here. I have noted here in the past how Venezuela with a duly elected President who is very popular, who had to do a snap election at our instistance because we refused to believe he won the real election, he won that after we tried the old fashioned police state coup and failed and now we are in a verbal war with him and he is threatening to cut off our oil sales and sell it all to China. So we are preparing to attack him so we can impose the same sort of totally evil police state we are running in Iraq, on that country too.

The philosophy behind our elite troops is the same as the one that Hitler carved out for the SS. In the nineteenth century, governments barely were able to start organizations like the police and Scotland Yard and all that. As the states grew in power and technology, the police state extended deeper and deeper into what was once considered private territory. The mega-totalitarian police states of the twentieth century like the Soviet Union or China, for example, privacy totally disappeared. No one was allowed even the slightest sliver of privacy.

When I hosted some top Chinese officials on of the first lessons they had to learn was how to ring a door bell and ask for permission to enter. We had to practice this several times over. It was rather sad. They would ring my doorbell, I would answer and they would simply silently shove me out of the way and try to enter and I would say, "Step back! You can't come in!"

When my parents followed Nixon into China, being some of the very first Americans to stay there to do business, when my parents went into the bathroom to take a shower together and talk while the water was on, someone came into their room and tried to open the bathroom door so he could listen to them better since the microphones weren't working. Another time, my mother said something to my father, opened the bathroom door and the man listening to them fell into her chest, nearly knocking her down.

My father went off to see Cho Enlai and complained and the invasions of their bedroom ceased.

The whole furor over Bush and his minions illegally spying on Americans is exactly what this is all about. A police state giving us zero privacy. Think it can't get like China in the seventies?

Note how the media isn't screaming about spying on us! Note how there were never any big headlines, "Bush Lies About Spying On Americans--Innocent Peace Activists Targetted!" Nope. We bloggers yelled about this until hoarse but the ruling class tool papers and TV stations played along with the police statists. This is because they hate and fear fellow Americans and want to keep us in chains especially after the farce of the last six years comes crashing down. By colluding with Bush to cut taxes to the point that our government must end up in the dire arms of the IMF, they have set the stage for a really nasty police state here as they plan to squeeze us all literally to death. They are in a hurry, they have to kill off much of the baby boomers before the retire and demand their share of the Social Security pie which the rich already ate up.

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Washington Pest

Chinese People Slip Out of Propaganda Net Using The Internet

2006-02-19T10:34:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

After screaming at us bloggers and internet rebels, the Washington Post turns around and crows about how the Chinese circumvent their own country's attempts at censorship. Geeze. Someday the WP will figure this out. What is good for the Chinese is good for Americans for the same reasons! And tell Rummy to not touch OUR internets, thank you!

From the WP:

The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances.

Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.

HAHAHAHA. God. I am seriously going to die laughing. OK. Why were all the reporters working for top corporate owners who were seeking tax breaks, favors and money from Bush who spent over a billion taxpayer dollars on media purchases!---so scared of pursuing stories about Bush? Why did they openly lie or misreport situations or facts on the ground?

Guess what! The American media is a whore of the rulers! This is why no one can trust anything they write or broadcast. They have sneaky ways of lying like using interesting adjectives to describe people. We saw it just yesterday when they described the messed up, frowning, shot to hell and back victim of Cheney's shoot out as "hale and happy." One look at the photos showed the articles were pure lies.

When ordered to villify someone, they will use words like, "agitated" or "sour faced" or even, in Hillary's case, "angry faced." They use every variation of negative wording when describing people they are ordered to mock. This frustrates many people who think the Democrats hide from the newsmedia because they are scared. They aren't just scared, they know it is fruitless unless the media overlords tire of Bush and his tax cuts and change course. Then it will be safe to emerge out into the open.

The Washington Post and us bloggers had several drag down fights recently. One was over the fiction that Democrats got money from Abramoff, the K Street sleazebag man. We gave the Post the data which conclusively showed, Abramoff didn't give even one Lincoln penny to any Democrat in his entire life. The Post refused to retract their lies and instead, reworded their original lie over and over, trying to make it look truthful. We pounded them for this and so they cut off communication and wrote a series of attack articles pretending we said and did things that never happened.

When we demanded they show some proof of all this, they got very nasty and wrote more lies and fumed so hard they set off fire alarms in their office building!

Now, because the force of good created by the free movement of information is helping the Chinese outwit their rulers, the WP applauds this and pretends, which is yet another lie on their part, that this is a great thing and everyone should imitate the Chinese!

Well, I agree! And the Chinese are very busy, acting up! May we do this too! The blog is mightier than the sword!

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Washington Pest

Rumsfeld Thinks Spending Billions On Propaganda Will Fool Muslims Into Loving Us

2006-02-18T07:06:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Rumsfeld believes the reason Muslims hate and fear us is due to propaganda and he thinks, all we have to do is spend a lot of money borrowed from China on propaganda aimed at Muslims and they will love us as we torture, rape, kill and steal everything,

From the BBC:

The US is losing the propaganda war against al-Qaeda and other enemies, defence chief Donald Rumsfeld has said.

It must modernise its methods to win the minds of Muslims in the "war on terror", as "enemies had skilfully adapted" to the media age, he said.

"Skillful adaptaion" the "enemy" uses most often is gossip. Word of mouth passed hand to hand. If Rummy is refering to Al Jazeera TV reporting the news then I must inform him that they are not an "enemy" and indeed, thinking of a fairly neutral TV news service that isn't filled to the gills with ridiculous propaganda as an "enemy" is exactly why we are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

When a little 12 year old child was shot dead in the illegally occupied Palestinian homelands, the headlines in America was "Palestinian MAN shot dead." OK, in simple matters like this, we can't resist lying. This sort of lying is standard operations in the USA and much of Europe. We can't look at our own crimes without whitewashing them via words, making little of our own malice by maliciously belittling or warping reality to suit us, not Muslims.

It used to be, they had no voice. No news media that the rest of the world could see. I happen to trust al Jazeera much more than most stuff I see here in America.

Correspondents say that in recent months victory in the battle for public opinion has become a new front for the Bush administration.

In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations, Mr Rumsfeld said some of the US' most critical battles were now in the "newsrooms".

"Our enemies have skilfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but... our country has not," he said.

So, our "enemies" (all Muslims not working for us) are "skillfully adapted." And what is this war criminal refering to? Bin Laden and others sending out video tapes? What is so high techie about that? Bloggers talking about the stupid propaganda churned out by the New York Times and Washington Post are skillfully using media? Huh? Or the very existence of the internet is skillful and clever?

Just this last week, the Pentagon ran war games directed at the media and the internet. They specifically tagged bloggers as a potential "enemy". Co-incidentally, most of this last week, from 9-5 EST, Blogger was up and down like a yo-yo with absolutely no explanation from Blogger as to what was wrong or why.

America's rulers who own vast media empires that stretch across the nation and over the entire planet, these rulers work with their tools in the White House and Pentagon to herd the rest of humanity along the road they chose for us and here they are, they and their stupid tools, whining about bin Laden's cave and his video camera.

Our media owners and military/industrial rulers deliberately targetted al Jazeera and quite a few other reporters, killing more than a few of them. So our counter-propaganda has been mostly threats, bluster and outright murder.

This program of bullying people until they surrender is failing spectacularily. It is even failing here at home as more and more people are getting disgusted with the war for oil disguised as a war on "terror". Clue to clowns: wars on terror aren't won by terrorizing everyone.

Indeed, if America wants to stop terror, worldwide, all they have to do is stop trying to control the entire planet. Our troops are patrolling everywhere and protecting only the ruling elite of America. Two helicopters crashed yesterday, lots of dead troops. This barely rates a low level headline in America. Seems we don't want to report any news anymore except for happy face lies churned out by our rulers.

Catapult the propaganda, as Bush said so memorably.

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Washington Pest

Killer Klowns: Once Again, The Texas Rangers And The Secret Service Hid Crimes

2006-02-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Again and again, the Texas Rangers are caught covering up Bush/Cheney crimes. The entire state aparatus in Texas exists to cover up the crimes of the well connected. This is why the Texas National Guard assisted Bush in scrubbing his files of mention of his desertion, the Driver's License Bureau scrubbed his many arrests for drunk driving as well as Laura's killing of ex-boyfriend. The Secret Service tried to cover up the fact that the Bush twins illegally used fake ID in bars and actively assisted them in violating the laws, helping them bar hop! Arrest all these clowns.

From Editor and Publisher:

Asked by The New York Times why it did not make the news known, Cheney spokeswoman McBride said, "We deferred to the Armstrongs regarding what had taken place at their ranch."

Armstrong said later, according to The Associated Press, that everyone at the ranch was so "focused" on Whittington's health Saturday that it wasn't until Sunday she called the Caller-Times to report the accident.

In an odd disparity, Armstrong told the Houston Chronicle that Whittington, 78, was "bruised more than bloodied" in the incident and "his pride was hurt more than anything else." Yet he was airlifted to a hospital and has spent more than a day in an intensive care unit.

The Chronicle also reports Monday that hunting accidents are amazingly rare in Texas. In 2004, it said, the state's 1 million-plus hunters were involved in only 29 hunting-related accidents (19 involving firearms), four of which were fatal.

So, they were too "concerned" to call the cops. Yeah, right. And too busy to tell anyone. And the Secret Service which was forced to testify about Clinton's sex life have to keep mum about Cheney's murderous rampages. OK.

Why weren't all the Secret Service agents who escorted Babs and Jenna Bush on their totally illegal underage drinking expeditions arrested for helping minor girls get drunk which happens to be totally illegal? Why weren't those girls put in prison for using fake IDs? That is illegal, very illegal.

Again and again we see the Bush/Cheney clans using the police, state agents, federal officers to cover up or commit crimes with them. And this is all "in our faces" from a gang that screams "Law and Order" all the time.

This latest case is classic. The Secret Service try to cover up a crime for it is a crime to shoot other hunters. Going back over 200+ years, whenever anyone is shot, there is an investigation and an inquest. Then a report is issued and someone is either arrested or vindicated. But it is NOT ignored! The fact that the Texan authorities and the hospital covered this up makes them all complicit in a crime. For the most powerful man in America to get away with shooting someone is exactly how royalty acts.

My family remembers a king they hated so much, they decided to get rid of him. This is why we are here, when our revolt failed, back in the 1600's. The king of England was out hunting with his queen, using crossbows. She shot at a deer only she hit the man who was herding the deer towards her so she could pretend she was hunting. Since the king was going bankrupt, he and she and their nobles decided to hide the body instead of paying the family. So a scandal ensued as the beater's dogs found his body in a shallow grave.

This is what America is now. The royal hunters shoot people and then try to stick it all under some leaves. The lawyer he shot knows the law, too, and should be arrested for covering up a crime that should, by law, be investigated.

Arrest them all. We can kill several birds with one stone here. Heh. Save America.
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Washington Pest

New Studies of Chimp Brains Show How TV Pundits Operate

2006-02-06T11:44:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

90% of what TV pundits say is pure rubbish yet millions of Americans believe what they say simply because TV gives them status within the monkey troop. The same goes for top chimp, the number one monkey, Bush. Now scientist figured out how this works, from our cousins, the real chimpanzees.

From Primates.com:

Monkey "Pay-Per-View" Study Could Aid Understanding Of Autism

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researches have found that monkeys will "pay" juice rewards to see images of high-ranking monkeys or female hindquarters. They say their research technique offers a rigorous laboratory approach to studying the "social machinery" of the brain and how this machinery goes tragically awry in autism -- a disease that afflicts more than a million Americans and is the fastest growing developmental disorder.

Fix autism? How about understanding why see see nothing but wall to wall monkey bottoms on TV pretending to be pundits? Seriously, these lower ranking monkeys on TV all groom and fawn over seemingly higher ranking monkeys and both conspire to drive the lowest ranking monkeys to go out and die in monkey wars a la "2001".

Here is another, similar story. From Live Science:

The social conformity displayed in a new study is a trait previously seen only in humans.

Researchers at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center presented two groups of chimpanzees a food puzzle. The chimps were faced with a small barrier that blocked food from rolling down a pipe.

They could either lift the barrier, allowing the food to roll towards them, or poke at it until it pushed the food reward down a different chute. The task was designed to recreate the type of problem solving chimps do in the wild.

Out of sight from the other chimps, researchers took aside one chimp from each group and taught each a different way to use a stick to get at the food. Erika was shown how to use the stick to lift the blockage. Georgia was taught to poke the blockage with the stick until it rolled into her hands.

"We chose those individuals because they had a lot of friends in the group and we thought that the other chimps would watch them," study coauthor Victoria Horner told LiveScience.

So, chimps act like Jr. High School girls? Who would have guessed! Actually, they show lots of human characteristics because except for only 1.5% of their genes, they are us.

Or rather, we are an infantilized version of them. This is why their teeth are big and strong and so are their arms, anyone who wants to arm wrestle a chimp will find their arm ripped out of its socket. The only chimps we can manhandle are their babies and toddlers.

This is why humans handling chimps can't do it so easily once they reach more than 7 years of age. This is when they discover they are stronger than even the biggest human. If nothing else, they can rip us apart with their teeth.

All animals like to imitate. This is why we humans were able to devise training for other animals, "taming" them pretty rapidly with no help from any scientific studies. When we let dogs move in with us, we did so because dogs always imitate the leader of the pack and so all you need is the top monkey to show the dogs who is boss and bingo. They go along.

Many animals I have owned end up watching me like hawks, trying to figure out what I do and why. For example, opening doors. I have had cats, dogs, horses and even a wild crow study how I open and shut things and then, behind my back, doing it for themselves. My horse, Sparky, is very dangerous about that. I have to hide my hands when manipulating things or he will memorize how I do it and then replicate it with his lips. This means, he is a top "escape artist". He even figured out how I turned on and off the electric fence because I stupidly thought he couldn't figure out the connection between the throw switch and the fence going off.

There is a place in the brain which recognizes faces. From National Geographic:

The brain of the macaque monkey has a distinct area dedicated to recognizing faces, according to a new study.

This brain region is the first one in any animal—including humans—found to have nearly all of its nerve cells focused on a specific visual form.

The finding adds weight to the theory that the brain works like a Swiss Army knife, with separate modules set to different tasks.

This must mean that Bush's brain is like a dull butter knife? Suits me.

The media exploits this tendency to not only face-recognize but couples it with the monkey see-monkey do reflexes. This is why our pundits don't care if they are naked butts on TV or lying or fuddling facts. All they have to do is bare their fangs, wave their manes hither and yon, flash the rear buttocks, and bark. The average monkey watching this dominance display then accepts the data without looking very closely. Those who dare look at information are driven away with the monkey pundits shrieking, "Shut up! Shut up!" More than one of these silly creatures has "won" their debates with me on TV or the radio by simply cutting my mike and rattling on, showing eyebrows, fangs and rear anal gear.

It works!

Scientists already know that humans have areas of the brain that are adept at face processing. For example, some stroke victims lose the ability to identify faces yet can still recognize everyday objects.

In my case, when I was hit by lightning in 1955, one of the odd side effects was, I couldn't recognize faces unless I "tag" them in some fashion. Mostly, though, I just don't bother with it, I warn everyone I have this bizarre deficit and they can do whatever. I LOVE heraldry because that, I can remember perfectly and when I used to fight in Society of the Creative Anacronism's battles fields, I had no problem knowing who was who. And who to whack with my sword!

Once, my parents and I were flying to different airports so when we said goodbye, I figured, I wouldn't see them again for another year.

I landed at Chicago airport and changed flights to Kennedy. A stewardess approached and said, "Some people want to see you," and I wondered if it was the Secret Service or something. Heh.

Two people came to me and I stared at them. "Don't you know who we are?" my mother asked. "Who are you?" I asked.

"We're your parents! You saw us only an hour ago at the airport in Tucson!" said my father. All the passengers around me laughed.

"Oh! Now I see you!" I said. For now I could ID them. Up until then, they looked like strangers because my brain told me they were in DC so they couldn't be standing in front of me. But their flight was diverted by a blizzard so they came to NYC with me, instead and visited the UN to talk about future projects.

Maybe this is why I am unimpressed by leaders. Since they have to be processed by a different part of my brain, the "worship the top monkey ass" isn't triggered. I always wondered about this. To spot loved ones in a crowd, I have to repeat what they are wearing or picture their hair style in order to cut down on the chaos of choosing.

Maybe if more humans disabled this part of the brain we won't see anymore Hitlers or Bushes since one would always be saying, "Who on earth is that bizarre looking idiot?" instead.
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Washington Pest

Republican Congressman's Wife Thrown Out of SOTU Speech

2006-02-01T20:44:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The paranoia of anyone showing any signs or anything around Bubble Boy are so intense, police even removed the wife of the powerful House Defence Appropriations Subcommittee for wearing a tee shirt saying, "Support the Troops"!

From commentator at Smirking Chimp:

Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young (news, bio, voting record) of Florida — chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee — was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom."

"Because she had on a shirt that someone didn't like that said support our troops, she was kicked out of this gallery," Young said on the House floor Wednesday morning, holding up the gray shirt.

"Shame, shame," he scolded.

Mrs. Young was sitting about six rows from first lady Laura Bush and asked to leave. She argued with police in the hallway outside the House chamber.

"They said I was protesting," she told the St. Petersburg Times. "I said, "Read my shirt, it is not a protest.' They said, 'We consider that a protest.' I said, 'Then you are an idiot.'"

Heh. The fascists consider any expression of anything to be a "protest". As always, the right wing, and this lady is a far right winger, thinks they will be granted the privilage to do whatever they wish while the rest of us have no rights at all and are forcibly silenced and crushed underfoot. The idea that she would need some civil rights eludes her, normally.

I have often seen this. "You can't do (x) to ME!" is the common refrain of people desiring privilages. Whole societies are predicated on grantig vast privilages and benefits only to select members. America was supposed to be striving to do the opposite even though we have a really crummy record in the past which is why the Civil Rights Act had to be added to the body of laws even though the Bill of Rights pretty much covers everything.

Here is an attempt at censoring Tom Toles, the Washington Post cartoonist. From Americablog:

And why not have the Pentagon try to stifle a free media while supposedly promoting freedom in Iraq? The US government just arrested one of President Bush's top political critics for threatening his life with a t-shirt. So why not now threaten a top political cartoonist for drawing a cartoon that the Pentagon doesn't like? Why not use the power of government to try to censor the media, something that's a direct violation of that pesky and quaint 1st Amendment to the US Constitution - you remember, that document the Bush administration doesn't think is relevant.

Here is the offending cartoon:

Of course, the Out of Joint Chiefs of Staff who sit in protected offices are all snippy about this, chosing to pretend the cartoon mocks the wounded when it is pointing out the obvious: the Pentagon itself has boasted about taking amputees and putting them back into Iraq!

Of course, the GOP hausfraus don't get all upset over the purple bandaids or mocking Murtha for being a Marine who actually saw warfare unlike so many officers in the Pentagon and Rumsfeld himself who never saw anyone shoot at him, ever, since he "fought" when there were no wars going on.

Ditto most GOPers. They attack amputees who dare to run for office as Democrats, they show no mercy to fellow Americans if any soldier gets in the way of the pork barrel in DC!

Even as Bill Gates backs down about censoring a Chinese man's blog and Google tries to calm us all about censoring blogs like mine if the person is googling in countries that hate me, all the world writhes with attempts at censorship or pretending they don't censor when they do it.

From the BBC:

Newspapers across Europe have reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to show support for a Danish paper whose cartoons have sparked Muslim outrage.
Seven publications in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain all carried some of the drawings.

Their publication in Denmark led Arab nations to protest. Islamic tradition bans depictions of the Prophet.

The owner of one of the papers to reprint - France Soir - has now sacked its managing editor over the matter.

The cartoons have sparked diplomatic sanctions and death threats in some Arab nations, while media watchdogs have defended publication of the images in the name of press freedom.

Muslims are raging about this all over the world. They are now boycotting many countries. The rage is justified because the Europeans, pretending there is no censorship therefore it is OK to publish sacrilege is sheer nonsense.

Try printing a cartoon showing Sharon wearing a swastika!

There, see? No go. Right now, they put "holocaust deniers" in prison just for saying, there were no deathcamps! They are lying, of course, but putting someone in prison for this is NOT FREE SPEECH. Period. The trials of holocaust deniers goes on and on with no on in the American and few in Europe mentioning this. Again, not only are they being tried for daring to speak their minds (wrong or right, it doesn't matter), they are being put in prison in a Nazi-like "Nacht und Nebel" media blackout!

If Europe wants to act like Nazis and stop free speech and not give news coverage of loss of the right to speak freely, they have no right to persecute anyone for talking about Nazis!

This creeping censorship is all over the planet and I am 100% against it. The blog is mightier than the sword is this blog's motto. But in the end, power grows out of the state and the state can silence anyone if the corporations and newsmedia want to conspire with the state.

And this, in a nutshell, is what is wrong today. Not enough free speech. Long live the net! Blog on!
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My Blog Is Often On Page One In Google Type Searches

2006-01-29T22:27:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I check the stats of this site daily. One thing I am interested in is how people find this blog. Many do it through search engines and I want to thank them for coming back for more than one read, everyone here is interesting to me because of the you are from so many far flung places and different backgrounds. I want to explain how I think the search engines work.

Here is an example from today's newest readers of my blog:From Google, Germany:

Yachts for sale online - Yachts for sale
Yachts for Sale Super Yachts Mega Yachts for sale online. Buy - Sell yacths online - Super Yachts Mega Yachts for sale ...
www.find-yachts.com/ - 23k - I hurtigbuffer - Lignende sider

Azimut Yachts for sale. Buy - selling - buying - sell Azimuts for ...
Azimut Yachts for sale. Azimuts for sale. superyachts, motor yachts, brokers, ... Buy and Sell yachts online from www.find-yachts.com, please visit ...
www.find-yachts.com/azimut_yacht_for_sale_4.htm - 17k - I hurtigbuffer - Lignende sider
[ Flere resultater fra www.find-yachts.com ]

Culture of Life News II: Super Rich Buy Superyachts and ...
Super Rich Buy Superyachts and Supermodels Thanks To Bush Tax Cuts. By Elaine Meinel Supkis The disasterous Bush tax cuts which he wants to extend eternally ...
culturelifenewsii.blogspot.com/ 2006/01/super-rich-buy-superyachts-and.html - 20k - I hurtigbuffer - Lignende sider

Amazon.co.uk: Working on Yachts and Superyachts: Books
Perfect Partner Buy Working on Yachts and Superyachts with Crewing Aboard A Superyacht: A Guide to Working Af... today! ...
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/185458295X - 35k - I hurtigbuffer - Lignende sider

Luxury Yachts & Super Yachts brokers :: Custom Line | Top Yachts
... tailored management, gardiennage, crewing and charter services. Contact us today and find out why you should buy your new super yacht from Top-Yachts ...
www.top-yachts.co.uk/ - 11k - I hurtigbuffer - Lignende sider

Buy and sell boats, yachts, etc. online
Sell/buy new and uses ships or other maritime products. ... Super & Mega Yachts, Sailing Yachts, Motor Yachts, Fishing Vessels ...
www.theyachtmarket.com/links.asp - 79k - I hurtigbuffer - Lignende sider

This is page 1 of 718,000 web citations. I was #3. I picked up this page from my webtracker. Someone in Germany, (Guten Abend, mein Freund!) clicked on my blog after googling "buy super yachts". If you are planning on buying a super yacht and want to give me a lift, I happen to love deep sea fishing in the Gulf...or Mediterranean, ahem (heh). But seriously, I used to wonder why my blog didn't show up on Google except for page 250.

So one of my wonderful readers, from Australia, gave me a clue about how to fare better with the search engines. Writing for the Web:

Research on how users read on the Web and how authors should write their Web pages. Mainly based on studies by John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen.

Short summary of the findings: How users read on the Web [read this one first]
Full paper (long): Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web (unfortunately this paper was written for print and not online)

Case study: Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages improved usability by 159% when rewriting sample pages from a popular website

Detailed study materials, including downloadable page files, tasks, and questionnaires (only useful if you want to replicate our experiments or conduct new studies in the area of reading and writing on the Web)

It is an old fashioned looking website with annoying aspects but their advice is sound, just don't copy their interface. Here is a paragraph I carefully analyzed and used to change my blog entries:

Journalists have long adhered to the inverse approach: start the article by telling the reader the conclusion ("After long debate, the Assembly voted to increase state taxes by 10 percent"), follow by the most important supporting information, and end by giving the background. This style is known as the inverted pyramid for the simple reason that it turns the traditional pyramid style around. Inverted-pyramid writing is useful for newspapers because readers can stop at any time and will still get the most important parts of the article.

On the Web, the inverted pyramid becomes even more important since we know from several user studies that users don't scroll,(*) so they will very frequently be left to read only the top part of an article. Very interested readers will scroll, and these few motivated souls will reach the foundation of the pyramid and get the full story in all its gory detail.

This is why I have the opening statement and then the relevent news story then analysis and connecting other news stories. Patient readers might even make it to the end, but since most of us have limited hours, the leisure of reading all the way through is something not everyone has. Thus the opening summary.

I noticed that my profile on search engines has shot up. Type in "Siberian Swans" and my blog is again, #3. Or "Deep Space Climate Observatory", I am #2. "Smurfettes", my blog is #1 on page 1.

I use Google a tremendous amount. Very seldom do I see the top popular blogs in the top 10 search items. I am usually sandwiched between the New York Times, the BBC or Washington Post. All of whom I quote a paragraph or two, but the original content is overwhelming, usually, compared to the direct quotes.

I suspect Google has cracked down on mere repetition of articles because many bloggers have gotten very lazy and post most often an opening sentence like this, "Wow. Look at this article!" and ending with, "Wow. That was so stupid/amazing/whatever." So up until recently, when I wanted more information about some topic, I had to plow through dozens of web sites that were almost identical, the search people disliked this because it made their engines a waste of time.

In the last three months, I noticed a change. The variety of links on page one have been much better and the repetition of the same article is nearly gone. No longer do they have 300 Associated Press releases under the titles of 300 different news delivery services. Most of the media use only a few services now since everyone has been firing reporters and reducing their overhead, lending a certain uniformity in the news which is pretty bad, I think.

Everyone is looking for some easy way to be on page 1 of Google. I got there the hard way: by posting diverse, researched, well organized (well, sort of! Heh.) articles, frequently and with origional content, especially the artwork. Many sites try using magic tricks like embedding words or sticking a string of "key words" at the start or bottom, etc. The search engines hate this. Once everyone does the same trick, the people programming the search engines, watching content collapse, retaliate by setting up a different system for grading content.

So the message here is simple: if you have good content, well produced and easy to read and access, you will end up being loved by the search engines. They do test their systems to see if the information retrieved is of good quality. And businesses pay a lot of money for gurus to show them the Golden Land which is the top 10 Google web search items on page1.

Isn't it funny, my odd ball blog has conquered that Mount Everest? And attacks corporate America? Truly, a laugh riot for me.
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Washington Pest

US Military Has Plans For Eliminating All Communications

2006-01-28T14:11:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Us webcitizens are very upset about the news that the military has plans to take down not only the web but everything we use to communicate. The web was build for NASA and the military. The military has never liked the web being expanded to ordinary citizens and AL GORE was the chief sponsor of the bill that did this which is why, I suppose, they hate him, eh?

From the BBC:

From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

I blogged about this in the past.

Bush Illegal Spying. This latest news story is just more confirmation of the malice and anger the military has towards free speech. It isn't just Chinese military overlords who want to lord it over us.

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

The silliest part is the "manipulate the thoughts and beliefs" mandate. The only thing right wingers can influence, thought-wise, is other right wingers. The Nazis were like this, too. They could convince each other, stars were really blocks of ice and subhumans should die and all good things flow to Germans only. Convincing the people the conquered was a complete failure.

In our war against Muslims, waving the Bible at them and screaming at them isn't operational, is it? So we will just drop bombs. I think the real plan is to deliberately radicalize them and then huffily say, "Well, see, they are radicals, we must bomb them!" Just before the Palestinian elections which were "close" Bush and his crew announced they wanted Fatah to win so they sent Fatah some loot. Landslide for Hamas to the delight of the right wing Zionists who now don't have to negotiate with anyone! Whoopee! They immediately asked for more money to finish the Berlin Wall.

In Iran, Bush had us broadcast stuff saying, "Don't vote! Boycott the elections! Then there will be a revolution!" So now we see exactly that! Heck, look at Haiti! The NYT has a big "What happened in Haiti" article about two years too late. After all, more than one person demanded we support the duly elected President, Aristide, but no. Bush wanted a coup, got a coup, and now, the place is in chaos! Duh!

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

American TV is wall to wall psyops. It is one great big cycloptic psychotic psyops.

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.

The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.

The mainstream media has told us over and over that we are a problem, we have no "ethics" (ie, chains around our necks!) and that we need to shut up or else. They would dearly love to shut us down. Since the clever Chinese force American providers to do the censoring, the computer models created to do this are going to suddenly start doing it to us. For example, my blog has achieved the wonderful pinnacle of being on page one on international Google on many topics! Hooray! But with a flick of a key, they have eliminated me from 1/4 of the planet: China. Boo.From Xinhua net:

China is set to become the biggest user of broadband in the world, Bill Gates said Friday.

"No one will catch up (except) maybe India in 50 years," the chairman and co-founder of Microsoft Corp. said at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.

Thanks to Bill Gates and Yahoo and good old Google, this audience is denied access to my cartoons and blathering commentaries. This angers me and should anger all bloggers and other information providers. I address Chinese issues frequently and the interface between China and America is a top issue for me and it is a crime that I can't debate these issues with people living in China nor can I hear from them! And this international exchange is very important! It is the key to the future!

How dare any of these people talk about "free trade" and "flat earth" when they are all conspiring together to keep us all apart?

On to a related topic, Congress is going to pass a lobbyist's dream law for the big movie/tv/music producers and they want the guts of the law to be a secret! From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The Digital Transition Content Security Act (H.R.4569) - or Analog Hole bill - would force every video digitizing device in America to watch for and obey a VEIL watermark, a proprietary signal embedded in video broadcasts. But how would such a detector work? What would be its cost? And how secure is the watermark? Security researchers don't know - because the company behind VEIL won't let them look at the technology without first obtaining a "license." A license to examine the VEIL specification costs $10,000 and requires signing a non-disclosure agreement that forbids revealing the details of the technology to others. Congress is choosing a technology that must be built into your systems, and it's not giving non-entertainment industry experts the opportunity to check out the technology first to make sure it doesn’t break your systems, or, even worse, leave those systems vulnerable to attack.

Sounds like a Diebold law! No can-see! I feel like the guys running things are dropping a veil over all their activities, a steel veil.

The American military plans and the rich corporate entity plans are rapidly meshing into something rather ugly. Even though the blog can be mightier than the sword in a fair world, in the real world, the sword can wreck everything and anything and even annihilate everything once and forever.
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Even China Should Have Freedom of Speech

2006-01-27T13:00:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I was the American advisor for the Chinese students who demonstrated in front of the UN in NYC for over a month back when the famous Tiananmen Square massacre happened. I went to the Chinese consulate on 42nd Street to deliver a message from my parents and myself when they locked the doors and wouldn't let me in, even though they knew me well, thanks to the long association my parents had with working in China for over 10 years.

I was ordered by the police to go across the street so I read the message with my very loud, bull horn level voice, shaking with rage. I then yelled I was going to stand there until someone came out to take my message. Within minutes, I was surrounded by bewildered and very angry students who asked who I was and wanted to know, what to do. Within minutes, I was explaining how to protest without being arrested, how to handle the press, how to do many things. So they voted me, on the spot, to be their advisor.

We failed to stop the government crackdown but our protests forced Bush the elder to not repriate the students back to China for punishment for being in front of the UN, we also sprang several Chinese out of prison, thanks to CNN which was a splendid news outlet back then (alas!). The Chinese government listed me as an "enemy of the state" and I thought this was totally hilarious since my own country had listed me as that, too! International enemy number 3! That's me!

Well, the Chinese government is cracking down again, stupidly and dangerously. Unlike in past times, this won't stick because wealth comes from freedom and freedom is freedom of speech and they better not shut us up!

They got Google and Yahoo and Microsoft to shut up. They think, the Chinese people are too dumb to figure things out.

Hate to clue you guys in, but even Americans can finally figure out things (I hope!). America has severely curbed freedom of speech despite the First Amendment, repeatedly, especially when they want to wage war and shut up any critics. During the Cold War, we had near zero freedom of speech, literally, if you wrote anything slightly off center, one was watched like a hawk and if one wrote like me, or worse, do cartoons! Well!

Enemy of the state!

China is abuzz about magazines and newspapers being suddenly shut down this week. Here is an example, in Chinese and English, I am doing this to add it to Google and pray Google googles this in China (hah!):

就《冰点》周刊被非法停刊的公开抗议

新闻界的同行们、知识界、法律界的朋友们、《冰点》周刊海内外的热心读者们：
2006 年1月24日，星期二，是《冰点》周刊的发稿日，《冰点》在京编采如往日一样，齐集编辑部，认真校对将于1月25日出版的新的一期周刊。下午4点多，版样全部出齐，送总编辑审阅付印。然而反常的是，迟迟没有回音。我们听到，报社领导层被全部召到团中央开紧急会议，没有人看大样了。这意味着将有不同寻常的事情要发生。

天塌下来，报纸也是要正常出版的，这是对所有订户、所有读者负责。我们将大样中所有发现的错漏改定，静等事变的发生。鉴于中宣部对《冰点》的批评指责从来就没有断过，星期一还刚刚见到中宣部阅评小组对《冰点》刊发的袁伟时教授的文章《现代化与历史教科书》作出的文革式上纲上线的蛮横指责，作为主编，我估计，撤销我职务的时刻来到了。

然而卑鄙所能达到的程度，总是超出常人的想像。大约5点多钟，全国各个媒体朋友们的电话纷至沓来，告诉我他们已接到中宣部、国务院新闻办、北京市新闻局的通知，"不许刊登任何冰点停刊整顿的消息和评论"、"不许参加冰点编采召开的新闻发布会"、"不许炒作"、"要保持距离"等等。继而，各个海外媒体记者的电话也络绎不绝，要求我证实这件事。然而直到7点，还没有人正式通知我，报社领导层从团中央回来，还在开会商量。我反倒成了最后一个知道这件事的人。所有信息证明，这是一个党内高层某些人甘冒天下之大不讳，蓄谋已久、精心策划的行动。这个行动，不仅没有任何宪法和法律的依据，也严重违反、践踏了党章与党内政治生活准则。

作为一个职业报人，《冰点》停刊是我最不能理解、最不能接受的事情。因为报纸是社会公器，报社与订户、读者有契约，是读者付款购买的信息产品，报社必须履约，不管个人的命运如何，《冰点》周刊应该如期送到订户手中。然而在作出这个决定的人那里，社会影响算什么？广大读者算什么？主流大报的声誉算什么？党章国法算什么？中国改革开放的形象算什么？执政党的形象又算什么？他们将社会公器视为个人的家产，认为可以随意处置。

晚上7点30分,我接到社长、总编辑叫我上去谈话的电话。对我宣布的决定，是团中央宣传部作出的。"决定"将袁伟时先生的文章冠以若干莫须有的大帽子，然后宣布《冰点》周刊"停刊整顿"；除对总编辑和我本人通报批评外，还要作"经济处罚"，谁给了他们这种权力！心态如此之龌龊，令人哭笑不得。

自然，这场谈话在前述种种背景之下，已经成了一场滑稽剧。很明显，这是"上面"少数人在背后操纵，团中央在前台扮演丑角。我据理向社长、总编辑痛斥这份" 决定" 和中宣部《新闻阅评》的荒唐，并向他们宣告：我将正式向党中央纪律检查委员会控告这次非法行为。

就在《冰点》周刊被停刊的今天，报社接到大量读者的询问电话，已有读者在得知《冰点》停刊后愤而去邮局退订本报。

" 上面"少数人对《冰点》周刊的扼杀，蓄谋已久。2005年6月1日，在反法西斯战争胜利60周年纪念日前夕，《冰点》刊发了《平型关战役与平型关大捷》一文，真实记录了面对民族危亡，国共两党两军密切合作、相互配合、浴血奋战的真实历史场景。与传统宣传不同的是，《冰点》首次在主流媒体上客观真实地报道了国民党将士在这场战斗中牺牲数万人的战斗历程。

这样一篇真实的历史描述，却遭到中宣部阅评组的蛮横批评。他们批评的根据是什么呢？没有任何事实，而是根据"××年××出版社的中共党史××页关于平型关大捷的记述"，《冰点》的报道是"美化国民党，贬低共产党"。结果，在纪念中国反法西斯战争胜利60周年的大会上，党中央总书记胡锦涛同志，在纪念讲话中全面肯定了国民党将士在抗日战争主战场上的功绩。谁对谁错，不言自明。

在连、宋访问大陆结束之际，台湾著名作家龙应台女士在《冰点》发表长篇文章《你可能不知道的台湾》。文章用丰富的材料，首次客观真实地向大陆人民介绍了台湾几十年来的变化和发展，在读者中引起了强烈的反响和好评，对沟通两岸民众起到了极为重要的作用。而这样一篇文章，竟被中宣部某些人指责为"处处针对共产党"，其眼界和心胸之狭隘令人惊诧。

去年11月18日，党中央隆重召开了伟大的无产阶级革命家胡耀邦同志诞辰90周年的纪念会，曾庆红同志代表党中央对耀邦同志一生的光辉业迹、伟大人格作了充分阐述，受到人民群众的热烈欢迎。而中宣部的某些人却禁止媒体发表纪念耀邦同志的回忆文章，规定只许发表新华社通稿，各媒体不允许有自选动作。

2005 年12月7日，《冰点》刊发胡启立同志的长篇回忆文章《我心中的耀邦》，引起强烈反响，海内外中文媒体纷纷转载，无数网友发帖说被文章感动得热泪盈眶。对这样一篇起到极好社会反响的文章，中宣部竟打电话到报社来问罪，称报社违反了"没有自选动作"的规定！在这些人那里，哪有一点对胡耀邦同志的真感情、真悼念啊！

中宣部少数人对《冰点》的无理指责和批评还有很多。譬如，2005年11月30日《冰点》刊发记者调查，披露了武汉大学法学教授周叶中在学术著作中的剽窃行为。这位周教授在《冰点》记者采访他时，竟有恃无恐地劝告道：你就不要管这事儿了，晚上中宣部就要找你的！你们总编辑会找你的！报道刊发后，果然遭到了中宣部某些人气势汹汹地问罪，蛮横地指责这篇报道有严重的舆论导向问题。

正是在这种压力下，《冰点》对此事的后续报道被撤版。2005年12月28日，《冰点》历史性地出了一期只有三块版的周刊。试问，中宣部的少数人究竟在保护什么行为？

现在，他们终于要跟《冰点》算总帐了！用袁伟时先生的文章为发难对象不过是个幌子。袁伟时教授在近代史的研究上著述颇多，在知识界影响很大。袁教授写的这篇文章依据的是史料，立论基础是开放的理性。文章发表后，亦引起很大反响。本来，对历史问题的讨论，需要对材料和观点有平等的、心平气和地交流，才能逐渐达到共识。诸多网上评论中，即便是不赞同袁先生文章的网友，也有态度十分认真、考据十分扎实的反驳文章。我本人曾将这些帖子转给袁先生参考，袁先生看后对我回复说：这些文章态度确实十分严谨，我将会认真考虑他们的观点，作出相应的回复。这正是一种健康的、正常的学术交流。而中宣部的阅评除了文革式的詈骂和扣帽子、打棍子，还有什么？！

这次事件再次集中暴露出我国新闻管理体制的根本性弊端，那就是中宣部少数人以其狭隘的眼界、逼仄的心胸、专制蛮横的工作方法，将本应该百花齐放、百家争鸣的活跃政治局面，管制得万马齐喑、一片死气沉沉。这些人要的是顺从，而不是平等。这种专权，中国共产党党章的哪一条授予过他们？！

对我国新闻管理体制的弊端，我们将另文论述。在这封信里，我们只是想告诉同行们、读者们、朋友们，到底发生了什么，为什么会发生。没有真理害怕辩论，没有真相惧怕公开。尽管中宣部的某些人动用权力，封锁所有媒介和网络，但我们相信，你们一定会看到这封信！你们有知道真相的权力！

衷心地感谢你们！

中国青年报《冰点》周刊主编李大同
2006年1月25日

Care of ESNW (http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060126_3.htm)

Dear news media colleagues, intellectuals, legal professional friends and devoted readers of Freezing Point inside and outside of China:

On January 24, 2006, Tuesday, which the deadline for the Freezing Point weekly magazine, the Beijing editorial staff of Freezing Point worked as usual to edit and proof-read the weekly edition scheduled for January 25. At just after 4pm, we were ready with everything and the pages were forwarded to the editor-in-chief for review and print. The unusual aspect was that there was no reaction for a long while. We gathered that all the newspaper leadership had been called to the League Central Office for an emergency meeting and nobody was minding the store. This meant that something extraordinary was about to happen.

Then the skies fell down. The newspaper will be published as usual, because this is our obligation to our subscribers and readers. We looked for any possible errors and we patiently waited for the breaking event. Based on the fact that the Central Propaganda Department never ceased in their criticisms of Freezing Point and most recently the Central Propaganda Department criticism group issued an Cultural Revolution-style critique of Yuan Weishi's essay on "Modernization and Historical Textbooks" on the Internet, I suspected that it was my moment to be dismissed as the editor-in-chief.

But the contemptible level was beyond the imagination of ordinary person. At just after 5pm, the telephone calls from various media friends around the country began to arrive. They told us that they have received the notice from the Central Propaganda Department, the State Council and the Beijing News Office to "not report or comment on the stoppage of Freezing Point," "not attend any press conference given by the editorial and reporting staff of Freezing Point," "not hype," "maintain the distance" and so on. Thereafter, the overseas media reporters called non-stop to ask me to confirm the facts. But until 7pm, nobody had notified me formally. When the newspaper leadership returned from the meeting the League Central, they went into a meeting to discuss matters. I was the last person to know about this affair. All the information proved that this was something certain persons in the upper level of the party dared to risk public contempt and plotted carefully to take this action. This action had no legal or constitutional basis, and seriously violated and trampled upon the party constitution and political standards of the party.

As a professional media worker, I cannot understand the stoppage of Freezing Pont. I cannot accept this. A newspapers is a public instrument. The newspaper has a social contract with the subscribes and the readers, and it is a source of information that the readers pay money for and therefore the newspaper must fulfill its contract no matter what. Therefore, the Freezing Point weekly magazine should be delivered into the hands of the subscribers. Yet for the person who made this decision, what did the social impact mean? What does the broad readership mean? What does the reputation of a mainstream newspaper mean? What do the party constitution and the national constitution mean? What does the image of Chinese reform mean? What does the image of the governing party mean? They regard the social instrument as a personal property to be disposed of at their own will.

At 730pm in the evening, I received a call from the publisher and editor-in-chief to go and speak to them. The decision about me was made by the League Central Propaganda Department. The "decision" gave Mr. Yuan Weishi an uncalled-for label and then announced that Freezing Point will be stopped for reorganization. Apart from the personal attacks against the editor-in-chief and myself, there were also "economic sanctions." Who gave them that kind of power? They are so disgusting that I don't know whether to cry or laugh.

Of course, with the aforementioned background, this conversation was a farce. Obviously, this was controlled by a small number of people "above" in the background and the League Central was just playing the role of the fools. I used reasoning to condemn the "decision" as well as the absurdity of the Central Propaganda Department's News Criticisms. I told the publisher and editor-in-chief that I will formally complain to the party central disciplinary committee about this illegal act.

On the day when Freezing Point weekly magazine stopped publication, the newspaper received a large number of telephone inquiries from readers. I learned that readers are angrily terminating their subscriptions at the postal offices on account of the stoppage of Freezing Point.

A small number of people "above" have plotted for a long time to strangle Freezing Point. On June 1, 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the victory of the anti-Fascist war, Freezing Point published the essay on "Pingyingguan battle and Pingyingguan victory", in which we recorded the historical truth about how the Kuomintang and Communist Party worked together in the face of national survival to win the battle with their blood. This was different from the unification propaganda, because Freezing Point was the first in mainstream media to objectively report on how the Kuomintang army sacrificed tens of thousands of warriors in this battle.

This true historical account attracted the brutal criticism by the Central Propaganda Department's Criticism Group. What is the basis of their criticism? It was based upon the "XX year XX publisher's Chinese Communist Party history about the Pingyuanguan victory." The Freezing Point report "glorified the Kuomintang and debased the Communist Party." In the end, at the memorial meeting of the 60th anniversary of the victory in the anti-Fascist war, Communist Party General Secretary comrade Hu Jintao said in his memorial speech that he affirmed the contribution of the Kuomintang solders in the war of resistance against the Japanese. It was clear that who was right and who was wrong in this case.

When Lian and Soong completed their visits to Taiwan, the renowned Taiwan writer Ms. Lung Yingtai published a long essay at Freezing Point titled "The Taiwan That You May Not Know." The essay used a rich content to objectively and truthfully present to the people of China for the first time the changes and developments in Taiwan over the past few decades. It created a tremendous response and approval among readers and had an important impact on communication between the people on the two sides of the Taiwan strait. But this essay was accused by certain people within the Central Propaganda Department as being "against the Communist Party at every step" and their narrow-mindedness was truly astonishing.

On November 18, the party central held a solemn memorial for the great proletariat revolutionary Hu Yaobang's 90th birthday. Comrade Zeng Qinghong represented the Party Central Committee to pay tribute to Comrade Hu Yaobang's glorious accomplishments and he was warmly received by the people. But certain members in the Central Propaganda Department forbade the media to publish memorial articles of Comrade Hu Yaobang and required that all media can only publish the Xinhua release and nothing of their own creation.

On December 7, 2005, Freezing Point published Comrade Hu Qili's long memorial essay "The Yaobang of My Heart" and drew a tremendous response. The media inside and outside of China carried that essay. Numerous netizens posted comments to say how they had been moved to tears. About that well-received essay, the Central Propaganda Department called the newspaper to complain and claimed that the newspaper had violated rule of "not having any voluntary choice."! For those people, they felt no genuine emotion or grief over Comrade Hu Yaobang!

A small number at the Central Propaganda Department had numerous unreasonable complaints and criticisms against Freezing Point. For example, on November 30, 2005, Freezing Point published a reporter's investigation about the academic plagiarism by Wuhan law professor Zhou Yezhong. When professor Zhou was interviewed by the Freezing Point reporter, he said: "You better not mind this matter! Sooner or later, the Central Propaganda Department is going to come after you! Your editor-in-chief will come after you!" When the report was published, certain people at the Central Propaganda Department came after us and complained that the essay had major problems with editorial directions.

Under these pressures, Freezing Pont withdrew its follow-up report. On December 28, 2005, Freezing Point published a historical first weekly edition of only three pages. We ask just who the small number of people at the Central Propaganda Department were protecting?

Now, they are looking for a final accounting with Freezing Point! The essay of Mr. Yuan Weishi is just an excuse. Professor Yuan Weishi has published numerous works on contemporary history and he has great influence among intellectuals. When Professor Yuan wrote this article, it was based upon historical materials and his theoretical basis is about the rationality of openness. After the essay was published, it generated a great response. On any discussion of historical issues, it is necessary to have materials as well as viewpoints and to exchange ideas in a calm and peaceful manner in order to reach agreement. Of the many Internet commentary, even those netizens who disagreed with Mr. Yuan were very serious and their rebuttals were very solid. I have personally forwarded some of these comments to Mr. Yuan and he replied afterwards that these essays were very rigorous and he would seriously consider their viewpoints and make the appropriate responses. This is a healthy and normal kind of academic exchange. But the Central Propaganda Department Criticism Group used insults and characterizations in the style of the Cultural Revolution and then nothing else!?

This incident exposes the basic flaws in the news control system of our country. A small number of people in the Central Propaganda Department have a narrow worldview and mind and used dictatorial methods to impose controls that deaden what should be a lively political scene in which a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools speak out. These people want obedience and not equality. Which item in the party constitution of the Communist Party lets them do that?

We will write elsewhere about the flaws of our national news control system. Here, we just want to tell our colleagues, readers and friends just what had happened and why it happened. When one does not have the truth, one is afraid of debates; when one does not have the truth, one is afraid of openness. Although certain people in the Central Propaganda Department used their power to lock up all the media and websites, we believe that you will see this letter! You will know the power of truth!

We thank you sincerely!

China Youth Daily Freezing Point weekly magazine editor Li Datong
January 25, 2006

Posted by ACB at January 27, 2006 07:51 AM

Thank you, Peking Duck. I was waiting for someone to post this in Chinese!

Here is some news about the crackdown: From Reuters:

China is preparing to "strike hard" against rising public unrest, a senior police official said according to state media on Thursday, highlighting the government's fears for stability even as the economy booms.

An unnamed top official of China's Ministry of Public Security told a Wednesday meeting that China faced a long period of dangerous social discontent, Xinhua news agency said.

We get closer and closer to war for wars unite, ask Bush about this, and to redirect worker/peasant anger, all one has to do is give a little push and America teeters on the edge of destruction so we know, all it takes is a tiny push and off we all go, deep into that well of misery, WWIII.

The latest unusually grim police diagnosis of China's social strains comes less than a week after Premier Wen Jiabao was reported as warning that corrupt land seizures in the countryside were stoking protests and riots.

"Some locales are unlawfully occupying farmers' land and not offering reasonable economic compensation and arrangements for livelihoods, and this is sparking mass incidents in the countryside," Wen said in a speech published on January 20.

Wen said the continued "reckless occupation" of farmland threatened "the stability of the countryside and whole economy and society." He promised stricter land controls and improvements to farmers' rights and income.

The Chinese rulers know they can't merely "crack down" or they might have a sudden revolution on their hands. They teach revolution in school and then try to undo it at work. This model won't work in the long run. I was amazed at how well the Chinese students reproduced various revolutionary posters, using flags, trucks and the famous Goddess of Democracy statue design.

Real revolutions are breaking out all over the place like in Nepal. From the Independent:

Police in Nepal opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators with live ammunition yesterday for the first time in almost a year, wounding at least three, in the resort town of Pokhara, in the shadow of Annapurna.

The country was shut down in a national strike called by political parties to protest against the dictatorial King Gyanendra. The streets of Kathmandu were deserted. Protesters attacked vehicles. Visitors could venture out of hotels only in special buses with banners reading "Tourists only". The bazaars of Thamel were empty and the shutters closed on shops selling Tibetan devil masks and Tintin T-shirts.

My parents spent a lot of time in Nepal. They became close friends of the Royal Family and trust me when I say, the murder of that family was a palace coup, not the son suddenly going mad.

The right wing neocons were terrified when the King had started negotiations with the people of Nepal and was ceding authority to them and preparing for a real election. Now we have an evil despot ruling autocratically there, supported by the CIA and other American forces. And the country is literally burning down. The Chinese rulers are hysterical about this disorder on their valuable and vulnerable Tibetan border which is why they are so anxious to settle matters with India.

As the Chinese rulers play Go on the world stage, making one power move after another, they worry about the other game that is running, the very ancient game of People vs Rulers. They know, with prosperity comes happiness, but prosperity for only a few equals revolution for the many since there is something to loot. After all, any palace can be stormed if people are organized enough to endure dying while storming it!

And like the Muslims, the Chinese people are feeling energetic and powerful. They know, there is no escaping their fates, so they are ready to stand and fight.

From Cina Economic Review:

In an open letter threatening to take the case of the closure of the Bingdian Weekly to the Communist Party's disciplinary committee, editor Li Datong protested the shutdown as many mainland reporters expressed anger over censorship in chat-room messages, blogs and emails, reported the South China Morning Post. One website was organizing a petition while journalists proposed raising money for a legal challenge. An offending Bingdian article by a professor questioned the official history of the Boxer Rebellion and of the Communist-Kuomintang cooperation in World War II. Other articles, one outlining Taiwan's arguments for separate status, also sparked anger from the Communist Party’s propaganda department.

Interesting, they are fighting back. I will keep on this story, hope they aren't sent to prison. We need world-wide freedom of speech.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon plans to do something about the net if we have a "war or terrorist attack"---namely, eliminate all non-propaganda, non-ruling class information access in America using the Chinese methods.
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Davos World Economic Forums Freak Out Over Pro-Palestinian Magazine Article

2006-01-26T16:14:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

This is funny in a pathetic way. Many top American magazines, TV and movie empires as well as newspapers and radios are owned or run by people who happen to be Jewish. They have successfully locked out nearly any mention of Palestine except on Zionist terms. But the official magazine at Davos allowed a call for boycotting Israel to slip into public view.

From Haaretz.com:

The chairman and executive director of the Davos World Economic Forum on Thursday offered a sweeping apology to all delegates for an article calling for the boycott of Israel that appeared in a prestigious magazine issued by the forum.

Professor Klaus Schwab, who founded the annual Davos conclave 35 years ago, said he was "shocked" to read, just today, the article that appeared in the magazine "Global Agenda."

Some American Jewish leaders attending the conference said they were not satisfied with the apology.

"As a publisher," said Mortimer Zuckerman of U.S. News and World Report, "I have to take full responsibility for everything that appears in my publications, whether I read them or not."

You can bet, Zuckerman carefully checks his own many publications to insure they are 100% pro-Israel. This is why stories like this one never made the news here and isn't talked about here: From Aljazeera courtesy of Lawrence of Cyberia:

When I first got to Hebron I wouldn't open fire on little children. And I was sure that if I ever killed or hurt anyone, I'd go so crazy that I'd leave the army. But finally I did shoot someone, and nothing happened to me. In Hebron I shot the legs off of two kids, and I was sure I wouldn't be able to sleep anymore at night, but nothing happened. Two weeks ago I hurt a Palestinian policeman, and that didn't affect me either. You become so apathetic you don't care at all. Shooting is the IDF soldier's way of meditating. It's like shooting is your way of letting go of all your anger when you're in the army. In Hebron there's this order they call "punitive shooting": just open fire on whatever you like. I opened fire not on any sources of fire but on windows where there was just wash hanging to dry. I knew that there were people who would be hit. But at that moment it was just shoot, shoot, shoot.

Heck, the Corrie story, the peace activist who was deliberately run over by an Israeli driving a huge earthmover, didn't get any sane coverage. The NYT openly lied about the circumstances and I saw a film of the event when it was obvious, the man saw her and deliberately drove over her, not once, but repeatedly.

The NYT could have and probably did see the same film footage which is why they didn't mention it when they made up a story about this incident, lying nearly nonstop.

Indeed, the lying is so seamless here in America, it is a shock to go online to other countries' publications and see not only stories but movies showing very clearly, the horror of occupation Israel.

For example, the little girl in this photo was shot dead by an IDF soldier in a watch tower. Evidently, he was playing "Nazi concentration camp guard" and was pinging civilians for fun. I'm sure the Germans enjoyed this sport, too. Of course, we are supposed to pretend Naziism is a German mental disease.

It is not. Anyone can turn themselves into a Nazi. All you have to do, is become self centered and desire the death of anyone who has things you want. A grotesque form of "me-ism." Criminals think this way. It isn't pretty.

In his letter of apology, which Schwab said he would circulate to all delegates at Davos, he wrote: "With great concern and pain I just learned that 'Global Agenda,' a publication distributed to our members at the Annual Meeting 2006, contains an article calling for the boycott of Israel. This article is totally in contradiction to my own, and the Forum's, mission and values. For 36 years I have been committed to fighting for better mutual understanding in the world. The Forum has been deeply involved in efforts to create better relations and reconciliation in the Middle East...

It is interesting watching all these wealthy Jewish binationals weeping about how they are making the Middle East "better". The "mutual understanding" part is particularily hilarious.

Instead of telling the raw truth: "Yes, we are tribalists who believe that we and we alone get to occupy, use and dispense with whatever parts of the earth we want, but who cares? This is a dog eat dog world," they go for the hypocritic oath, "Pretend you are nice while being very nasty."

America has a very sick public information system that apes the Chinese one, you know, China, which has strangled Google and squashed Yahoo and arrests anyone who writes stuff that displeases the rulers, here in America we have "freedom of speech" but accessing the mass media is a whole different kettle of fish. Namely, the gate keepers are locking out many people, blocking any view but their own, they are warping our dialogue, driving us into directions which will end us in the middle of WWWIII, they have agendas which are not allowed to be discussed except on lonely forums like mine.

These controls have to now be planetary thanks to the internet. I expect them to scheme to shut down the parts of the internet that carries messages they hate. So far, we have some tiny free speech left but I expect this to now be under fire, nonstop, from the ruling elites.

China is showing them how to do this. They will buy out or vy for control or pass laws making life impossible for anyone who wishes to talk about things they don't want us to talk about. They want uninterrupted propaganda with us drinking it like Kool Aid and then marching off to die in whatever wars they stir up.

This is what Davos is all about and why they are surrounded by the military which keeps the populace at bay. These people aren't loved by all that many of us and I see them becoming increasingly unpopular as the American financial tower of Babel collapses.
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Google Defies Justice Snooping

2006-01-22T14:57:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

One of Yahoo's "most popular articles" remains the news that Google is defying Justice Dept. snooping. The excuse for this snooping is just plain silly. They want to see how many people Googled "hot sex teens" for crying out loud. Geeze, don't these guys have girlfriends? Seems cops and government lawyers don't get enough excuses to look up "hot sex teens" sites while at work. Are they given rain coats while doing this, to fold over their laps?

From Reuters:

Right-to-privacy groups said on Friday an attempt by the Bush administration to force Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to turn over a broad range of materials from its databases set a dangerous precedent that should worry all Americans.

"This is the camel's nose under the tent for using search engines and all kinds of data aggregators as surveillance tools," said Jim Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute who also runs Privacilla.org, an Internet privacy database.

Correct. Only it isn't a camel's nose, it is an elephant trunk attached to some of the nastiest sexual deviants on the planet earth. These snoopy jerks drove America into impeaching Clinton over a stupid blowjob, for example, while at the same time, screaming at us to look away as they whack off on telephone poles and skinny right wing loudmouth broads.

Give me a break.

In court papers filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, the Justice Department stated that Google had refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for one million random Web addresses from Google's databases as well as records of all searches entered on Google during any one-week period.

The government said it needed the information to prepare its case to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which the Supreme Court blocked from taking effect two years ago.

Why would the Supreme Whores revisit this case? So some of them can leave a hair or two on a drink again? Heh. Or maybe give O'Reilly another opportunity to falafel us in public? Didn't Justice unveil the Whore of Justice in the main building? Geeze, give her the nine headed Beast and make it One and All.

Anyway, their favorite topic, sex, is again, their favorite topic over there.

But others were not reassured. Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, the ranking Democrat on the telecommunications subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he would introduce a bill to strengthen consumers' Internet privacy by prohibiting the storage of personally identifiable information Internet searches beyond a reasonable time.

"Internet search engines provide an extraordinary service, but the preservation of that service does not rely on a bottomless, timeless database that can do great damage despite good intentions," Markey said.

Chris Jay Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center worried that the government could follow up its initial request with a demand for more information.

"If Google hands over the search logs and the Justice Department finds search strings like 'child porn' or 'naked children,' could they not then go back and ask Google for the user's Internet address?" he said.

You know, there were dirty books back in 1789. So why did our Founding Fathers insert the 1st amendment and made it first? Of course, the French never needed an amendment assuring them the right to look at dirty pictures since they have freely exercised this right since they began painting pictures and carving statues back about 45,000 years ago.

We need protection here from people who believe we all want to look at baby Jesus and his mother who had sex with a bird who impregnated her....Oh well, Leda and the swan without sex. Yup.

On the other side, the Cincinnati-based National Coalition for Protection of Children and Families, a Christian fundamentalist group, said search companies should be willing to help the government defend children from pornography.

"I'm disappointed Google did not want to exercise its good corporate branding to secure the protection of youth," said Jack Samad, the group's senior vice president.

I have this amazing ability to remember my childhood. We wanted to see nakkid pictures so we would rifle through parental bedrooms and more often than not, find something hot to giggle over, since we thought these pictures were D-U-M-B. Laugh, hahaha. Worse, one of my playmate's fathers was a surgeon and he had a book on sexual diseases with photos.

Ick. Hey, it wsa good for learning about siphylus and why it was good to avoid. Ever see the autopsy of a syphillic? Ech.

Anyway, kids had an even better snooping tool: going around, eavesdropping and sneaking looks at the neighbors when the bed was shaking or better still, watching horses or dogs go at it. Heck, cats.

Chickens. I saw alot of this stuff. But then, maybe I am weird, with this memory thing.

Anyway, lay off the net, you jerks. Bad enough we had to hear the details of Bill C's sex life.
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Media Tries To Ignore Gore's Call For Investigations of Bush But Notice Hillary Said, "Plantation"

2006-01-18T10:06:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The media whores worked hard, trying to ignore what Gore said in his famous speech this week, now, in order to change the topic, they are screaming about Hillary Clinton saying the word, "Plantation." Like, wow.

From Common Voice:

President George W. Bush's staff are mad as hell and they're not taking it anymore. They charged that the junior senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton was "out of bounds" when she said Monday that the Bush administration was "one of the worst" in US history and compared the Republican House to "a plantation."

The former First Lady said this at a rally in Harlem to honor Dr. Martin Luther King. Senator Clinton shared the stage with Rev. Al Sharpton and New York City Councilman Charles Barron who once said he'd like to walk up to a white man and slap him just for his own mental health.

During the daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan was asked about sharp remarks from two nationally prominent Democrats, Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore, who spoke before a crowd at a MoveOn.Org event.

Gore called for an independent probe of the administration program that listened in without a warrant on Americans suspected of talking to terrorists overseas.

Asked about the former Clinton Administration Democrats' comments on the same day, McClellan said, "Well, I think we know, one tends to like or enjoy grabbing headlines; the other one sounds like the political season may be starting early."

This article is typical of the right wingers. They never note how they spout racist, evil garbage but if ever a black man or woman ever says anything, any time, this has to be dredged up constantly.

The minions harping about Hillary saying, "Plantation" when more than half of America calls the GOP Congress a lot worse names is hilarious if it weren't so obviously tragic. This focusing on just one word, one gesture, one person is typical of the right wing scream machine which has smeared or changed the subject over and over again for years.

Only it is falling on deaf ears. Like Ulysses, we put cotton in our ears to cut out the shrieks of the sirens on the rocks. More and more, Americans are tuning out all this. The right wing hopes some of the screams will filter through which is why they took over NPR and thinking, silencing that last voice would fix their calliope is rather sad to see since we, on the internet, have circumvented them entirely.

As usual, pointing out the obvious mechanisms with which the right wing media bosses gull people is never ending work. I remember a NYT headline once, "Gore Campaign Must Repay $7 Million" and buried on the last line of the article was this eye-popper, "The GOP must repay $18 million" which was more than double what Gore had to return and after chastizing Gore for ten paragraphs, the much greater problems of the GOP rated exactly one sentence. The NYT could claim they covered the news but they covered it with manure.

The usual method was at work this week against Gore again. The media at first pretended this call to arms speech which basically said, Bush broke some very serious laws and has created a very serious Constitutional crisis, as some sort of obscure joke. Haha. Old Gore at it again. Then, as the web amplified his speech and cheered it and a Democrats.com poll showed that 54% of Americans want to see an impeachment investigation, as Bush's polling numbers as done by right wingers even are now below 40% approval ratings, the media had to boost Bush's crew of pirates so they attacked Gore directly.

No one can reply to this slime than the Man himself, Al Gore. From Rawstory:

"The Administration's response to my speech illustrates perfectly the need for a special counsel to review the legality of the NSA wiretapping program.

The Attorney General is making a political defense of the President without even addressing the substantive legal questions that have so troubled millions of Americans in both political parties.

There are two problems with the Attorney General's effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration's behavior. First, as others have thoroughly documented, his charges are factually wrong. Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton/Gore Administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law.

Second, the Attorney General's attempt to cite a previous administration's activity as precedent for theirs - even though factually wrong - ironically demonstrates another reason why we must be so vigilant about their brazen disregard for the law. If unchecked, their behavior would serve as a precedent to encourage future presidents to claim these same powers, which many legal experts in both parties believe are clearly illegal.

The issue, simply put, is that for more than four years, the executive branch has been wiretapping many thousands of American citizens without warrants in direct contradiction of American law. It is clearly wrong and disrespectful to the American people to allow a close political associate of the president to be in charge of reviewing serious charges against him.

The country needs a full and independent investigation into the facts and legality of the present Administration's program."

Of course, we should not expect the mainstream whore press or TV to cover any of this, certainly, the courtesy of letting him reply to his White House detractors won't be extended to him. So we on the web, as usual, will carry the burden.

Sometimes, when we make enough a fuss, they are dragooned into reporting what is going on. But only sometimes. Just like the dust-up with the Washington Post over articles about the evolving Abramoff scandals, what with the Post pretending repeatedly that it is a bipartisan scandal and not 100% dyed in the wool GOP trainwreck or how the various media pretended to be outsiders in the Valarie Plame affaire while in reality, in cahoots with the White House in that illegal smear job.

Unrepentant, they churn forwards, swivelling the hips and baring their bosoms to their bosom buddies, lap dancing lap dogs.
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Washington Pest

Striking Workers Attack EU Buildings In Strasbourg

2006-01-17T10:58:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I once ran around Strasbourg during the Student Uprisings in 1968. Well, this time, it is the workers who are rioting. This got near zero coverage in America unlike, say, riots in China, eh? What a surprize...NOT.

From Associated Press:

Demonstrators fought with police and smashed windows at the European Parliament building Monday during a protest over a proposal to make port operations in the European Union more competitive.

Strikes and work slowdowns also disrupted cargo handling at several ports as unions pressed their opposition to the plan even as EU legislators predicted it would be rejected.

Police used water cannons and tear gas trying to keep thousands of protesters away from the EU legislature in this eastern French city. But the mob surged forward, hurling rocks, logs and metal fences to shatter windows along a 150-foot stretch of the building's front.

Earlier, officers fired pepper gas into a crowd of protesting dock workers from major European ports who threw flares, glasses and stones at officers. At least three protesters were detained.

Workers in yellow vests accompanied by marching bands set off smoke bombs and waved banners saying "Victory to the dockers." Some cars were set afire, and smoke mingled with the smell of pepper spray in parts of the old town.

Ah, memories! Lovely city, the old town is utterly medieval and when I was there, paved with wonderful cobblestones which we put to good use. Also, the tanks had trouble clanking around sharp corners there which is why the rabbit warrens of old towns were splendid venues for street action.

Unlike America which has been built deliberately so the capitol is far from all forms of commerce and activity of the peons, the European countries are all easily accessible especially thanks to the splendid public transportation systems, again, unlike America. When we had our last antiwar demonstration, all the Amtrak trains were stopped for hours forcing the march organizers to put things on hold and naturally, the venal pressitutes pretended this was due to lack of good organization. And unlike in Europe, the demonstration was utterly peaceful and sweet. Not like South Koreans who go bezerk at the drop of a drumstick!

Unlike the cowed populace here, the European workers know, if they don't actively fight back, they will end up slaves like the Americans who are not roll models any more than Russians but are feared as possible enemies of union organizing, seeing how defunct and demoralized the Americans have become over the years, losing ground, influence and now all the labor gains they fought so hard for before turning "anticommunist" in the fifties which is what killed them.

Cleaving to their enemies was a disaster!

The American press is utterly hostile to unions. If they strike, the media goes for the "how did the mean strikers ruin whatever" stories and when unions are destroyed, the press celebrates this with stories about how, despite all things that workers must pay shooting up in price, wages stay down thanks to worker inability to get even a few pennies more, isn't this great, it means inflation will be confined to the lower levels of society and not bug the rulers as they debase the currency!

Whoohoo.

Because our media want us to think China is falling apart, they carry stories like this on the front pages. From the NYT:

A week of protests by villagers in China's southern industrial heartland over government land seizures exploded into violence over the weekend, as thousands of police officers brandishing automatic weapons and electric stun batons moved to suppress the demonstrations, residents of the village said Monday.

The residents of the village, Panlong, in Guangdong Province, said that as many as 60 people were wounded and that at least one person, a 13-year-old girl, was killed by security forces. The police denied any responsibility, saying the girl died of a heart attack.

Of course, the lesson again is this: want something? Better be ready to fight for it and this means facing death. For the forces that need to suppress the will of the people can and will and do kill anyone in its path but the only way of stopping it is to stand in its path.

The Chinese student who, in that famous film, refused to let the tanks go around him, was murdered under torture, you know. I was representing the students back then, in 1989, and when I learned he was arrested, we demanded he be turned loose, I had arranged passage to America for him but they wouldn't turn him loose at the last minute and then denied they even had him and no one has seen him since.

From Xinhua net:

Hu Jintao said that a shift in the country's mode of economic growth is an important and urgent strategic task which is crucial to maintaining national economic and social development.

During an inspection tour to east China's Fujian Province from Jan. 12 to 16, Hu called for stronger resolve and more vigorous measures to promote conservation-minded, environment-minded and safety-minded development.

China will push economic and social development truly on the track of human-centered, all-round, coordinated and sustainable development, said Hu, who is also General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee.

While in Fujian, Hu visited rural villages, companies and urban communities to oversee how they boost local economic and social development in a scientific way.

Cumbersomely and slowly, the communist leaders who successfully ignored the peasants and workers is waking up to their own possible demise and are struggling to find some sort of solution and you can bet, they will only do this so long as the people downstairs make a very loud racket.

America is so big and mobile, we think we can Grapes of Wrath our way to a new state and make money again so we seldom stand and fight. The fights over New Orleans are sporatic and desperate and a rearguard action because, again, things are so diffuse, when people were evacuated, for example, they were deliberately sent to the far corners of the imperial realms.

This is harder to do in smaller places. Russia did this for centuries, this is what Siberia meant to them.

Our Siberia is the strip mall/strip joint countryside that is formless and barren. The eternal Motel 666.
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Imperialist Editors of the NYT Fake Headlines Concerning Chile Show Ruling Class Insecurity

2006-01-16T08:24:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Like a Freudian slippage of San Andreas earthquake in size, the New York Times editor's fake headlines today reveal the fears and insecurities the ruling elite feel whenever any socialist wins any election anywhere.

From the NYT:

What Is Missing in This Woman's Victory? Coattails

This is the headlines. So I looked in vain for any mentions of "coattails" or no one voting for her party or anything that could be remotely constrewed as lack of support except for this:

The tally this time suggested that class may have trumped gender. In some northern copper-mining regions, where union sentiment is strong and suspicion of Mr. Piñera's wealth and support for untrammeled free-market policies also runs high, Ms. Bachelet won more than 60 percent of the vote. In more prosperous areas, her support was generally weaker among both men and women.

That is it! So, the fact that voters there, unlike here, voted for their own collective interests as workers meant Ms. Bachelet's victory was "coattailless". Hahahaha.

And this, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with Kansas. The ruling elite, whenever voters anywhere on planet earth, no matter how remote from us geographically, vote for class interestes, the fury and fear and rage here at the citadels of power are unimaginable!

The new President of Chile now has to watch out since the CIA and the USA powers will work frantically to undermine her and replace her with a general or a billionaire. We have handed over America to million and billionaires and what did they start doing?

Cutting their own taxes and handing our heads on a platter to two hostile Asian countries! Great! Unlike South America's leftists who are banding together rapidly to do something for thier working classes and those ever pesky peasants we hate with such an enduring passion!

President Bachelet's father was murdered by CIA operatives, tortured literally to death in a School of the Americas run prison. She, herself, as a daughter, was also tortured just like we tortured the children of suspected "terrorists" in Iraq and Afghanistan, to force daddy to tell them where various socialists were hiding.

I had a socialist friend down there during the coup, he was working at the University and he ran from the masked government gunmen who shot at him, he waved his passport at the locked gates of the American embassy and they kept him locked outside! Being athletic, he climbed over the gate and demanded to call a lawyer. He couldn't get one but he got me. I had enough influence to force the State Department to keep him inside otherwise he would be dead, wouldn't he?

It was a horrible time. I was furious with Nixon and Kissinger, two war criminals. Here we sit today, demanding all other countries disarm so we can invade or overthrow them and use them like tissue paper to blow our noses. The profound unpopularity of Americans down in South America means we lost the hearts and minds battle thanks to our need to support only the upper classes down there.

By the way, the one thing the new President intends to do is fix the stupid "retirement" system that allows only the upper middle class a real retirement. This alone, has caused tremendous fury in the ruling elite in the USA because that stupid, idiotic, cruel system is being touted as a model for us to follow.

So VIVA, BACHELET! VIVA!!!
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New Website/New Webpage Design

2006-01-03T00:29:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

My computer literate progeny promised to make me a .com homepage. So here is a mockup which we designed over New Year's weekend. I would like to hear any opinions about this redesign. Feel free to comment.

This one was too dark and too corporate (see what happens when one uses corporate sites as role models?!) So I lightned it all up and found a banner I made earlier and had tucked away in my files.

Is this better?

OK, now after talking to my husband who was a photographer and worked in publications, we made more changes. All clickable items are in blue like it is on my present blog. Does this work, visually? Please tell me if there are problems. I'm wondering if the titles inside the lower blocks should be black instead of blue.

Blair Intimidates Newsmedia But Not Bloggers Who Run Uzbekistan Torture Story

2005-12-31T07:33:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The media mythology always has been that they need to "scoop" each other and this is why the news always comes out, they are in such a rush to publish or put it on TV. This fairytale is hogwash, of course. Again and again, we bloggers online have to shove hard as hell to force the media to cough up the news. Here is yet another example of this: the torture story out of Uzbekistan.

From Yahoo:

A former British ambassador has published government documents he says prove that Britain knowingly received intelligence extracted under torture from prisoners in Uzbekistan.

Craig Murray, who was removed as ambassador to Uzbekistan after going public about his concerns, defied a Foreign Office ban to publish the internal memos on his Web site Friday. The documents include memos to Foreign Office chiefs in which Murray expressed his concern over the use of "torture material."

In one memo, Murray said he was told by Foreign Office legal adviser Sir Michael Wood that it was not illegal to use information acquired by torture, except in legal proceedings. Intelligence officer Matthew Kydd had also told him the intelligence services sometimes found such material "very useful indeed, with a direct bearing on the war on terror," he said.

It used to be, when the mainstream media finally was shoved and dragged by us bloggers into covering obviously important stories, they would moan and groan about how we need blogger ethics and how unreliable we all were and how we didn't understand what real news is (missing white women and celebrity divorces, of course!) and etcetera.

Not only was this story news, it is important news. The memo where Sir Michael "Boil them in oil" Wood blandly states that yes, it is illegal to torture but hey, it could be useful. "Ve haff vays off making you talk," is very popular in despotic regimes, right? Remember all those WWII movies where the Allies tortured people we captured? No?

Um, geeze. I do believe that doing this makes one the bad guy except today, in movies, the good guy tortures, murders, runs amok and doesn't follow any civilized finesse, does he?

Like the Downing Street memos, we bloggers single handedly (actually, a thousand bloggers pushing very hard!) forced the media to pay attention. This forces politicians to pay attention and say something or even force a prosecutor to go after criminal actions done by our rulers.

This is why they hate bloggers on the left. Right wing bloggers work for the rulers. This is why any yapping on their part instantly comes into the media. And they are petted and praised and even the, "Oh my, aren't you SOOOO much more effective than those unethical, annoying liberal bloggers!" stories show up time to time, most recently in Time magazine where they tell us sneeringly that we are so uneffective, why don't we imitate the right wingloons!

Well, they ain't pushing stories the media owners and their co-conspiritors, the men in power, are pushing!

And push we do, magnificently, thanks entirely to our many readers who faithfully read so many liberal bloggers and who are the real fuel that keeps all of this going, this budding experiment in real democracy, real news in real time by real people!

I love other leftist bloggers and there are now so many, it is impossible to keep up but I wish I could read all of them every day but then, I wouldn't have time to write, myself. But do remember, it is all of us together that matters and if 10,000 blogs carry these important stories this means 1,000,000 people will read and 100,000,000 will learn the real news as we force the mainstream media to tell the truth.

Onwards and upwards! Go, team!
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Fox TV's Christmas Party Celebrates Sinking of Titanic

2005-12-16T07:32:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Breaking news: Novak fired by CNN.
As we all know, Fox TV has cynically decided to wage war against civilization by screaming about how we are taking Jesus out of Xmas yet they are the first to do so. This year's Xmas party for the staff has decided to use the sinking of the Titanic as their theme. Seems about right to me. Glub, glub, Murdoch.

From Campus Progress:

ThinkProgress and The Majority Report have been covering News Corp (the parent company of Fox News) and how they invited everyone to a "holiday party."

Well it turns out that Fox is apparently a full-on combatant in the war on Christmas, since it wasn't their only one. At the end of this post is a scan of an invitation to another NewsCorp "Holiday Party," this one with a Titanic theme, which, in itself, is really, really weird.

So maybe it's time for Bill O'Reilly to start explaining why he's not objecting to his bosses having multiple parties refusing to acknowledge Christmas. (How can his heart possibly go on?)

Do click on this URL. The invitation is amazing. To think that adults will celebrate the baby Jesus by making fun of the icy, horrible deaths of over a thousand passengers on the Titanic boggles the mind. This comes on the heels of a deliberate program of fanning the flames of religious bigotry at Fox TV. On all shows featuring loudmouthed pundits, they have been pounding away at this idiotic theme and now they will get drunk and laugh themselves silly celebrating the sinking of a passenger ship!

This rampant, cynical hypocricy is the avian flu of the media. Just like them all pretending they were outraged by Clinton getting a blowjob, O'Reilly, for example, had to pay an outraged former employee millions to shut her up when she charged him with sexual harrassment. But was he fired? Did all the media attack him for being a blackguard and hypocrite? Did he apologize to Clinton?

Of course not! He roars and bellows and waves baby Jesus in the air as he tosses the Holy Child into the watery deep.

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Newsweek Reads Us Bloggers: Calls Bush Bubble Boy

2005-12-12T21:07:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

On the left side of the blogsphere, the intelligent side, we have alternated between calling Bush a chimpanzee or bubble boy. Looks like the mainstream media is sufficiently unafraid of him to pick up the bubble boy formula, now if they only see how degenerately Darwinian Bush is....Well, Bush blew up today about all this.

From Yahoo:

Bush had been asked about an article in Newsweek magazine that says he is isolated and features a drawing of Bush in a giant bubble -- the traditional term for the layers of aides between a US president and the US public.

"I don't feel in a bubble. You feel in a bubble in the sense I can't go walking out the front gate and go shopping like I'd love to do for my wife -- although I may, and I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to buy her," said Bush.

"I just talked to the president-elect of Honduras. A lot of my job is foreign policy. And I spend an enormous amount of time with leaders from other countries, and they come right here in the Oval Office and tell me what's on their mind. And I tell them what's on my mind," he said.

Bubble boy can ask Karl Rove what is going on outside the super strong solid steel in an undisclosed location bubble he inhabits! Of course, this has a wee problem, especially with the cops hot on Rove's ass.

Here is the Newsweek bubble boy picture from MSNBC:

President Bush has always shown an admirable ability to ignore the Washington pundits and make fun of the chattering classes. Yet his inattention to Murtha, a coal-country Pennsylvanian and rock-solid patriot, suggests a level of indifference, if not denial, that is dangerous for a president who seeks to transform the world. All presidents face a tension between sticking to their guns and dealing with changing reality. History suggests it can be a mistake to listen too closely to the ever-present (and often self-aggrandizing) critics. But likewise, the idea that any president can go it alone is, to say the least, problematic.

Bush mocked his own courtiers who work for rich people who wanted tax cuts and raiding the Treasury. So they put up with the patrician frat rat's mockery as he sneered at their obvious grovelling. But the little pig overstepped the bounds of grace and is not being mocked or hated by many victims of his misrule. So the press can now attack him so long as their tax cuts keep rolling in.

Of course, we are going bankrupt, our nation is bleeding red ink, hemmoraging a sea of red ink, but they and the media owners barely mention this. But they can mention Bush's obvious bubble which they helped construct. The news story won't mention this glaring fact. It will pretend that Bush build this all by his little own self! Sort of like a personal Habitat for Inhumanity.

Here is one picture of bubble boy I did in the past:

If you google "bubble boy" at the top of this blog, many a story will appear for I and a host of other bloggers have called this idiot that name for quite a while.

Well, let's hope this iron bubble of his is popped. Fitzgerald, you hear me? Pop.

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"Happy News" Blog Story Reveals Mental Collapse of Right Wing America

2005-12-12T07:09:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

As the right wing drags us ever deeper into terrible times, as we struggle to keep up with all the crappy news this creates, the right wing's leaders and followers both run away from reality prefering only "happy news." So it is no surprize to see all the media go ga-ga over a blog that compiles what right wingers consider to be "happy news" like soldiers handing candy to children in Iraq and aren't blown up.

From Yahoo:

Carrie Rodgers is so engrossed by cable-television news shows that her husband calls her a news addict, but lately she has found another source to balance the onslaught of stories about war, crime and natural disasters.

Two or three times a day, the 28-year-old insurance agent in Columbia, S.C., turns to a Web site called HappyNews.com.

She often clicks first to a section called "Heroes," which recently featured stories about U.S. troops rescuing two cheetah cubs in Ethiopia and the induction of 12 people into the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans.

"There's so much going on in the world that is so sad," Rodgers said. "You can go anywhere and find depressing news. I'm glad somebody has stepped up and shown there are still good people in the world."

HappyNews is the brainchild of Byron Reese, chief executive of Austin, Texas-based PageWise Inc., which publishes several how-to and advice Web sites. He decided the world needed a refuge from all the unpleasantness served up by newspapers and television news shows, so he launched HappyNews in July.

As the Mothership of the right wing neo-nazis famously said, ""Why should we hear about body bags and deaths," Barbara Bush said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on March 18, 2003. "Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

All over right wing America, people are tuning out. The refusal to view the body bags pouring into America from this woe-begotten war isn't just Bush. These people never want to see that which they wrought. It is getting so bad, the military has ceased honoring their dead when they ship them, like crates, home. From Channel 10 News:

Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag -- greeted by a color guard.
But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners -- stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo.

John Holley and his wife, Stacey, were stunned when they found out the body of their only child, Matthew, who died in Iraq last month, would be arriving at Lindbergh Field as freight.

"When someone dies in combat, they need to give them due respect they deserve for (the) sacrifice they made," said John Holley.

I still remember the Vietnam war in gory detail. I used to go to the airport in San Francisco to leaflet. Many people didn't want leaflets reminding them about the war. I used to observe the dead coming home, there was no honor guard after 1967. The sad dark boxes were hustled out of the hold of planes and studiously ignored. This is when hyper flag waving and screaming at antiwar people demanding the war stop was at its height. This is also when the same right wingers were actively, like Bush and Cheney and the entire leadership of the GOP, scheming and pulling strings to avoid fighting in this war.

The exact same disconnect from the reality they want that we see today.

The happy face was created when America was very divided. We were all supposed to put on a happy face, take tranquilizers or sniff coke like Bush was doing at that time, and laugh and drink and be merry. My tedious job was to shove the dead bodies into people's faces and force them to see reality.

From Yahoo:

Moderates are imploring colleagues in Congress to tone down the rhetoric on Iraq as debate about President Bush's war policies has become increasingly bitter and partisan.

Their pleas are likely to be ignored.

The war is expected to be front and center in the upcoming congressional election year, particularly in several races where candidates are Iraq war veterans. Neither party has much incentive to pull its punches, with Republicans eager to paint Democratic critics of Bush's Iraq policies as soft on defense and Democrats looking to exploit his woes as polls show declining support for the war.

Nevertheless, some senior lawmakers are appealing for courteousness, saying that while debate is essential to democracy, politics and partisanship should stop at the waters' edge.

Good fucking grief. When a country runs amock abroad, you should have screaming debates at home. The screaming should be deafening. Our representatives representing us antiwar people should make life hell for the pro-war creeps who have created this mess. How dare anyone tell us to shut up? Why is being cute and friendly good when we are murdering thousands of people? Eh?

Always, we are told to not fight. Yet whenever the right wants something, they cheerfully go forth and call us names, attack us, suggest we be blown up, spread hate talk, and worse, the loopy idiots who want happy news lap it all up and ask for more violent talk, more hate. So long as they are hating fellow Americans.

Buzzflash:

In many ways -- although this is our observation and not Pickett's -- the interview with GOP/FOX shill Cavuto reminded us that so many Democratic leaders are missing the boat. The battle is not between two visions of public policy, although the differences are night and day. The major political conflict of our time is between propaganda and the truth. That is why the Bush administration is spending so much time buying off journalists and news coverage here and in Iraq.

The Vietnam war at home, our struggle for the hearts and minds of Americans, was hobbled by the desire to be happy no matter what. "Laugh-In" is an icon of the times. We were supposed to laugh and play and ignore things. Luckily for us, the news on TV wasn't profit driven at that time so reality would leak into the conscience of the audience.

Here is an interesting study about how we deceive ourselves. From Live Science:

Do you always get what you ask for? A new study finds that when you don't, you might not even notice the difference.

Swedish researchers showed a pair of female faces to 120 volunteers for 2 seconds and then asked them to choose which one they thought was more attractive. The researchers then asked the volunteers to explain their choice.

The trial was repeated 15 times for each volunteer, using different pairs of faces. but in three of the trials the faces were secretly switched after a decision had been made.

Surprisingly, not only were a large number of the volunteers oblivious to the switch when ultimately allowed to take a longer look at their choice, they were actually able to gave detailed explanations for why they preferred the face that, indeed, they had actually rejected.

It would be asking for an apple and then explaining exactly why you wanted the banana you got instead.

Everyone likes to think they control their own brains but as we well know, propagandists and con artists prey upon people's innate need to think they are in control even as someone is forcibly guiding them into a box they can't escape. The reason why news services iike mine exist is because I feel one needs to know what is going to happen next. Pretending it won't happen is futile. This is why I look to the far future, the obvious future when our planet is destroyed by our local star. Being a worry wart, I want to have the living creatures of this planet spread to other star systems. This is why I support the space program.

Many death traps in nature are set up so the victim enters willingly and can't escape. Spider webs, venus fly traps, flowers filled with fluid and cupped so one can't escape, human traps are alway baited with goodies for the unsuspecting. And this is why news is important: so one can see the traps, see the danger.

The tendency to turn our news into Pravda is very strong. All despots order news to be only happy news. Five year plan exceeded! Look at the cute kitten! Everything is coming up roses!

Here is news about the approaching mess I call WWIII: From the London Times:

ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.
The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.

Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.

This was not a headline in America. Anywhere. You are reading it here and you hair better stand on end. This is bad news everyone should know. Relentlessly, our allies in the Middle East are shoving the world towards the Apocalypse and at home, the happy news consumers like the lady in Texas in the article at the top, are enabling this to happen because she voted for the people who are sponsoring this stupid event and many happy news readers actively desire this event because their churches have assured them that happy Jesus will happily pick them up and save them while we sinners will be ripped to shreds while they and Jesus laugh happily in heaven.

Gads. What a moronic mess. Cassandra was never popular but she was also never wrong.

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Fox TV's Cynical Xmas Hysteria Invades Their Business News

2005-12-05T10:09:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Crooks and Liars website ran the screen capture of Fox TV's "Bulls and Bears" show. It is full of unintended irony. I wonder why these fatuous, cynical people are flogging the "Liberals are killing Christmas" meme when it is them who are reducing welfare to the poor and bah-humbugging Tiny Tim all the time?

The screen crawl at the bottom is the same news service with the latest propaganda ploy in Iraq, about how "secular" Iraqis (nearly all Sunnis!) don't want a religious dictatorship. Yet the right wing bloviators are screaming at us all that the winter festivities are not everyone's but are the sole province of the born again right wing white Christians. Namely, this isn't a holiday, it is only Jesus' birthday.

This crude attempt at intimidating all of us into handing over the classic Winter Solstice to a gang of ill tempered, ill educated lunatics is really fueling bad blood in America. The world watches, agast, as we out Taliban al Qaeda. Today, in the news, the GOP is talking about which tax cuts to give to the already very rich while cutting even more services to the poor. This is the exact opposite of Jesus who was a liberal, he even had long flowing hair. And a beard. So there!

Indeed, Jesus and bin Laden, if they stood side by side, would be hard to tell apart, wouldn't they? Long robes, long hair, long beards. Yup. Twins.

"Happy Holidays" was created to be civil to all people especially Jews who have had to endure terrible progroms and attacks on Christmas and especially Easter. To recognize they would be filled with trepidation and even fear upon hearing "Merry Christmas," the tradition of not saying this to them or anyone else has arisen for good reason.

The thuggish, snappy, ill tempered attacks on us all coming from the sour faced sour pusses pushing "Merry Christmas" has driven many of us to hating those words. I know, if anyone spouts that to me this winter, I will tell them to shove it. Instead of merely ignoring the hyperfluidity of merchantalism at Christmas (yes, my son wants video games, of course!) I am now in a very bad mood.

Bah on buying stuff. My son will get his thingie but not because I love Jesus. Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with all this. Orion rules the winter skies so I will dedicate it to that constellation, not Pisces which is the one appropriated by the Jesus nuts.

To tabulate the things that aren't even remotely Christian, reindeers, pine trees, mistletoes, hog's heads, puddings and pies, cookies and taffy, feasts and costumed characters like Santa are many of the non-Christian things we attached to the winter solstice festivals. Lighting all those lights is pure paganism.

There is a Jesus thing going now: Bethlehem, which has been cut off from humanity behind tall walls, a ghetto set up to imprison the native people of the Holy Land. Isn't that charming? Tear down those walls! If "protecting" people means murdering and enslaving millions, it is totally wrong. After all, Hitler was "protecting" Germany when he murdered all those innocent people!

And of course, we are doing this, too, today, in Iraq. Which takes me back to the whole damn Christmas thing: "Peace on Earth and Good Will Towards Men." You can't buy that. It has no price. It is what Christmas was supposed to be all about.

Peace.

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Downey, WP Editor, Attacks War Critics

2005-11-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The disgusting, lying editor-in-chief of the Washington Post attacks war critics and whines about how fine the war is going even as he and his ilk cowardly refuse to fight...Ever.

From the Washington Pest:

What's needed is more talk about Iraq in 2005. Though there have been successes -- including the staging of an election and a constitutional referendum -- the country is in danger of splitting into pieces, and the Bush administration has not done enough to head that threat off. New elections in December could propel the country toward a political accord that would undermine the insurgency. But reconstruction has foundered and needs to be relaunched, with emphasis on supplying electricity and jobs. Iraqi troops are improving but still are far from ready to fight the counterinsurgency war on their own. If there is to be any chance of that war being won, the United States will have to commit its own forces to the fight for years, though perhaps not at current levels. The alternative is to risk a defeat that would be devastating to U.S. security. That's a hard truth to face: It can't be done amid a partisan free-for-all.

We can't even rebuild New Orleans without tons and tons of graf and misallocation of funds and this week, talk of tossing the refugees out into the streets!

Downey, a notorious coward, makes no mention about finances. This is not unusual. Virtually none of the blowhard editors who advocated war in the first place, joined in lying and deceiving readers during and after the beginning of this war, these clowns yap about bringing order and democracy to Iraq and never talk about how our military/industrial complex is feeding off of this war, growing fat and bloody! They don't ever mention the fiscal black hole that has opened up at our feet! They never mention Bin Laden's many statements about how his plan it to bankrupt us just as the Jihadists bankrupted the Soviet State in Afghanistan!

By the way, here is a typical story from that warfront from the same paper! From the Washington Post:

In September 2002, nearly a year after an American-led coalition deposed the Taliban, the United States launched what would become an aggressive effort to build or refurbish as many as 1,000 schools and clinics by the end of 2004, documents show. However, design flaws and construction errors caused the initiative to fall far short.

By September 2004, congressional figures show that the effort's centerpiece -- a $73 million U.S. Agency for International Development program -- had produced only 100 finished projects, most of them refurbishments of existing buildings. As of the beginning of this month, only about 40 more had been finished and turned over to the Afghan government.

Internal documents and more than 100 interviews in Washington and Kabul revealed a chain of mistakes and misjudgments: The U.S. effort was poorly conceived in a rush to show results before the Afghan presidential election in late 2004. The drive to construct earthquake-resistant, American-quality buildings in rustic villages led to culture clashes, delays and what a USAID official called "extraordinary costs." Afghans complained that the initial design for roofs made them too heavy to build in rural areas without a crane, and the corrected design made them too light to bear Afghan snows. Local workmen unfamiliar with U.S. construction methods sometimes produced shoddy work.

Think this isn't happening today in America? Of course, it is! This is the modus operandi of the famed American military/industrial complex as built during the Vietnam war. Unlike the WWII efforts, the sole reason we do anything is so top executives can get huge pay checks. Period.

There is no other reason. Oh, and propaganda. Potemkin projects galore.

Their sole function is to ape WWII real projects that were done with ernest, real reasons. Of course, Democrats ran THAT show. They passed laws preventing the wholesale looting of the Treasury by military companies. No war windfall profits! Everyone worked together to a real end, not a nebulous end.

The rip-off artists running America today have only one goal: to enrich themselves by hook or crook and deposit the money in bank accounts outside of America. And then move outside, themselves, to live like pashas.

To do this, today, they are cutting Medicare, Medicade, reducing the inflation boosts to fixed incomes by manipulating inflation numbers, cutting school aid, children's care programs, school building in America, housing programs for the poor, hurricane aid that goes directly to families and not them, etc. Meanwhile, the flow of red ink goes utterly unabated, nay, it has increased in volume. One huge tap is the Iraq/Afghani war that we lost utterly and hopelessly. If we withdraw, oil will go up in price but it already has so what the hell?

It doesn't matter anymore, does it? Do we buy oil from there?

NO! Japan does! Japan is not paying for this damn war, they are loaning us money, setting us up to be Weimar Germany, forced to pay off huge war reparations. In this case, the pay-off will put us in hock to an industrial power who doesn't mean well for us since they openly lust for using us as a military tool.

The Chinese this week played a magnificient diplomatic game. Understanding how power grows out of the barrel of a gun yet talk softly and carry a big club, they made Bush salute their troops over and over again as they paraded communist icons past him just like Putin did, communicating to their own people, like Putin did, that the triumph of the communist states will be total in the end, Bush stood there, cap in hand, cup in other hand, begging and they graciously handed over something that was already in the bag, a jet contract for military/industrialist entity, Boeing! Boo! What a victory.

Not.

So the Chinese are keeping Boeing alive, economically. As well as buying our bonds that are pretty much worthless since our ability to repay will be very restricted if they need to call in our debts by selling back the bonds (an impossibility now). So here we are: going steeply into debt in a stupid war that has no goals except to make traitors very rich at our expense, many soldiers dying or being severely disabled, and for what?

So the Iraqis can vote? Gads. Tell me another fairy tale.

And Downey can go there and do foot patrols if he is so hot to trot. Put his lousy, nasty life where it counts. Stop bloviating at the Washington Pest.

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Like Roberston, O'Reilly of FOX TV Wants to Kill Americans

2005-11-12T15:57:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Right on the heels of satanic ritualist, Pat Robertson, far right wing fascist O'Reilly hopes al Qaeda attacks San Francisco. Again and again, these clowns show who they really hate: good Americans. Homeland Security should arrest them for inciting terrorism.

From SF Gate:

Not everybody took Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's on-air comments this week about terrorists bombing Coit Tower as the hyperbole that fills the talk-radio ether. One of the ticked off was San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, who Friday called for O'Reilly to be fired.

"For an anchor on a major station, Fox News, to be saying those kinds of things, it's just not OK," Daly said Friday. "It was just over the top."

Agreeing with Daly was San Francisco firefighters union president John Hanley, and not just because the hose-shaped tower is a tribute to firefighters.

O'Reilly gets to be on TV, on the radio, in print, he is literally everywhere. He gets top dollar and top billing. Some clowns are paying him a lot of money to trash talk Americans. Why they do this?

Well, Murdoch wasn't even an American, he is now, but he keeps his other passports because he isn't really an American, this "divided loyalty" garbage means everyone connected with keeping America safe, well, don't want to. These bangers of the patriotism bucket are often cynics pretending to be one of us while keeping the back door open for departure to where ever they hail from.

O'Reilly doesn't hold two passports but then, he is just their barking dog, doing his master's bidding. And his master, Murdoch, obviously is very pleased that his pet hates America and attacks Americans. This is a top thing with these ueber-menschen: to divide their host nations, to seperate and destroy the American unity. Since the majority of Americans are agaisnt the war in Iraq and it is obvious most of us have zero desire to die in Iraq or to go bankrupt in Iraq, the people who really hate America like O'Reilly and Murdoch have to stir the pot of poison, attacking us for being correct and sane.

Why doesn't the FCC shut these clowns down and force Murdoch to sell off his properties? After all, would we invite Tokyo Rose to host radio shows after WWII? Would we hire Goebbels to run our news media after WWII? Heck, knowing the Bushes, Prescott probably would have!

Time to fine Murdoch, fine O'Reilly, arrest them for urging terrorist attacks! After all, you are either with the good guys or you want terrorists to attack American, right?

Right.

More news:From Think Progress:

O’Reilly not only stood by his comments, but claimed they “needed to be said”:

I mean, look, everybody knows what’s going on there. What I said isn’t controversial. What I said needed to be said. I’m sitting here and I’m looking at a city that has absolutely no clue about what the world is. None. You know, if you had been hit on 9/11 instead of New York, believe me, you would not have voted against military recruting. Yet the left-wing, selfish, Land of Oz philosophy that the media and the city politicians have embraced out there is an absolute intellectual disgrace.

This man has no shame. Like the Cheney chick peddling women's rights, he pretends to be a patriot...well, why aren't reams of right wingloon youths signing up to fight in Iraq? Why should sane people in SF sign up? Eh? What? Why have recruiters, even, if patriotism is all about fighting? Where is the right wing?

NYers aren't all hyped up to fight in Iraq. They know this is a diversion. We all know this. Time to arrest terrorists like O'Reilly.

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Washington Post Asks Bush to be Sane About Global Warming

2005-11-07T21:52:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Washington Post thinks Bush can read and will listen to them tell him to do something about global warming. But he is happy with it because it increases banana production. This is why he wanted a single market at the Americas summit meeting. Chavez wrecked that scheme!

From the Washington Post editors:

ACCORDING TO the British press, the Prince of Wales issued a "gentle rebuke" to President Bush last week. Speaking at a formal White House dinner, Prince Charles said that "many people throughout the world look to the U.S. for a lead on the most crucial issues that face our planet." That, apparently, was a coded challenge to the president to do more about climate change and the greenhouse gas emissions that cause it.

Nothing less than a swift kick to the head will get any point across the chimperer-in-chief. Not a soul on this planet looks towards Bush for leadership. This is why, when he dares to visit any country, huge numbers of people turn out to scream at him to go away! Just this week, they were waving signs saying, "We don't want you on this planet!" at him!

Speaking at the first day of a summit of energy and environment ministers, Mr. Blair noticeably hinted at the idea that Europeans should begin moving away from reliance on the Kyoto treaty to meet the goal of curbing greenhouse emissions.

Since the USA, the world's biggest polluter, won't sign the treaty or change, nay, we are making things much worse each year, deliberately, Blair is "hinting" that everyone else drop the treaty?

And this says what? To my ears, it sounds like giving the fuck up! Forget about global warming! Hey, it is rapidly reducing America to rubble! Hoorah!

Instead of an "external force" that would impose an "internal target," Mr. Blair said that "in the world after 2012 we need to find a better, more sensitive set of mechanisms to deal with this problem."

Blair won't say what this mechanism is. Perhaps, this is the goal of the ridiculous Mars mission: to remove Bush and his buddies to another planet!

In the five years since Mr. Bush was first elected, climate-change science has been moving rapidly toward firmer conclusions. More scientists have observed the impact of global warming on plant and animal life, on the Arctic ice pack, and on weather patterns. More studies have concluded that human activity is a cause. The president has a chance to break the vicious cycle of European whining and American stonewalling on climate change. He should take it.

Yeah, Europeans suffering from global warming should what, shut up? So should we? The Washington Post's editor who is a drinking buddy of Bush and I wouldn't be surprized if the drinks aren't hard liquour, sneers at the people we are victimizing. How tiresome of them to rudely talk about American pollution of the entire planet?

Naw. We will change...When it is way too late. But then, the sight of zillions of Americans fleeing destruction in a snarl of creeping SUVs has amused millions across the planet.

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The Owners and Advertisers in the Media Protect Bush Every Time He Falls Down

2005-11-01T06:48:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Now that Scooter was thrown off the sleigh to be devoured by wolves, the media owners and advertisers and the rich in general all have banded together to save Bush yet again. They want us to go away and ask no pesky questions. Party on, dudes!

From Editor and Publisher:

In its editorial analyzing the indictments of "Scooter" Libby returned yesterday by a federal grand jury, the Times reiterated its backing for Miller's original decision in refusing to testify, and said it had "no reservations" about backing her in jail, while noting that perhaps her struggle could have been handled somewhat differently:

"Journalists from some news organizations testified after trying to fight the subpoenas; others testified on the basis of a document White House officials were compelled to sign that said they waived any promises of confidentiality from reporters. Ms. Miller says she believed the waiver was coerced, and she went to jail until Mr. Libby assured her directly that he was freeing her from her promise.

"While she was imprisoned for 85 days, this newspaper and this page gave Ms. Miller unwavering support. Recently, Times executives have expressed regrets about some of the ways her case was handled. Reflecting on these events, we have no reservations about the obligation of this paper to stand behind our reporter while she was in jail. We also think Ms. Miller was right on the central point, that the original blanket White House waiver was coerced."

Coerced by the cops! Wow. Don't let the cops make criminals squeal! That is a no-no. This country screams about law and order and the need to kill to impose a New World Order but if the authors of all this control get caught breaking any laws, suddenly it is time for gentleness and forgiveness and simple stonewalling.

Of course, the dropping of the "sources say" identity cover was coerced. Since the people conspiring to attack a war critic were breaking some serious laws, they had to conspire further to prevent the deeds from seeing the light of day because it unravels a very dangerous alliance: the press, which is supposed to be feeding information to us is actually colluding with criminals to hide information we need while using secret information to defame.

When Hoover of the FBI went slithering to President Kennedy to ask him if he could use some Martin Luther King blackmail they unearthed while illegally listening in to King's private life by wiring up his hotel rooms so they could watch him all the time, Kennedy said no. It was morally wrong. Then Hoover, I assume, warned the President that he has more dirt of similar import. Kennedy ended up dead as we all know.

Look at Clinton! The media and the people in charge of the machinery in DC went after him relentlessly. Instead of dealing with bin Laden's developing conspiracy which, according to Able Danger, the FBI and CIA knew about, instead, an army of agents went about trolling for Clinton's sex life.

Once it was discovered that he had one, the media joined the witchhunt, howling like banshees. The reason they did all this is very simple: he raised taxes on the rich and he stopped many entities from forming interlocking monopolies and cartels and he crushed oil profits when they tried to milk the system for more loot.

Well, the oil companies are very fat and well fed. They have reaped vast profits and now will settle in and let prices drop to keep Bush's ratings at about 40%, out of the danger zone. Bush doesn't care, he isn't running for office. The GOP knows they only have to come within 5points of winning and tweaking that 5 extra points by screwing around with the voting tallies is easy.

But they are nervous. So the media has ramped up a campaign to do two contridictory things: keep the right wing in power while keeping the right wing troops from gaining anything they really want like the abortion stuff. The restrictions on abortions will be carefully crafted so that they apply only to the poor and middle class. The rich will have their beloved "health of the mother" loophole which they always used, I know this for a fact. Never have they had to go to any back alleys for abortions.

Fellow columnist John Tierney, however, suggested that the administration leaks about Plame were not deliberate, nothing but an "accident."

He said journalists will suffer: "Still, the biggest losers so far in this case -- aside, of course, from Scooter Libby - are journalists. We've spent our careers assuring sources that we'll protect them, but now they can see how our testimony led to one source's indictment. If there's a trial, reporters will have to publicly betray Libby's confidences - and probably endure assaults on their integrity and accuracy from Libby's lawyers."

Of course, these creeps need to confuse honest Americans by pretending that men and women in power are the same as whistleblowers who take their careers and lives into jeopardy to uncover the illegal or dangerous actions of the rich and powerful. Mixing up these utterly opposite identities is at the core of the "we must protect our sources" debate.

The fact that the NYT's owner and the owners of all the vast media circus that is wheezing and bellowing this lie about sources needing to be protected (well, actually, the rich always protect each other's tools!) is a sign of exactly how sick our empire has become. These liars and conspiritors need to confuse people just long enough to finish the looting of the world. When everything collapses, and it has a 100% chance of doing that when America goes bankrupt, these clowns dream of hop scotching off to other lands or worse, imposing a full fascist dictatorship or something like China has, and living in armed compounds while we die outside the gates.

Manhattan is an island, after all. Easy to protect. Remember, Manhattan sided with the King many years ago, to Washington's despair.

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Republicans Continue to Lie About CIA Covert Act

2005-10-31T06:23:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Victoria Toensing is one of the people who helped write the CIA Covert Agent laws. She now shills for the GOP and lies about the laws she wrote. In particular, her contention that it was written so it wouldn't apply to nearly anyone means she is a traitor who deliberately set things up so CIA agents could be attacked. Also-- the Vietnam war rears its ugly head again, all because of the lies told back then, lies concocted to fool Americans into an unnecessary war.

From Bloomberg news:

Randall Eliason, the former chief of the public corruption section of the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington, said the fact that Fitzgerald pursued Cooper and Miller so aggressively suggests that he has a legal target in sight. It is rare for a federal prosecutor to seek jail for a reporter who refuses to reveal sources, he said.

``You wouldn't expect him to go to these lengths unless he thought he had something serious to look at,'' Eliason said. ``You don't compel reporters to testify or jail reporters unless you have a pretty good reason. This is not something you do lightly.''

Eliason said Fitzgerald could be pursuing a perjury or obstruction of justice charge rather than a prosecution under the 1982 law that makes it a crime to reveal the name of a covert operative. He said that for an indictment under that law, Plame would have had to have been a covert operative, Rove would have had to have known she was covert, and information about her status would have to be classified.

`Difficult to Prove'

Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate Intelligence panel when the law was drafted, said it is ``very difficult to prove'' someone violated the statute.

This Toensing female has deep tonsils for her long history of being the covert voice for the GOP. She was the funnel for much of Ken Starr's legendary leakage back during the Monica dress affair. During that illegal investigation, we on the left called for Ken Starr to resign and for a special prosecutor to investigate his illegal leaks. Of course, he was never punished or debarred or anything. Nor was Toensing who aided and abetted Starr. She, like her fellow conspiritors, flourished on TV and in print, blythely spreading lies or compromising secrets. After all, the information Starr was collecting was all supposed to be secret but this didn't stop her from visiting her right wing buddy and then openly flacking it all in the media!

Sort of like Judy Miller.

Here is a blast from that past:From American Politics:

THURSDAY MARCH 5TH 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- We suppose, like everyone else today, we should be writing about the leak of the President's deposition to the Washington Post. Suffice it to say, "It's old news." As we write, Susan Carpenter McBimbo is sitting in a MSNBC studio lying through her teeth, and is allegedly as usual claiming the White House leaked the deposition. "Even Paula's husband hasn't see a copy," she grins. We should talk about her, but.....

No.

We're going to talk about two very much more disgusting characters than that -- two people that the brilliant writer Jacob Weisberg, and the illuminating Damon Chappie of Roll Call, the leading Capitol Hill newspaper -- seem to have little respect for.

Weisberg writes often for Slate, but he outdid himself examining none other than, from a Democrat's point of view, "The Couple from Hell" -- Lucy-like Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, the fourth Stooge -- a match that can't be beat if you're betting on the couple most likely to lose their clients first.

Interesting reading, a good jog to my own memory of those exciting times when we all used to hang out at the various forums of the major media, nearly all of which are now gone with the wind.

Thank goodness for blogs, right?

Media Matters has been chasing down Victoria Toensing's lies and fabrications for quite a while. She is an endless font of bad information. Of course, she never appears on TV next to the various bloggers who track and refute her lies. This is how the media continues to cover up the cover up. Namely, since they only use people who are deeply connected via those pesky tree roots to each other to examine this mess, of course, they get everything wrong or worse, add more lies to the already towering edifice of lies.

This whole business really steams me because the entire point of passing that stupid law to protect CIA agents was because the CIA and the American right wing wanted to protect CIA agents so they couldn't be "outed". Period. If the law was witlessly written so it has no possible use then the traitors who lied about this law while writing it and passing it should be examined. Why did they do this farcial thing?

After all, Victoria, the writer of this law, herself claims it is as useless as a toupee on a fifteen year old boy! Why have it? Why write it? Was it done to fool the CIA so operatives could imagine they were safe when they really were not safe? Eh? Why even have any secrets at all? Why classify anything since nothing is really classified, at least when the GOP decides it isn't classified!

Why bother? Instead of laughing this ridiculous woman and her consorts off the stage, they get gobs of TV time with virtually no outrage. Note that Cindy Sheehan, when she correctly examines our imperialist wars, is mocked by the media, why don't they mock Victoria?

Oh, those pesky roots again!

From the NYT:

The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar with the historian's work say.

The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by the N.S.A., the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were falsified so that they made it look as if North Vietnam had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash. President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the supposed attack to persuade Congress to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, but most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack.

The N.S.A. historian, Robert J. Hanyok, found a pattern of translation mistakes that went uncorrected, altered intercept times and selective citation of intelligence that persuaded him that midlevel agency officers had deliberately skewed the evidence.

Mr. Hanyok concluded that they had done it not out of any political motive but to cover up earlier errors, and that top N.S.A. and defense officials and Johnson neither knew about nor condoned the deception.

No political motive? HAHAHAHA. I remember that war! Like this one, all the "mistakes" were the sort that would allow the mad dog imperialists running our military and bankrolling our supposed leaders to run riot. Never were they "mistakes" that would minimize the urge to war! I remember the Vietnamese government (sic) floundering fatally and we wanted to up the military response but didn't have a "Pearl Harbor" to egg people at home into supporting a bloody conflict so of course, "it accidentally" happens. Har. I remember the media screaming about dominoes and how we have to draw a line in the sand, etc.

The pre-war push was nearly identical to the pre-Iraq war push.

Same style, techniques, nearly exact same words, often the same goddamn actors! Geeze!

Aid's description of Mr. Hanyok's findings was confirmed by the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the research has not been made public.

Both men said Mr. Hanyok believed the initial misinterpretation of North Vietnamese intercepts was probably an honest mistake. But after months of detective work in N.S.A.'s archives, he concluded that midlevel agency officials discovered the error almost immediately but covered it up and doctored documents so that they appeared to provide evidence of an attack.

"Rather than come clean about their mistake, they helped launch the United States into a bloody war that would last for 10 years," Mr. Aid said.

So why weren't these officials who doctored the information put on trial for war crimes? Why is the UN all hot under the collar about Syria and that assassination but not about our invasion of Iraq or the Vietnam war, both of which were illegal as hell? Why have a CIA if it isn't operative? Why have secret military information if it is all hogwash and no one is punished for lying about it? Why allow some people to spy on our military while we scream about the need for security and pass ever more draconian laws to "protect America" even as the law writers shrug all this off if they themselves are caught breaking the laws they sponsored or wrote?

After all, Cheney voted for the law Toensing wrote and at that time, he and his fellow conspiritors all made big noise about how strenuously the long arm of the law will prosecute anyone breaking it.

I hear the sound of glass shattering here!

Mr. Weber said the agency was working to declassify not only Mr. Hanyok's article, but also the original intercepts and other raw material for his work, so the public could better assess his conclusions.

The intelligence official gave a different account. He said N.S.A. historians began pushing for public release in 2002, after Mr. Hanyok included his Tonkin Gulf findings in a 400-page, in-house history of the agency and Vietnam called "Spartans in Darkness." Though superiors initially expressed support for releasing it, the idea lost momentum as Iraq intelligence was being called into question, the official said.

The shadow of Vietnam hangs over our entire government. There should be absolutely no secrets from that time. Heck, they kept many WWII secrets hidden because they showed the USA openly courting or hiding Nazi and Japanese war criminals, for example!

Nixon's dark shadow hangs over DC and the Iraq war memorial should be built on top of the Vietnam memorial wall and all these people responsible for both disasterous wars should be put in prison after a trial at the Hague.

Period.

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Krauthammer Wants New Antiwar Leader: Here is One for Us!

2005-10-30T07:44:00.000-05:00

Picture from the Mirror, UK

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Washington Post is in full bellow today, roots trembling with fear and indignation. They are now again attacking Cindy Sheehan for talking about imperialism and they want a new antiwar leader. I suggest they talk about Thomas Young.

From Krauthammer:

Now that Cindy Sheehan turns out to be a disaster for the antiwar movement -- most Americans are not about to follow a left-wing radical who insists that we are in Iraq for reasons of theft, oppression and empire -- a new spokesman is needed. If I were in the opposition camp, I would want a deeply patriotic, highly intelligent, distinguished establishment figure. I would want Brent Scowcroft.

Oh yes, Cindy is mean. She talks about reality! This is strictly verboten, our propaganda is all about how we are this shy, retiring democracy that wants to merely share the fruits of freedom and liberty which is why we station most of our military overseas even as we close bases here at home and most of our allies that allow our troops to occupy their countries are vile dictatorships, yeah.

Kraut is attacking Scowcroft because this Presidential advisor was against going into the Iraqi cul de sac from day one. Well, let's look at one of the men and women we sent into that sand trap: From the Mirror, UK:

2,000 US TROOPS DEAD IN IRAQ: ONE SURVIVOR TELLS HIS STORY
I went to fight in Iraq to get revenge for 9/11... I found out Bush had led us into a war that was immoral and totally wrong
From Ryan Parry in Kansas City, Missouri
BRAVE Tomas Young saw it as his patriotic duty to join the Army three days after 9/11.

Tomas, 25, wanted revenge on the terrorists who murdered nearly 2,750 people in the Twin Towers.

But on his first mission in Iraq - and before he had fired a single bullet in anger - he was left paralysed from the chest down after being shot in an ambush.

Krauthammer knows probably no one who has been blown up in Iraq. The victims of this badly run, illegal war, are not part of the well watered aspen forest whose roots are so intertwined. Mr. Young was a real patriot. So of course, he is ignored here at home. Many web sites are echoing this Mirror story out of England, we have to traipsie overseas to get news about real patriotic Americans who live in America, isn't this funny, NOT.

Tomas paid a very high price for Iraq and he gets to eke out the rest of his life, tended by his wife and family, with bare minimum support. HIs future poverty and suffering is not what Cheney and his gang are getting, they get zillions in sweetheart contracts for this war. The Daddy Warbucks in DC are rolling in dough thanks to this war. Even as Congress is cutting ruthlessly all social programs, they are lavishing tons of money on this war.

"I joined the Army to exact some sort of retribution on what happened to us, whether it be going to find Osama bin Laden or to get al-Qaeda.

"I joined to get back for what happened. Nothing more, nothing less. But so far there have been 2,000 dead American soldiers and some 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians.

"That's certainly a lot more than we lost on September 11. What has happened in Iraq is wrong."

Tomas, now confined to a wheelchair, is bitter that his Government's lies got him to enrol.

And he is frustrated Mr Bush will not listen to the American public and withdraw the troops.

He said: "From the start I didn't see a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but when Bush first said, 'Weapons of mass destruction', I bought into that a bit.

"However, when that reason became more and more bulls**t I started to fall off the bandwagon.

"It became clear they didn't have any strong connection and that's when I started to snap."

Krauthammer won't tell us why he supports this war. He won't explain his own personal roots that are dug deep into alien territory. We know one country in the Middle East, besides Iran, who wanted to deep six Saddam. Israel.

Since Krauthammer won't talk about his real reasons for sacrificing patriotic Americans, why should the WP give him room to rant? After all, wait! They are all connected at the roots, all of these people. Note how Krauthammer says nada about the Franklin guilty plea! You would think, as a patriot, he would be all hot and bothered that Israel has been openly spying on the USA, his "nation"!

Surrounded by traitors who attack real patriots like Cindy Sheehan, a woman who dares to talk about the Israeli-DC axis of power, our ship of state is sinking. Instead of engaging in a healthy debate about how healthy it is for our empire to take on so many military adventures that are not aventageous, Krauthammer and his ilk attack on a the bearers of bad news. Back to Krauthammer's slime:

Even today Scowcroft says, "I didn't think that calling the Soviet Union the 'evil empire' got anybody anywhere." Tell that to Natan Sharansky and other Soviet dissidents for whom that declaration of moral -- beyond geopolitical -- purpose was electrifying and helped galvanize the movements that ultimately brought down the Soviet empire.

It was not brought down by diplomacy and arms control, the preferred realist means for dealing with the Soviet Union. It was brought down by indigenous revolutionaries, encouraged and supported by Ronald Reagan, a president unabashedly dedicated not to detente with evil but to its destruction -- i.e., regime change.

Talk about fairy tales. Ridiculous history. Reality: Reagan loved Gorbachev! He made deals with Gorbachev! He stopped calling the Evil Empire "evil" after meeting with Gorbachev! They were more buddy-buddy than Bush and Putin! What happened to the Soviets?

They went bankrupt. Duh. Too much military spending and control over far flung provinces was collapsing. They could no longer occupy Eastern Europe, they couldn't hang onto their own lands. Afghanistan was bleeding them to death, financially and militarily. Oh, more deaths in Afghanistan for our forces and our allies this week. And the numbers in Iraq are worse and worse each month, not better. Bleed, bleed!

When people refuse to understand historical processes and regurgitate agitprop like this Krauthammer traitor, one wonders, why does the WP give such fools so much money, so much power? And the owner of the Post wonders why Bush can't throw out his sychophants and replace them with thinking individuals! Clean your own Stygian stables, dude.

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Washington Post Wants Bush Gravy Train to Roll Onwards

2005-10-30T06:06:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Washington Post caters to rich lobbyists while papering over crimes in the White House. Gloriously incurious, totally unable to explain anything, they tell Bush how to save himself: get better toadies. Perhaps he should hire America's Most Wanted. At least we will know they are already criminals that can't be caught easily.

From the owner of the Washington Post:

POLITICAL COMMENTARY is addicted to bold trends: Leaders must be either up or down; sideways isn't tolerated.

Yes, we know the media whores are mainlining heroin. The question is, why does this man who owns the WP complain? He is the one providing them with the money to buy the dopey commentary. Indeed, if the comments are particularily stupid, he gives them pay hikes! Duh.

So it's easy to forget that, along with the implosion of the Harriet Miers candidacy for the Supreme Court, last week featured the nomination of a highly qualified candidate to head the Federal Reserve; or that, along with the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, last week brought a big step toward ending the investigation that has put a cloud over the White House for so long. Presidents have a way of bouncing back from low points, and it is too early to assume that President Bush is a lame duck.

The owner of the WP wants his tax cuts and his ability to form monopolies to be forever so he has to keep Bush propped up. Note the ads surrounding this editorial. There are many a mistress needing goodies to be happy. So the money game has to continue. The rich need endless funds to party, note how they run up $250,000 tabs in Manhattan, playing with lap dancers! What really touches me is how this owner thinks the Plame scandal is now over. His refusal to understand that the game is beginning now, not ending, is not accidental. He and his merry whores conspire with the resident in the WH to do all sorts of ugly things. To appear to be a newspaper instead of a mouthpiece, the owner allows naive reporters to blurt out the truth on page five with an editor adding a misleading headline. For example, at the DC correspondent's dinner, the reporter told us how Bush charmed them all by making them laugh about the lack of WMD. They all knew it was a joke from day one when Powell lied to the UN. They think this lie is very funny and no one has to be punished for lying about going to war, this is business as usual! Of course, Iran must be punished for talking about going to war with Israel! This is verboten!

Anyway, we bloggers were horrified about this dinner and chided the media whores. So now the whores are surly. They wonder if maybe they should hide their roots that connect all these trees in the DC/NY axis that are feeding each other information and turning their leaves simultaneously, spitting out the identical talking points in unison.

But unquestionably Mr. Bush is in trouble, and if he is to recover, he needs to acknowledge the root causes of his misfortunes. There may be less to learn from the indictment of Mr. Libby, whose alleged perjury appears to be the result of his own miscalculations, than from some other recent stumbles. Ms. Miers's failed Supreme Court candidacy, for one, is emblematic of a broader and persistent Bush failing: a lack of intellectual seriousness, which goes hand in hand with his excessive trust in loyalists.

Listen, dummy, Bush is screwing up because when you decided to back a fellow ruling class tool, you and your buddies decided to back the Skull and Bones Idiot. We know you thought he would be a shoo-in due to name recognition but he wasn't which is why you and your ilk conspired to destroy Al Gore, destroy democracy and rip up the Constitution. Now you want your idiot to be a smart tool. Tough titties. He ain't going to grow a brain now.

As for the Libby inditement: he is laughing today for he was promised a pardon. So he doesn't care if he breaks the law. The owner of the WP doesn't care about laws, he cares about powers and he wants Bush to pick better enforcers to keep power away from voters. Further, what is this garbage of Libby "miscalulating"? Deliberately running over someone you want to assassinate isn't a "miscalculation"---(Except if you are Laura Bush!)--it is a crime. Further, why would Libby want to "out" Valerie Plame? He had no way of finding out who she was except if the VP told him and the investigation showed that the VP did tell Libby. Did Libby say, "Do you have any dirt on the ambassador's wife so I can call the WP and smear her?" Why would he ask the VP that question? If he did, why didn't the VP tell him to go to hell, it is a crime? After all, the VP was the man who voted for the law that Libby violated!

Of course, the WP's owner doesn't want to examine this issue because his aspen roots attach him directly to Cheney and Libby and watching Libby being chopped down irritates his roots and so he has to try to prop up this particular tree or the whole forest might face the axe. Of couse, it should. A legion of beavers chewing away at the trunks of this massive conspiracy! Gnaw, gnaw.

He invaded Iraq in the hope of spreading democracy through the region, among other reasons, but his officials failed to plan for reconstruction. In confronting al Qaeda, Mr. Bush rightly grasped that this was a new kind of war that demanded new ways of fighting. But he pursued that broad conviction with a counterproductive indifference to substance, taking positions on civil liberties that harmed U.S. standing and that the Supreme Court later ruled untenable.

Our "new ways of fighting" seems to me to be stubbornly old. Propaganda, threats, bribes and blatant killing of peasants, straight out of the Cold War/Vietnam playbook. Not one new thing here at all. As terrorists romp all over the planets, doing whatever they wish, as the plans to attack America roll forwards silently, we all imagine the temporary silence here is due to our measures working. It is not.

The fact that the war criminal who owns the WP is pretending our imperial wars are us spreading democracy is quite revealing. Note that this imperialist was perfectly happy with the Supreme Court ripping up the Constitution and disallowing Al Gore the Presidency he so obviously won, democracy is something these clowns hate with a passion. This is why they don't stop the lobbyists, why this owner won't talk about why the medicine bill costs a fortune, this would be revealing the tree roots connecting everyone! Bush's leadership had to twist many arms very hard to pass that bill for the pharmacy lobby! Everyone knew it was a disaster. But thanks to DeLay and Bush's very hard work, they managed to corrupt enough Republicans to pass this bill. It wasn't due to inattention or poorly chosen aides working for Bush, it was a jewel in his crown: delivering goodies to his buddies who give him campaign money and other goodies in return! Duh!

It is obvious the owner of the Post is getting irritated with Bush because he himself is now in danger. He would prefer to rule in the shadows and conspire with whoever is allowed into the White House, quietly and without eavesdroppers like with Nixon's taping of the usual criminal activities run out of that building.

The entire media, roots atremble, is in a full chorus today, screaming that the Libby case is an isolated thing, his roots are not connected with anyone, he misspoke, he was a rogue root doing his own thing, not at the center of this little forest of identical trees, oh no.

The beaver prosecutor told us, this isn't the end. He is after "Offical A" who is Karl Rove. Karl Rove's roots wind right up Bush's little shrubbery, doesn't it?

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Criminals at the NYT and WP Attack Wilson and Fitzgerald Again

2005-10-25T10:02:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

We now know that the Washington Post, the New York Times and many other major media organizations were co-criminals with the Bush/Cheney conspiracy to lie about WMD and Saddam. Fearful of the prosecutor, these same criminals are now conspiring to destroy the prosecutor and witnesses. Arrest them all.

From the criminals at the Washington Post:

To his backers, Joseph C. Wilson IV is a brave whistle-blower wronged by the Bush administration. To his critics, he is a partisan who spouts unreliable information.

But nobody disputes this: Possessed of a flamboyant style and a love for the camera lens, Wilson helped propel the unmasking of his wife's identity as a CIA operative into a sprawling, two-year legal probe that climaxes this week with the possible indictment of key White House officials. He also turned an arcane matter involving the Intelligence Identities Protection Act into a proxy fight over the administration's credibility and its case for war in Iraq.

Oh my god. If you are flamboyant, it is OK to become the victim of rape, eh? So, Valerie Plame dressed too flashy, eh? So Cheney and Bush gave the media the keys to her bedroom and asked them to rape her, eh? So she deserved this?

Wow. A new legal twist! If she dressed like a nun, she wouldn't have been outed, right? Eh?

What the fuck? Think that CIA agents are hidden in the dark? Eh? The top agents operate using false fronts out in the open, often on TV a lot, ahem, hello, everyone! I know this for a fact. Stasi agents in East Germany were on stages, on TV, ditto the KGB, and certainly our own CIA. They all do this. "Hiding in the open" it is called. Duh.

Valeries REAL job was hidden just as much as our news media mavens hide their under the table payments from the government as well as their agenda.

Kristof, at the NYT, attacks the fundamental basis of the rule of law. Like his fellow criminal, Miller, he poo poos the Constitution and the law and is angry about prosecutors snooping around the double agents working for the NYT and WP. How dare they reveal the extent of this quasi-governmental collusion!

Meanwhile, the war roars on as the fake constitution passes in Iraq leading to the Civil War just like our own Constitution which gave power to slave owners via the 3/5 vote for every slave provision in our own Constitution.

I want the owners of the Washington Post and New York Times investigated and arrested. They are war criminals. They colluded with the Bush criminals in defaming the victims of a grave crime. They are traitors who are selling us out to foreign powers.

Arrest everyone.

Gads.

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Judy Miller Lied to Her Boss as Well as the World

2005-10-22T09:41:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Miss Run Amok, Judith Miller of the New York Times has been forced by the prosecutor in the Plame affair to admit she lied to her bosses at the Times about her involvement in this crime. The owner and his editor refuse to believe she did anything that bad, she merely has a bad memory.

From the Associated Press:

Judith Miller's boss says the New York Times reporter appears to have misled the newspaper about her role in the CIA leak controversy.

In an e-mail memo Friday to the newspaper's staff, Executive Editor Bill Keller said that until Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald subpoenaed Miller in the criminal probe, "I didn't know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end" of leaks aimed at Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.

"Judy seems to have misled" Times Washington bureau chief Bill Taubman about the extent of her involvement, Keller wrote.

Taubman asked Miller in the fall of 2003 whether she was among the reporters who had gotten leaks about the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.

"Seems to have misled"? Talk about a wienie whinny way of saying, "She lied her ass off." The word "seems" make it sound as if one needs several perspectives about this. Like, maybe it was sort of not lying but just appeared to some wayward minds as lies. Heh. Depends on what is isn't.

"Misled" is also a bizarre way to describe open lying. It seems 90% of whatever she reports on is just so many rank lies, no? Indeed, the only place her reporting could appear truthful is in Neoconland.

In response, Miller told the Times that Keller's memo was "seriously inaccurate," the newspaper said in a story for Saturday editions. It reported that in a memo to Keller, Miller wrote she "never meant to mislead Phil (Taubman), nor did I mislead him."

Judy is hoping her faulty memory could be used as an excuse. From day one, I was all ears on the Valerie Plame business because she did what my mom used to do and it is very dangerous work, overseas. I forgot nothing about that case from day one. Judy claiming that she, in the very dark heart of this conspiracy to destroy a CIA agent, has a faulty memory about this matter, pisses me off.

The New York Times can hire me to replace her. I know how to write. And I am just as biased, heh. So why not, Keller? You know where I am and my name. The editorial staff and I have chatted more than once!

As for Keller's remark about "my `entanglement' with Mr. Libby, I had no personal, social, or other relationship with him except as a source," Miller wrote.

Prostitutes don't think going to bed with their Johns is social. It is pure business. Happy to see she keeps up her standards!

Of course, Judy doesn't talk about those mysterious aspen roots connecting her to her right wing buddies.

Others are in hot water, too. Tim Russert of MSNBC's Meet the Preesitutes, is part of this probe. Like Judy, he lied about his level of involvement. He knew from day one who was leaking the CIA agent's name and he remained silent. The Silence of the Lions here is not surprising. Like all hyper-criminal organizations, the American media has been colluding with the rulers to lie, cheat and steal. They pretend to be enlightening us while really shoving shit. They lie because they have goals and desires which require fooling people into supporting their campaigns.

These con men and con women work with the top cons, the neo cons in the GOP. They are all war criminals. They have directly contributed to the deaths of thousands and tousands of people, they have destroyed our defenses, they are bankrupting our country and meanwhile, every blasted one of them remains at large, on TV and in print, their vulture voices bellowing across the land, lying and lying.

The media liars will now switch gears and attack their buddies so long as we, their sheep, don't punish them for their crimes. They hope we will forget what they did in the past even as they try desperately to forget their own crimes. But alas for them, there are thousands of bloggers keeping track of all this and exposing the lies. This case, the Plame investigation, is very important because it lances into the heart of the conspiracy against America. It isn't uncovering the greater crimes, how the media colluded with Bush to steal two elections, but it hits on the same cast of criminals.

Put them in prison. Put all of them in prison. Send them to the Hague to stand trial. Put them on trial in Bagdad.

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LITTLE MISS RUN AMOK

2005-10-16T14:16:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today, the NYT allows reporters to report on the reporter who reports on whatever the hell she wants which is pretty much whatever the GOP and neo cons want.

It is an amusing read. From the NYT itself:

"Judy is a very intelligent, very pushy reporter," said Stephen Engelberg, who was Ms. Miller's editor at The Times for six years and is now a managing editor at The Oregonian in Portland. "Like a lot of investigative reporters, Judy benefits from having an editor who's very interested and involved with what she's doing."

In the year after Mr. Engelberg left the paper in 2002, though, Ms. Miller operated with a degree of autonomy rare at The Times.

Douglas Frantz, who succeeded Mr. Engelberg as the investigative editor, said that Ms. Miller once called herself "Miss Run Amok."

"I said, 'What does that mean?' " said Mr. Frantz, who was recently appointed managing editor at The Los Angeles Times. "And she said, 'I can do whatever I want.' "

Heh. She ran amok and people died. Like a driver who presses down the accelerator while screaming she is really braking, she drove into Iraq and ran over scores of humans. Now the whole country is a smoking ruin and chaos rules there. But she did her embedded best, hopping in and out of more than one bed, one presumes.

In two interviews, Ms. Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes.

On July 30, 2003, Mr. Keller became executive editor after his predecessor, Howell Raines, was dismissed after a fabrication scandal involving a young reporter named Jayson Blair.

Within a few weeks, in one of his first personnel moves, Mr. Keller told Ms. Miller that she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons issues. Even so, Mr. Keller said, "she kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm."

Although criticism of Ms. Miller's Iraq coverage mounted, Mr. Keller waited until May 26, 2004, to publish an editors' note that criticized some of the paper's coverage of the run-up to the war.

OK, who owns the NYT and who wanted her to be raised on a dais? The fired editor?

Nooooo. He was fired for a far smaller matter. The present editor? Noooooo. Not him. He claims she can cover whatever she wants when she wants and it gets front page, too. Haha.

So who has the pull to put her on the front page? Heh. Hard to guess, eh?

No reporter in the Times is going to rat on the owner, of course. What happens in private is private except when it involves killing lots of people or blow jobs for poor Clinton. Then it is certainly a public matter. Obviously, even after the so called editors chided Miss Run Amok in their feeble apology they didn't have any control over her actions nor her dirty tricks she was pulling. Obviously, people with more power than the editors enabled her to jump her traces and run amok.

As Ms. Miller, 57, remained resolute and moved closer to going to jail for her silence, the leadership of The Times stood squarely behind her.

"She'd given her pledge of confidentiality," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher. "She was prepared to honor that. We were going to support her."

But Mr. Sulzberger and the paper's executive editor, Bill Keller, knew few details about Ms. Miller's conversations with her confidential source other than his name. They did not review Ms. Miller's notes. Mr. Keller said he learned about the "Valerie Flame" notation only this month. Mr. Sulzberger was told about it by Times reporters on Thursday.

Interviews show that the paper's leaders, in taking what they considered to be a principled stand, ultimately left the major decisions in the case up to Ms. Miller, an intrepid reporter whom editors found hard to control.

"This car had her hand on the wheel because she was the one at risk," Mr. Sulzberger said.

Oh, the owner is so passive. The editor couldn't stop her. The owner handed her his car keys under what can only be described as very murky conditions, then he and the entire newspaper let her "drive her own story home."

Haha. Into the ditch and arrested for drunk reporting by the cops! And so Sugar Daddy Sulzberger bails his moll out, runs around trying to intimidate the prosecutor, attacking the drunk reporting laws, acting pretty much like papa Bush trying to pull Jr. out of the grip of the law again and again.

Birds of a feather, these drunks are!

So, just remember, the NYT is owned by a total idiot who gives the front page to run amok reporters. Great going, Arthur. Why don't you hire 6' tall talking rabbits instead? And give Jeeves your car keys.

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NO NEWS TODAY

2005-10-16T08:35:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I troll the web for news. I spent two hours doing this with domestic news service then I visited Xinhuanet which is run out of China. To my surprize, here was a news story that is nowhere to be found in America: From Xinhuanet:

One person was killed and thousands of others were evacuated Saturday in the south-central US state of Arkansas, after a train derailed and a tanker containing flammable gas exploded, local media reported.

Seven empty train cars and a tanker containing propylene derailed in Texarkana, southwest of Arkansas, when the Union Pacific train was hit in the back by another Union Pacific train coming from Chicago, the reports said.

At least two homes were destroyed, in one of which one person was killed, and at least seven people with respiratory problems were sent to hospital for treatment.

The tanker was still burning at midday, but the fire was under control, the reports said. Enditem

Now this happened fricking yesterday. I saw no mention yesterday in the news. None today in American news. Googled like crazy, got only one other news story...from Canada! From Edmonton:

Seven empty train cars and a tanker containing a flammable gas derailed yesterday in a switchyard, exploding in a ball of fire that killed one person and forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes.

A plume of smoke covered the southern end of the city and at least seven people went to hospital emergency rooms with complaints of respiratory problems.

At least two homes were destroyed - including one where the victim died - and several vehicles were totalled in the half-kilometre area surrounding the accident, police spokesman Chris Rankin said.

At midday, the propylene tank was still burning but the fire was under control and the smoke had thinned out, Rankin said. Police recommended residents stay away from their homes.

This came from an AP feed. The AP feeds the NYT, for example.

This amazes me. I track the rise in callous feelings because if the media outlets don't carry stories of dead Americans this means Americans can die and no one will pay attention. The dying brain dead lady got tons of attention from the media and politicians because a political group wanted to use her body for passing laws preventing us from controlling our own bodies but when people die hither and yon, this is OK, it seems.

I could find no photos of this blow out. Normally, photos of burning stuff makes the news simply because it looks neat to our prehistoric minds which to this day is filled with wonder when viewing fires. I have noticed since the war in Iraq began, we have begun to deny death and destruction. The childish "pull the covers over the head" mentality has corrupted our ability to see even the most ordinary news.

It is buried.

So tornadoes take out parts of Wisconsin, trains blow up, bridges collapse, floods carry away homes, these things are no longer newsworthy. The floods in the Northeast, note how this is covered because it is in the Tristate region which has millions of people but the coverage is wane. It is as if those not being affected want to say, "Get on with your life," all the time.

It always shocks me to find American news in China first. Often, they wait up to a week to report things in America. Remember when newspapers raced to cover the news? Well, that is dead. When news has to give priority to propaganda shoots of the dictator or to fluff pieces for advertisers, this dilutes and destroys the real function of the news media which is supposed to report the fricking news, ie, new things happening that involve life and death issues and trains burning toxic chemicals and dead people and thousands evacuated because of this is news, not chopped liver.

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THE PHAKE PHOTO PHUN CONTINUES

2005-10-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I build houses and do escavation work. I took one look at the latest photo op for Bush and laughed my head off. I did take the liberty to make the picture more believable.

But it was a 100% fake show. Why this is being foisted on us is obvious. Bush needs to pretend he, the prissiest of pretty boy, the rankest of Richie Riches, has to mimic real workers. Being a spoiled brat, he can't do a credible job of it. First---you do not hammer nails in the dark. Easy to see why! The chances of nailing the thumb is great. One does this only in emergencies or if one is very good at it and I will assure you, even with artificial lighting, it is hard to not slip up, nailing is dangerous work which is why I almost never use a hammer anymore except to hit pieces of wood into place, no nails for me! No way.

Secondly, look at the real President Jimmy Carter doing real work.

It is daylight. He has a glove on the hammer hand but note how he has no glove on the nail holding hand! Duh. Try picking up nails with a damn glove on! Even so, the glove he wears is one I stopped using years ago because they have really good gloves out now that have fingertip sensitivity while the main part is strong and flexible and unlike split leather gloves, you can get it wet and it doesn't stiffen up or fall apart.

I once lost gloves like the ones these amatures are wearing. We were felling trees in the forest and it was fall and the gloves were dropped so I could fiddle with the chainsaw. They dissappeared into the leaf matter and it was snowing so we couldn't find them again. The next spring, I was up in the woods and spotted them but when I picked them up, they fell into two neat pieces because the forest mice ate the outside seams because of the salt sweat in them!

The reporter interviewing our little prissy boy asked him somewhat sane questions which set Bush off into a rictus dance, St. Vitus would be proud! He gimmaced and sputtered, his eyes blinking like a lighthouse on speed, he nearly jiggled himself off the ladder, watching this poor creature answer questions is like watching Linda Blair in the exorcist.

Now, that would be a photo-op I would like to see.

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MORE BUSH DOG AND PONY SHOWS

2005-10-13T18:54:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

When Bush is in a corner, he prays to Geronimo's skull and asks Chang the destroyer of the Shaolin Temple for help. Or he calls on grandpa. "What would Hitler do?" he cries to his patri-ghostie.

"Mein sohn, du musst treffen mit den Truppen," said grandpa.

So Bush, being a rank coward, decided to do what Hitler did, visit quiesent troops, in this case, officers under orders, and have a "frank" talk which wasn't frank at all but tom, tricky dicky and harried.

The CIA Washington Post:

President Bush, speaking to U.S. troops in Iraq today ahead of Saturday's referendum on a new constitution, thanked them for "being a part of this global war" and vowed to press on until "total victory" over an enemy he described as ruthless and cold-blooded.

In a videoconference with 10 U.S. military personnel and one Iraqi soldier, Bush said the referendum vote must be protected to help defeat the "backward, dark philosophy" of the insurgents and lay "the foundation for peace."

Der Voekischer Peepenschnooper Washington Poster covered this well. They hinted that maybe some of the dribble was rehashed trash.

But other, less Sieg heiliger media were less impressed and they let the truth slip out knowing that more than half of America wants Bush swinging from the streelights: From Associated Press:

"I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me," Barber said.

A brief rehearsal ensued.

"OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?"

"Captain Smith," Kennedy said.

"Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked.

"Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied.

And so it went.

"If the question comes up about partnering — how often do we train with the Iraqi military — who does he go to?" Barber asked.

"That's going to go to Captain Pratt," one of the soldiers said.

"And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit — the hometown — and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?" she asked.

Before he took questions, Bush thanked the soldiers for serving and reassured them that the U.S. would not pull out of Iraq until the mission was complete.

"So long as I'm the president, we're never going to back down, we're never going to give in, we'll never accept anything less than total victory," Bush said.

Well, he certainly didn't promise them he would push the Soviets out of Berlin's suburbs but then, al Qaeda is attacking Russia's suburbs so we better not dwell on this war on terror which we seem to be losing since the other side refuses to be even slightly frightened, much less, terrified.

You've got tremendous support here at home," Bush said.

Um, wacko bubble boy, you mistated that by a word. There is tremendous support to BRING them home. Kapeesh?

Well, Bush is hard of hearing and feeling. This is one man that won't feel our pain. We won't feel his pain, either, when it comes down to that.

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DEAD SMURFETTES

2005-10-12T16:09:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

They killed Smurfette to make a point. Of course, many cheered, but that is another matter. The UN wants to stop war. From the BBC News:

The UN children's agency has launched a hard-hitting ad campaign, involving cartoon legends the Smurfs being blown away in a sudden air strike.
The film, which aims to raise money for former child soldiers in Africa, is being shown on Belgian TV.

A spokesman for Unicef Belgium said it had departed from previous policies on advertising in order to shock people, and that this tactic was working.

Unicef said the ad should only run late at night to avoid scaring children.

The 20-second clip opens with the Smurfs happily dancing and singing their theme song accompanied by birds and butterflies.

But then planes appear which drop bombs on the idyllic scene, setting fire to the blue-skinned characters' houses.

One character, Smurfette, is killed and others run for cover while a baby is left crying in the middle.

The ad finishes with the message: "Don't let war affect the lives of children."

The claim is to stop "child soldiers in Africa" but the real message is obvious: child soldiers don't drop WMD from airplanes. Nor do any of the combatants in the ongoing tribal troubles in Africa. There is only one country dropping bombs from planes on peasants: the USA.

Indeed, aside from that, the Smurfs live in magic mushrooms, they are covered with woad and they like to sing around blazing fires, looks like Burning Man celebrants, no? They have a distinctly "hippie-type" philosophy and lifestyle, even gay members live there, they are certainly exactly the sort of creatures the American right wingers want to annihilate.

So they are being radicalized. Next thing you know, little blue terrorists will be blowing up subway trash cans or making loudspeakers squeal with feedback at embarrassing moments or even cutting the electrical feed during football games.

They can destroy America.

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BLOGGERS MAKE EVER BIGGER WAVES

2005-10-11T09:12:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

3pm EDT update: My son was here and we screwed around for hours----and found out that Yahoo won't accept Google-based Blogspot.com, my home page. Ie, even following their coding instructions, nada. This might be innocent but my son seriously doubts this.

So Yahoo's blogger base will be a stool with one leg, teetering on edge. har. This sort of underhanded, in the dark, knives out warfare characterizes all computer businesses. They have to cut people out or off or styme each other. They hate Linux because it does none of that and as Linux grows, they snarl and snap.

And they don't really like us, they just want to exploit us, each their own way. Well, while screwing around we found a better RSS feed which is now my feed. It comes from one of my son's favorite websites which is hyper geeky, of course.

Feedburner.com. Friendly interface, much easier to use compared to the mess Yahoo funnelled us into. So screw Yahoo. They want to find me, I'll be on the street corner with my gang, heh. Near the local dive. Yo. &:)

Years ago, I had this dance based on Loie Fuller, the first American modern dancer, whereby I would take a huge 100 yd length of silken material and just by flicking one corner with harmonic ripples, gradually make the cloth rise higher and higher until the waves went well over my head and then I would swirl it around myself in a roaring cyclone of cloth and wind. This is the publicity photo for the dance. Bloggers are doing this, too. We have taken one small corner of the net and using it as our base, have caused greater and greater waves. Now everyone is jumping aboard, the rich, the famous, the powerful, everyone. Yahoo today announced they will start trolling blogger RSS feeds. This is another victory in our fight for recognition.

From Yahoo.com:

Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)'s online news search tool on Monday added Internet journal entries as a supplement to professional media offerings — an experiment that figures to test the public's appetite for information from alternative sources.

Under Yahoo's new approach, a keyword search for online news will include a list of relevant Web logs, or "blogs," displayed in a box to the right of the results collected from mainstream journalism.

Google Inc., which runs the Internet's leading search engine, so far has treated blogs differently.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company last month introduced a specialty search engine that does nothing but sift through blogs. Meanwhile, Google's news section continues to focus on material from mainstream media.

I have a big presence at Google's blog section IF you know my name already. Getting through that needle's eye is a whole different kettle of fish. All us bloggers toil mostly in the dark, so to speak. People either stumble upon our blogs or those who know us from all those defunct forums (that used to be run for free by the major publications until they got tired of our yammerings) or blogwhoring (we all do that, don't we!) but getting known is very tricky indeed.

Usually, bloggers support each other by linking to each other's blogs in their main entries. It used to be, putting everyone's blogs on a sidebar aka "blogrolling" was the big thing but I don't bother with it since no one really uses it anymore. It is too big, too many defunct links due to the fact one has to update it by messing with the code which is always an iffy thing if one isn't a coder. I have to change my RSS feed to accomodate Yahoo's search spiders and after sweating over this for two hours, gave up. Luckily for me, I got pregnant several times in the far past and out came my computer support staff.

Heh. Plan ahead! This is probably the best way to hire staff. "But I am your loving mother! Of course you will do it..." works everytime....right, kids? Heh. Don't drop that on my foot...ouch.

Anyway, blogger.com has some coding to do. Damn. They haven't updated the RSS code since 0.3 for god's sake! 1999 according to the coding I fiddled with today.

Although many top bloggers lack formal journalism training, it hasn't stopped them from building loyal readerships or breaking news that the mainstream media either missed or ignored.

Those scoops have helped rally more support for "citizen journalism" — a cause that Yahoo wanted to recognize by spotlighting some of the news appearing in blogs.

"The traditional media doesn't have the time or resources to cover all the stories going on," said Joff Redfern, a Yahoo product director.

First, the MSM doesn't accidently not cover the news, the deliberately refuse to cover the news. When we bloggers got started as commentators on forums, we would fetch or generate information and do research arguing with each other and the staff of the various news organizations that used to run comment sections. We quickly discovered that the MSN hated our information, hated it when we broke stories, hated our comments. They hated our dot connecting activities and they didn't want to hear squat diddly from us. They hated us and still hate us.

But they no longer have the keys to the whole kit and kaboodle anymore. We wrest them away.

They are being sidelined by their own actions. All the media are in a huge firing frenzy. The NYT fired 500 people and are cutting off the oxygen to their commentators by putting them behind a pay only firewall, effectively destroying their careers since no one will read or comment on them anymore. I don't mind seeing the mindless Brooks or Tierney shut out but it will kill Krugman and Rich and other liberals.

From the BBC:

The best books based on blogs are to be recognised in their own literary prize.
Dubbed the Blooker Prize, the annual award will reward the best writers of literary works that started life as online journals.

Prominent net activist Cory Doctorow will chair the judging panel and the author of the winning Blooker will get a modest cash prize.

The Blooker's first shortlist will be announced in March next year and the first winner in 3 April 2006.

I hope to see more of this sort of thing. Some web awards already exist but the way they are run is either through popularity votes which means only the big guys will get any recognition, as if they need it at this point, or by committee which waits for submissions but have murky processes for soliciting or have no "rewards" that are meaningful, thanks to the explosion in web sites.

Namely, we are a very big crowd now. There are literally over a million blogs. Of course, my site is actually 10 blogs under one main RSS feed and I am not the only one to multi-blog.

The battle over control of the net rages ever higher. From the BBC:

The US has got an image problem when it comes to the internet. US administration coming under worldwide pressure over the net.

It is seen as arrogant and determined to remain the sheriff of the world wide web, regardless of whatever the rest of the world may think.

It has even lost the support of the European Union. It stands alone as the divisive battle over who runs the internet heads for a showdown at a key UN summit in Tunisia next month.

The stakes are high, with the European Commissioner responsible for the net, Viviane Reding, warning of a potential web meltdown.

"The US is absolutely isolated and that is dangerous," she said during a briefing with journalists in London.

"Imagine the Brazilians or the Chinese doing their own internet. That would be the end of the story.

"I am very much afraid of a fragmented internet if there is no agreement."

WAARGH!!! In the alternate universe where Al Gore is President, we would be the trusted trustees of the net which would have very good relations with all other nations over running this massive alternative brain complex, the Hyperhumanity. But we are stuck with the stupid anti-geek, Bush. The slacker slumper shafts us all. He alienates everyone while chest thumping his puny rib cage.

Currently a California-based group called the Internet Cooperation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is the nearest thing to a ruling body.

The private company was set up by the US Department of Commerce to oversee the domain name and addressing systems, such as country domain suffixes. It manages how net browsers and e-mail programs direct traffic.

Icann was to gain its independence from the Department of Commerce by September 2006. But in July the US said it would "maintain its historic role in authorising changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file."

Years ago, I nearly got on the Icann board but was blocked. Few people even knew what that was back then. The Real Rulers noticed it (ahem, Bill Gates, anyone?) and have tried to keep control of it and Icann which was supposed to be a democratic organization of voting web users is now much more secretive and exclusive (Real Rulers need only to apply).

The gold rush for eyeballs extends to ears, too. Yahoo joins other web searchers for featuring pod casts. I have featured some pod casts here on my blog, for example. They can be amusing. From PC Magazine:

On Monday, search giant Yahoo Inc. was the latest to recognize Podcasting's increasing popularity and numbers by introducing Yahoo Podcasts, a service for locating them.

Rather than drawing on what's actually said during each Podcast, Yahoo Podcasts and its competitors take as their best source of information a very brief written description of the show provided by the creators.

As I discovered today about my RSS feeds, the way web spiders see things is rather different from the way we see them, it goes about via the code, not the visuals, and making that match up the seeking equipment of the spiders means changing my code and maybe changing the way I post.

All bloggers have to keep up to date with technological changes. This isn't easy. But one can do it. Here is the RSS tutorial. It can give one a headache, reading techie-talk. Like learning a new language. Can't be a little old lady. Got to work on my lingua computa.

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MEET THE MSRC/HOMELAND SECURITY APARATUS

2005-10-09T11:35:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Last night, in between dealing with the floods, I was trolling the Yahoo.com raw photo feed when, in the middle of pictures of the devastation from the earthquakes and floods, resided the picture above of the man at a podium with a weird name attached. The caption said, "Media and Homeland Security work together."

I said, "Ah-ha! Our much vaunted MSM and the GOP conspiring together, I wonder what is up with them?" So I innocently googled information about this organization and very little popped up, indeed, many word various got preciious little information, none about this present conference which is obviously not being touted in the press at all and indeed, this photo and the tiny caption seems to be all that is exposed of this big, fat iceberg of collusion.

There are no news stories I could find easily on the web which means the MSM and their toadies are covering their tracks but I did get this year's Power Point presentation: I can't click and drag it so you must click on this to see it.

Under "Local Goals and Objectives" are these: Set priorities and identify OBSTACLES

Define responsibilities

Anticipate RESISTANCE and FEEDBACK

OK, it seems this media/government machine was createed after the 9/11 disaster when the media slipped up and let too much information flow. They clamped down within hours and began a concerted effort to lie and totally fabricate reality. On the web, many weirdo sites created deliberate confusion with bizarre theories thus burying the really hard work done by us web commentators who painstakingly assembled a true timeline. Not it is very hard to find the truth about 9/11 with too many sources and entities that are fake.

The rulers don't mind weird theories, they can call it "tin foil hat conspiriacies" and ignore it. But the real timelines scare them. They thought they brought the vast machinery under control but once again, real events blew it apart. The RESISTANCE AND FEEDBACK parts they are concerned with are people like myself. Bloggers yapping, seeking the truth, pulling it online and most importantly, putting it all into context! With Hurricane Katrina, we forced the MSM to pay attention to the poor in New Orleans. They really didn't want to report on all this but we dug up material about how money was bled from the dike programs, how the National Guard's manchinery and men were fatally set in Iraq, we forced them to look at the dead, we did many things and more importantly, significant reporters/photographers told the truth.

One example of the power of bloggers is the story that people trying to escape New Orleans were forced back at gun point from leaving by a sheriff. This sheriff isn't in jail. He is still sheriff! But I carried the email story, many did, it took three days to finally hit the so-called news media, the MSM itself finally carried it...without any context, of course, and when the next hurricane blew in, they made up news wholesale like "No deaths!" when people were drowning to death! "No damage to the oil industry" when historic devastation was being wrecked," this is what the "control" is all about: getting the media to conspire to LIE about ONGOING EVENTS. The obstacle is our counter-news efforts undoing these lies.

On the chart above, there they are, the main players in this quasi-governmental organization. Note their interesting histories, they are all war mongering nuts out to exploit us.

There are past stories or information about this organization. For example, this: From All Hands Community

For Immediate Release May 28, 2003
Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge to the Media Security and Reliability Council

Federal Communications Commission

Washington, D.C. (10:10 a.m. EDT)

SECRETARY RIDGE: Dennis, thank you very much. Chairman Powell, and members of the Council, I want to express my appreciation for your work.

And Susan Neely is with me. She's Assistant Secretary for Communications. She is responsible for the public affairs portion of homeland security. We view it as a ‑‑ one of the most critical components of the new department, and one of the most important pieces of critical infrastructure.

We need to protect those means by which we communicate timely and accurate information to the public during periods of crisis, and so we're going to stick around a little bit longer and benefit from your discussion of best practices. I mean, we think the work you've done, we suspect has immediate application to that point.

You should know that, during the top-off exercise that you-all covered and commented upon last week, where we had the radiological device detonated in Seattle and the biological challenge in, the plague, in Chicago, that for the purposes of the exercise, we engaged Frank Sesno to set up a VNN network so that we could work through the entire five days through the media, because we understand that communication during times of crisis is a critical part of what we do, so literally, every day.

And it was a means by which we could have emergency management officials and public officials and others view our emergency communication, and we had that as an integral part of the exercise, and we're going to go back and review what we said, how it was projected, how people who viewed it responded to it. We're going to be very analytical and very, I think, very constructive as we take a look at our emergency communication plan during those two crises, and I suspect that had we had the benefit, perhaps, of your work and the reports of your best practices, we might have actually changed how we responded.

But we did have, as part of that program, a virtual news network. They ran it constantly. And engaging you today and engaging you for all time in the future, as we deal with the challenge confronting this nation in the post-9/11 environment is something that we have to sustain this conversation, because the public information component is one of the most critical pieces of the national response to crisis.

And so I'm grateful for the invitation to be with you today and anxious to spend some time with you discussing the work product of your working groups.

They play "war games" where they pretend they, the rulers, have to "address" the American people and not in the old fashioned way of having the President make a speech, no, this has to be much more clever and thus, the need to practice manipulation COORDINATION. If only one media refuses to play along, it becomes an obstacle, not a team player!

As a side note, here is the MSM trying to fix up a broken connection, rehabilitating Bennett, note the number of pundits screaming to eliminate his media presence...NOT.

From Yahoo:

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - Former Education Secretary William Bennett on Saturday blamed the news media for distorting his remarks about aborting black babies, saying he had intended to make "a bad argument in order to put it down."

Bennett, making his first public speech since the comment aired on his radio show last month, said the meaning of his remark linking the crime rate with black abortions was reversed in many news reports.

"I was putting forward a bad argument in order to put it down," Bennett said, drawing sustained applause from nearly 4,500 people attending the Bakersfield Business Conference. "They reported and emphasized only the abhorrent argument, not my shooting it down."
*snip*
Dozens of residents marched in protest outside the convention center where Bennett spoke, many saying they wanted to make sure he did not feel welcome in their community. Before the speech, local black leaders met with Bennett for an hour.

"He heard our outrage and our hurt, but he didn't say he was sorry," said Irma Carson, a Bakersfield councilwoman. "We didn't take (his comment) out of context, because there's no context in which those comments would fit."

Many in the largely white crowd attending Saturday's conference said it was clear to them that Bennett was using an extreme example that did not represent his views to make a point.

I am glad this article is fairly neutral. This is hard work for our MSM, cleaning up elephant shit. Code Orange! They will meander this story into the ground. This is where community action does work. If outraged people put on pressure, they have to respond. They do minimize this pressure by deliberately lying about how many people demonstrate and what they are trying to communicate. But this control slips whenever someone becomes too unpopular as the very recently "reelected" Bush is vastly unpopular. Geeze. Makes one wonder about that "election", doesn't it?

So, in conclusion: Fuck the MSRC and the MSM and the GOP. Fuck them all.

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O'REILLY'S NAZI THINKING BETRAYS HIM

2005-10-05T08:12:00.000-04:00

Memorial to General who said, "Nuts" to the Nazis.

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

From Crooks and Liars (a must-visit site!) :

Bill O'Reilly defames our WWII troops

In his debate last night with Wesley Clark, Bill said this to prove his point:

Clark: And let me explain something. You go all the way up the chain of command --

O'Reilly: General! You need to look at the Malmedy massacre in World War Two, and the 82nd Airborne who did it!

OK. I have seen several movies about that very famous battle. I have seen the massacre of American troops by the Nazis in that dark, cold forest in more than one movie. This massacre is very famous. There are many vets alive today who were fighting in WWII back then and they should remember this massacre.

Nazis were executed because of this sort of crime. We killed them after trials. You see, the stronger (arf) Geneva Conventions were created by the UN to prevent exactly this sort of barbarism. Of course, we tore up that along with our constitution.

Super duper chickenhawk O'Reilly was arguing with a real General, Clarke, who is now a Democrat, hooray!---And O'Reilly, being a full blooded Nazi, slipped up and got confused about who committed which crimes. Since his heart is with Hitler, he had to turn this crime upside down and blame the victims. Thinking backwards, inside out, the widdershins thought processes of the demonically possessed Bohemia Clubbers like O'Reilly infects them more and more and the mask of being an American who defends freedom falls, doesn't it?

They are Nazis. Pure and simple.

Will O'Reilly be fired? Will our Real Rulers who loved Hitler too, push to remove this crazy man from TV land? Hahaha. You don't see me on TV, you see him. He is perfectly a-OK and will probably apologize while snarling and pulling off the heads of puppies. Then, like Bennett, another notorious criminal mind, he will be put back on the air to spew more Nazi propaganda at us.

And will WWII vets watch him and not rise up and yell bloody murder? If not, it will be because....we are the surrender monkeys. The French fight back. We don't.

The VFW should be up in arms today. They should be harassing Fox and Murdoch to cut this man off the air once and forever. There should be headlines in other media about this like....hello? Meet the liberal blogger community. Seems we are nearly totally alone in yelling about this, aren't we? My, oh my.

And thank you, Crooks and Liars, for watching TV for me. I can't bear watching American TV anymore. It makes me sick. The bloggers who take on this dreadful task are brave and we should put up memorials to them.

STUCK ON STUPID

2005-09-29T13:38:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Quick, tell me the names of at least 10 dead people in this week's military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan or from the two hurricanes! Hahaha.

Meet Citizen Anonymous. These are the piles of dead bodies with no names. The media has become so allergic to reporting the names of the dead, it would be funny except we are told to "never forget" 9/11, whatever that was...oh, Bush's trifecta! How can one forget winning the lottery? We are so lucky.

The rising death toll from hurricanes is sinking in the news. As more and more bodies are found they aren't found in the news. The news is still reporting on that missing white girl in Aruba, that is certain. Someone was arrested over that!

Kapowie!

Our military which is in cahoots with Bush for hiding the deaths in their ranks is employing the same values here at home. Like with the many dead overseas, we are being "spared" this information because we want to make life easier for the victim's families who, even when homeless and scattered, shouldn't learn important news through the news. My. If someone dies in one's family, you certainly don't want any information, do you? At least, that is how these disconnected criminals think. Why alert anyone to the identifications of victims? Better to shut up.

Here is Lt. Gen. Honore on this subject:From Smirking Chimp:

Frustrated by questioning from the assembled press over efforts to help victims of the latest storm, Honore urged, "Let's not get stuck on the last storm. You're asking last-storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don't confuse the people, please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don't understand, maybe you'll confuse it to the people. That's why we like follow-up questions. But right now, it's the convention center, and move on."

When another reporter asked for clarification and "a little bit more about why that's happening this time," Honore responded with, "You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita."

Hey, totalitarian military bozo, we are all stuck WITH stupid and you aren't stupid, you are an autocrat of the worst sort.

As I pointed out, the military rides to the rescue only to utterly destroy because they are trained to do one thing: destroy stuff. Period. Whatever they build it is to destroy which is why all military rulers are evil, all of them, in the past and forever into the future. The worst ones are spooks like Putin who runs things into the ground, being a spook. And people who worship the devil are even worse than that, like Hitler.

From Capitol Hill Blue:

“It’s like working in an insane asylum,” says one White House aide. “People walk around like they’re in a trance. We’re the dance band on the Titanic, playing out our last songs to people who know the ship is sinking and none of us are going to make it.”

Um, it has been since day one, an insane asylum. But before, the inmates who know they stole the election, thought no one would protest thanks to the bribes paid out in the form of tax cuts and goodies which are driving us in to unimaginable debts. Now they are trapped like rats. They are not in a good humor. Only briefly did demonstrators surround this insane asylum but they will be back, with a vengence, when we run out of heating oil and the price of gas goes up even more.

When Bush and the Pentagon co-conspiritors...remember, we hung German and Japanese Generals at the end of WWII!....managed to refuse to count civilian casualties, and they are dying like crazy every day over there!...everyone in power sighed with relief because good Americans behaved exactly like good Germans and Japanese. After bloggers besieged them over the dead soldiers being hidden from view, they all grudgingly allowed tiny bits of information out. But traditional "causalties" was turned into 'dead only" so we can only guess at the casualties. The death toll isn't trumpeted, either. Usually, the story headline is about, "Work on Constitution Ongoing in Iraq" and paragraph 24 has, "Five soldiers blown up today, names will be released later (sic)". When one person died in a tornado in Wisconsin, this didn't rate even slight mention in national news. The dead from Rita were discounted even as the hurricane was killing them. "No one dead!" yelled more than one headline. Ahem.

It was true, it wasn't one person dead, was it? It was a lot more.

Everyone knows that criminals try to hide their victims. In this case, the victims are in plain sight and we are still watching the criminals try to hide them. In this case, pointing in the opposite direction and telling us, looking at dead people is impolite.

Well, aren't they all a bunch of dainty Miss Manners!

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I HATE IT WHEN MAIN STREAMERS TALK ANIME

2005-09-25T07:48:00.001-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I grew up in more than one country, watching TV or movies in other languages. I remember my first anime, it was at this Asia Society community center. To keep us kids happy, they showed us some beautiful anime in Japanese.

Love at first sight.

I seriously fell in love just from that one day's experience. The thing that struck me hardest was the religious side of anime. In one scene, the monkey king argues with Buddha, as usual. He then laughs and jumps on his cloud and zips off. In the distance, he sees pillars that get closer and closer and suddenly he realizes they are Buddha's fingers as he closes his hand over the recalitrant monkey. Finally, I thought, someone who understands the cosmos I live in.

It set my feet on an important path, it is a cartoon that changed my religious life. It was magical.

And this is what makes anime so wonderful. The animators, over a fifty+ year time span have created a strong alternate universe, playing off of each other's works, delving into all sorts of snarly things, dark corners and estatic heights. There is a ton of dross anime that is awful but the gems created in the massive mix are astonishing, amazing and often heart breaking.

In NYC, I watched Japanese TV courtesy of Channel 68. I watched their news (and the German and Brit and French TV shows, too) and dramas and even cooking shows (Iron Chef was on that station early on). My children grew up watching tons of anime on Japanese TV shows. Not in English but in Japanese.

Here is the stupid article from the NYT:

A Japanese scientist agonizing over the terrible experiments he performed during World War II? You may not find him in a Japanese history text, but you will in the anime series "Tetsujin 28." The show, which makes its American debut on DVD on Tuesday, features three professors wracked by guilt over wartime research that produced, in the words of one of them, "things that should never have been brought into this world."

Jason Alnas, marketing manager at Geneon Entertainment, the American distributor of "Tetsujin," said: "An element of war guilt pervades the entire series. The professors all say, 'We had no choice.' " The story begins, however, with a professor who does make a choice: in the latter days of the war, when Dr. Kaneda is assigned to create the gigantic robot-soldier Tetsujin, he leaks the location of his lab to the Americans to ensure its destruction and his own death. But a decade later, the robot appears in Tokyo and encounters Dr. Kaneda's son, Shotaro, and his former apprentice, Dr. Shikishima. The boy detective Shotaro soon meets his father's rival, Dr. Furanken, who performed Frankenstein-like experiments on corpses, including that of his own son. Furanken outdoes Lady Macbeth and sees blood literally flowing from his hands."Tetsujin 28," based on the same manga as the mid-1960's series that Americans knew as "Gigantor," generated surprisingly little controversy when it was broadcast in Japan in 2004, perhaps because it juxtaposes the professors' hand-wringing with scenes of the firebombing of Tokyo. "I've seen a lot of anime, but I haven't seen any hints of war guilt before," Mr. Alnas said. "There have been lots of films in which the Japanese essentially say, 'Oh yes, we were in this war, we lost, we were victimized by it, but we rebuilt and have moved on.' 'Tetsujin 28' takes you where a lot of people don't want to go. People need to move on with their lives but not forget the past."

Give me a break. There are zillions of Japanese anime wherein the characters agonize about war guilt. You show me ONE American cartoon that shows Americans feeling guilty about...well, anything, especially war crimes...and I will laugh to death. It is about the most verboten topic in ANY American film much less, cartoon.

The few movies that did broach that hot topic were done by great directors who the Republicans hate and fear. Like Michael Moore. Pariahs.

The reason why I watch anime is precisely because it explores the interface between humanity, the gods and our deeds and Mother Nature. They dare explore the downside of living too long, living badly, exploitation of others, using violence to gain power, all these things, the bad side of technology, the responsibilities of being a god, all examined in a most critical way.

Anime characters die. Sometimes, quite brutally. I have seldom cried at an American cartoon.

I have wept so hard while watching anime, even thinking about it, brings tears of memory. Some of the most seemingly goofy looking shows often suddenly lurch into such territory. In "Chrono Crusades," when the two lead characters suddenly fall apart, become demonic, fight, then refind each other's souls and then very quietly, peacefully die in each other's arms, I could hardly stand it.

Hinotori (the firebird) is a series I love. "Tensujin 28" is done by the same animators. They also did "Black Jack", a children's series about a doctor wearing a dramatic black cape. These animators like to speculate about the futility of humans creating robots and medical systems to make people in power live forever. They show in horrible detail, how this destroys the humanity and ability to love or live like a living being. They explore, in nightmare detail, the downside of modern systems. This is why I love this animating team so much. The agony of scientists who sell their souls to the Devil that is Death is heart breaking and infuriating. They obviously have given this topic a great deal of thought.

They attack the Buddhist clergy, the politicians, the corporate owners, all those who have status or control of things are put through astonishingly harsh examination and sometimes, the animators bring us to the very edge of total despair.

One of my favorite shows is about a young aristocratic girl forced to act like a boy by her warrior father during the Onin Wars. Her brutal father murders her mother in a rage. She swears she will destroy her own father. He hears of a Buddhist nun who can cure any disease, sick in bed himself, he sends for the lady. She arrives, looks at his daughter and is filled with despair. She promises to cure the warlord but tells him she has to go back to the shrine for the magic Pheonix feather. At the shrine, she is attacked by the daughter.

In a series of lovely scenes, the conversations and art are amazing as one realizes, the two women are the same person at two different time loops, crossing each other's paths. So she kills herself and to cover up the crime, becomes herself, for the aristocratic girl is trapped in a time loop and can't leave...except to meet herself, over and over again. Each time she plays out the 18 year cycle, she pleads with the Firebird to release her from life but the eternal bird cautions her that undoing the karmic mess she created will take many revolutions.

Talk about a hard lesson! Maybe, that is why I watch this show and lean forwards, scanning each image carefully.

Even using mecha to kill hostile aliens causes Japanese animators to explore human internal conflicts as in a recent show, "Soukyuu no Fafner". Early on, a lovely young, sick girl, sacrifices herself to save a boy she admires as well as her island community. The mutal death deaths of herself and the alien she kills had me crying, it was a toothgrinding episode, not cheerful or violent just to be violent, it shoved into our faces, the despair, harsh realities of fighting and the pain of dying, the pain of those who witnessed the deaths....a difficult subject for any artist, done gloriously, as a cartoon!

I could write a million words on Japanese anime that explores war, war crimes, death machines and how humans using them are corrupted or changed. The anime American children see on our TV stations has often filtered out the shows that do all this stuff. They just aren't popular here. We want our heroes to be all powerful and to win all the time and never die.

We are the crazy ones who refuse to see what crimes we commit even today, we are committing one crime after another, all in the name of Freedom. What a joke. What a farce.

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I HATE IT WHEN MAIN STREAMERS TALK ANIME

2005-09-25T07:48:00.000-04:00

A Japanese scientist agonizing over the terrible experiments he performed during World War II? You may not find him in a Japanese history text, but you will in the anime series "Tetsujin 28." The show, which makes its American debut on DVD on Tuesday, features three professors wracked by guilt over wartime research that produced, in the words of one of them, "things that should never have been brought into this world."

Jason Alnas, marketing manager at Geneon Entertainment, the American distributor of "Tetsujin," said: "An element of war guilt pervades the entire series. The professors all say, 'We had no choice.' " The story begins, however, with a professor who does make a choice: in the latter days of the war, when Dr. Kaneda is assigned to create the gigantic robot-soldier Tetsujin, he leaks the location of his lab to the Americans to ensure its destruction and his own death. But a decade later, the robot appears in Tokyo and encounters Dr. Kaneda's son, Shotaro, and his former apprentice, Dr. Shikishima. The boy detective Shotaro soon meets his father's rival, Dr. Furanken, who performed Frankenstein-like experiments on corpses, including that of his own son. Furanken outdoes Lady Macbeth and sees blood literally flowing from his hands."Tetsujin 28," based on the same manga as the mid-1960's series that Americans knew as "Gigantor," generated surprisingly little controversy when it was broadcast in Japan in 2004, perhaps because it juxtaposes the professors' hand-wringing with scenes of the firebombing of Tokyo. "I've seen a lot of anime, but I haven't seen any hints of war guilt before," Mr. Alnas said. "There have been lots of films in which the Japanese essentially say, 'Oh yes, we were in this war, we lost, we were victimized by it, but we rebuilt and have moved on.' 'Tetsujin 28' takes you where a lot of people don't want to go. People need to move on with their lives but not forget the past."

POTEMKIN SOBRIETY

2005-09-22T09:57:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

We Bush watchers have known for years and years that he is still a drunk and we suspect he is abusing prescription drugs, too, like many of his enablers and co conspiritors, they have to be swilled or drugged to keep those little voices hidden deep inside, silent. As their crimes accumulate, the need to self medicate rises ever higher.

From the National Enquirer

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.

Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.

Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.

His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."

Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against "falling off the wagon" and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.

"When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!"

"Laura gave him an ultimatum before, 'It's Jim Beam or me.' She doesn't want to replay that nightmare — especially now when it's such tough going for her husband."

Bush is under the worst pressure of his two terms in office and his popularity is near an all-time low. The handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq have fueled public discontent and pushed Bush back to drink.

A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months.

This article is all lies, you know. Bush never stopped drinking. We have photo after photo, films of him actually drinking, acting drunk. HIs entire demeanor is that of a drunk. His frequent falls off of a bike is what happens when one is either drunk or having a hangover. HIs running over of people, stumbling, just recall, he was filmed carrying his dog off the plane, walked up to some children and dropped the dog on its head, knocking it out, in Texas. The children screamed in horror, his killer housewife, Laura rolled her eyes because he does this all the time and the obviously drunk Bush laughed as he saw his dog, inert, on the ground.

Hahahaha. Like on 9/11, no? Funny as hell.

After the pretzel incident, he was so drunk still, his eyes sagged sideways and he had this goofy grin on his face as he literally stumbled to the helicopter. This is why he is on vacation all the time.

Drunk.

This is why he and his drunk crew laughed at the 9/11 warnings. Hahaha. Pass some more Bud, buddy.

The entire press corps can tell if someone is drunk. I can tell. You can bet, they sitll have two brain cells to rub together, they could see. They drink with him.

Ahem.

Yeah, American media. Bush is so hated after "winning" another election, the sewage of his life now flows freely. Remember Ford? He was touted as this sober man replacing Nixon who was a sober drunken sot we learned from the Oval Office tapes, well, all the stumbling, accidently junk around Ford was him drinking.

Duh, I say.

This is what is wrong with Kansas. They want to pretend to be sober while drinking like fiends. Like the GOP serial killer, they want to be sexually confined while secretly ritualistically murdering people in a satanic way. The GOP wants to balance the budget by blowing it up.

They are not sober NOR sane.

The photoeditor of the gossip paper that showed photos of Jenna laying on the ground, drunk, was the very first victim of the anthrax killer. Just this week, the stupidest man on earth, Dan Rather-not, was given a lifetime award for working for the real rulers and that idiot whined about how mean the Bushes are.

Well, duh to hell, you drunken sot. I hope you enjoy your stay there. Dan Rather knows/knew a great deal and covered it all up, he worked for Bush, he lied for Bush, he covered up for Bush and he took a dive for Bush, running what had to be the most moronic story about Bush's desertion during time of war, allowing that creep to spin it as "poor bubble boy is being attacked."

Rats.

Well, anyway, don't expect the NYT to rat on Bush. They would cheerfully go to prison to not rat on Bush or Rove. The fools.

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GIVING BLOGGERS GOOGLEY EYES

2005-09-15T23:14:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

This might be actually useful, you know. When I test Google out periodically, about 1/10th of what I write, at best ever shows up no matter what combination of words I use. Tons of stuff stays hidden despite the specificity or general use of key words. This is frustrating because often, I find people linking to my blog only via Google!

It is nice to know this information and I have struck up a conversation more than once thanks to finding people abroad. So this news will be nice, if done right: From Mac World:

Google Inc. has added to its menu of search alternatives the option to search through the ever-popular online journals called Web logs, or blogs.

The new search service, which went live on Wednesday, is in test, or beta, form, and can be accessed through a variety of Web addresses, including Google blogsearch and Blogger Search.com.

“Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves,” a frequently-asked-questions (FAQ) page on the new service reads.

The new service doesn’t limit its searches to Google’s own Blogger service, and the index is continually updated and includes blogs written in English and other languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese, according to the FAQ.

Users can do basic searches entering keywords or they can do advanced searches in which they can specify certain parameters, such as searching within a specific blog or only blogs written in a particular language or authored by a specific person, according to the FAQ.

The Mountain View, Calif., company’s new blog search also gives users the option of subscribing via syndication feeds, such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom, to search results. This means that if someone searches for “Hurricane Katrina,” Google’s blog search lets him add a feed in his news aggregator of choice, such as Bloglines, and be alerted whenever Google’s blog search indexes blog postings that match the query term “Hurricane Katrina.”

I will be trying out this service. It better work better than the present system (a system that stinks, by the way).

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PRESS POOL PARTY DUDES

2005-08-27T07:21:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Bush had no time to spare to talk to Cindy Sheehan or anyone really important to America but he obviously has plenty of time for throwing parties. From Editor and Publisher:

More than four dozen members of the press corps accepted an invitation to a barbeque at the Bush ranch in Texas last night, even though it was off-the-record and they had to ride a bus past the Cindy Sheehan-led antiwar camp site.

The party was pool side, though no one stripped and swam. The president wore jeans and served Texas beer.

Well, according to my secret photo you can see above, they did swim and they did strip! This is why they were sworn to secrecy. Like in a typical Skull and Bones bash, they had to worship the Devil of Death and dance around naked. Sounds like a typical Bohemia Club party, for that matter.

Dan Froomkin, in his online Washignton Post column today, notes that “in spite of all the recent press demands for senior administration officials to stay on the record more often, the press corps can't resist an offer of face time with the president, pretty much no matter what the conditions.”

Nevertheless, he reports, he had been told “that several reporters expressed squeamishness about last night's event, particularly as the press-pool vans drove by antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan's 'Camp Casey' site. And later, a small handful watched askance as the rest fawned over Bush, following him around in packs every time he moved.”

Anyway, the media whores were delighted to sneak into the Bush Waco Compound and to smooze with the booze, you know, Bush served alcohol, and have top secret Skull and Bones conversations with the Chief Brat himself and I am assuming, though I have no pictures to prove this, they got branded, too.

"It is no small feat to organize the White House press corps, over 60 strong, into a half dozen white vans and then motorcade them to the ranch. This summer, of course, has been no ordinary summer, with Cindy Sheehan camped out along the side of the road and those opposing her views on the other - the van ride to the ranch is a reminder that our country is at war and the President we are to visit has much on his mind..

Oh, getting the little brats lined up and onto the buses sure is challenging. Sort of like herding pigs. It really isn't that hard. You clang the bucket of sops and yell, "Soooooeeeee pig pig pig," really loud. I assure you, the pigs move very fast.

At Gitmo today, the captives there are on a hunger strike. Of course, no one talks about them anymore. They are our scapegoats who had nothing to do with assisting Atta in his attacks on America that one fine, sunny day, whose anniversary is just about to dawn.

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FOX FUX FIX

2005-08-25T19:26:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Time for the mass media to yell about blogger ethics! Remember, they accuse us of using Google to learn stuff and then we talk about them! That is a no no. But they can talk about us and they don't use Google, it seems. In in this case, Fox was, as usual, totally irresponsible and of course, enough holes in their story you could sieve spagetti in it! From Yahoo News:

After the report ran on Fox News on Aug. 7, people have shouted profanities at Randy and Ronnell Vorick and spray-painted "terrorist" (spelling it "terrist") on their property.

"I'm scared to go to work and leave my kids home. I call them every 30 minutes to make sure they're OK," Randy Vorick said.

John Loftus, a former federal prosecutor who appears on the Fox News segment "Inside Scoop with John Loftus," gave out the house address during the broadcast.

He said the home belonged to Iyad Hilal, whose group, Loftus said, has ties to those responsible for the July 7 bombings in London. But Hilal moved out of the house about three years ago.

Police have patrolled their house since the day after the broadcast and now have a squad car across the street. Police Capt. John Rees said the department was "giving special attention to the family to make sure they're safe."

The couple sought a public apology and correction.

I hope they sue. I was going to run the story about two hours ago here but went out to deal with some wasps and got stung.

So it is all over the blogsphere. Hope you read about it at Kos and Washington Monthly and Atrios! They are spot on about it, being bloggers and thus, the unethical masses like ourselves, long live the bloggers! Anyway, I came inside and sat down, the wasp stings really itch now! And here is the cartoon. I think I am the first to cartoon this story.

Gads. Fox is filled with clowns. And they dare talk about patriotism. They certainly ape their chimp in chief.

Back to the regularly scheduled program: the missing movie star white teen was found...she ran away. Everything is OK, everyone, maybe we should see more Fox breaking news about her.....heh.

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TURN OFF, TUNE OUT, DROP OFF

2005-08-20T21:50:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I think Americans are putting the pillow over the head and tuning out...except on the left. We seem to be just beginning to hit our strident stride. Heh. We aren't shutting down or shutting up, are we, gang?

Readership of mainstream news media is way down, TV news watching is way down, not triumphant American bombs blowing up cities! No, just bombs blowing us up, or rather, blowing up Gold Star Mom's kids. As the pro war demonstrators said so loudly, "We don't care!"

From the Twin Cities Star Tribune:

Twin Cities listeners have been tuning out political talk radio.
Locally, conservative-talk icon Rush Limbaugh's show has lost 43 percent of its audience among 25- to 54-year-olds in the past year. Sean Hannity's show is down a whopping 63 percent. The shift is serious enough that "we're weighing where these shows fit for us in the future," according to Todd Fisher, general manager at KSTP (1500 AM), which carries both syndicated programs.

Many Americans also are switching the dial. While ratings for political talk radio typically drop the year after an election, experts around the country sense something else in the air. Many metro listeners are turning to local, often sports-oriented shows.
"We're not sure yet what's really going on," said talk radio veteran Ken Kohl, Clear Channel's director of news and talk programming for northern California. "In general, the talk shows that are succeeding are ones that haven't been reliving the election, or constantly harping on the polarization between liberals and conservatives."

I have a suggestion for Clear Channel: run Marine recruiting ads 24/7 for free until we get enough soldiers so they can stop these third cycles through that Iraqi hell! After all, I remember before this stupid war, Bush told Clear Channel when he was going to cross the ~~Polish~~ er, Iraqi border on flimsy charges and so the radio station was poised, like Fox, to broadcast broadsides of patriotic music and pro war talk.

They are as complicit in this war crime spree as Tokyo Rose was in WWII. And like her, they should be punished.

Now ratings are falling because this war stinks. And the President stinks, too. And the stench or Rove makes the stink smell like roses in an outhouse.

So now they claim all those pro-war Americans who were stirred up by Clear Channel propaganda are now interested in movie stars! Well. They can stick their heads in the sand but what about this ugly news story: From AP:

The Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current number of soldiers in Iraq — well over 100,000 — for four more years, the Army's top general said Saturday.

In an Associated Press interview, Gen. Peter Schoomaker said the Army is prepared for the "worst case" in terms of the required level of troops in Iraq. He said the number could be adjusted lower if called for by slowing the force rotation or by shortening tours for soldiers.

Geeze. 4 more years! Let's do the math: 2 years=2000 dead so 4 years= 4000 dead. OK. All those Clear Channel listeners, listen up. We need besides the future 4000 corpses, at least 40,000 limbless/brain damaged people, too. So turn off that radio and go to your nearest recruiter.

Hut hut hut! What ya gonna be today?

We are going to go away!

Where ya gonna go away?

We are going to hell to play!

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BIG LIES

2005-08-17T13:21:00.000-04:00

From "Heaven onlly knows" by Joe Archibald, 1945/ Science Fiction Art by Brian Aldiss

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Our rulers are getting pretty surly. Remember the hoo ha over the brain dead woman? Congress held special sessions that ran into the night and desperately tried to twist laws by passing obviously unconstitutional stuff, all to pander to right wingers wailing. Bush left his vacation hideaway to fly to DC to sign the unconstitutional bill.

They all had tons of time, money and compassion...for right wingers.

Now they are wailing and keening that Bush can't spare five minutes to argue with mothers of soldiers killed in his stupid little wars.

From the NYT:

CINDY Sheehan's attempt to have President Bush tell her - again - how sorry he is about the death of her son in Iraq is escalating into a protest more political than personal. As such, it is a legitimate expression of antiwar sentiment. But the individual cry for attention at the heart of it - "Mr. President, feel my pain!" - is misguided. Ms. Sheehan cannot expect a commander in chief to emote on demand.

Talk about a dead brained dodo. She wants to talk not about her son who is already dead but about the stupid war that is killing other sons and daughters that Bush's own children are not fighting. She wants to debate about this war, a debate Bush won't have with any Americans much less the victims of his policies.

What troubles me most is the NYT editors won't note that this editorial sucks. They could easily pull it and tell the lying courtier that he is making stuff up since he won't address this obvious inequality of issues. Lately, there have been a tsunami of editorials that skip over essential points like the sudden rash of "why have a war on prescription drugs?" push to get Rush Limbough off the hook or whining about Judith Miller in jail when the NYT doesn't give a hoot about Padillo or all the unfortunate people Starr imprisoned, trying to make them tell false tales about Clinton's sex life.

Richard Nixon was not unsympathetic so much as transcendentally awkward. His way of dealing with a situation only half as fraught as Reagan's encounter with the state trooper was a desperate attempt at wit: "Don't worry, soldier, you see too much out of the other eye, anyway."

Nixon lived in a bubble, too. He didn't want to argue with us, he wanted to destroy us. Shoot at us. Hammer us. Arrest us. Far from being besieged by beggars, we were intent on making him face reality.

He didn't want to and didn't do it, ever.

Bush, like Nixon, wants to keep us at arm's length, preferably, a million miles away as he kills foreign people and leaves us exposed to attacks at home. He wants to talk to us through his media whores who bellow his opinions at us while we scream at him in the streets and on the internet. He hates us. Far from an excess of humanist feeling, this psychopath hates his victims and he wants to push us into a deadly trap because this makes him and his oil buddies filthy rich.

The NYT hosts this elephantine parade of garbage because Bush gives the owners huge tax cuts, no inheritance taxes, lots of leverage and they obey their buddy in crime.

It tees me off, this sort of fake editorial, full of lies and mixing up people on personal missions begging for something vs a leader of the anti war movement who has a real, very public, international, important bone to pick.

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ARMOR ISN'T ALL...

2005-08-14T15:03:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

This is an AP photo. Many American news media subscribe to AP. You won't see this photo plastered all over the place. I got it from the BBC. They show pictures of our war. Our media won't.

Look at this photo carefully. The vehicle is one of the most heavily armored troop trackers we have. It became the coffin of all the soldiers inside. They burned to death.

None could escape.

One of the big lies being run around by the mass media is that our occupying troops have no or little armor. They have a lot of armor. It doesn't work, indeed, it might even make things worse. The very well trained Iraqis who we as well as Saddam toutored in the arts of war, are very good indeed. They make the Vietnamese look like pikers. They know their ordnances and the weak spots of our equipment because we are teaching them every day, how things work, how we patrol, what our equipment looks like. Just like in Vietnam, we teach them at day and they then apply the lessons, setting traps, at night. They are the one and the same.

They are our soldiers, our buddies. The friendlier the Iraqi, the more likely he is the one setting the charges at night. One of the friendliest Vietnamese during that war turned out to be the third in command of the North Vietnamese Secret Services, for example. He was cozy with everyone and read all our military plans which were handed to him because he was by far and away, the friendliest Vietnamese in that country.

Then we wondered why we lost.

From the owner of USA Today:

'Support our troops' — bring them home alive
They're burying young Marine reservists in Ohio this week. Fourteen of them, ages 19 and up, were killed last week when their amphibious landing vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
President Bush won't be at any of the Ohio funerals. He has not attended any funeral for any of the 1,840 servicemen and women killed in Iraq, although he has met with some groups of families who lost loved ones.

Bush simply called this latest tragedy a "grim reminder" that we are at war. It also should remind anyone who knows anything about war that lightly-armored amphibious vehicles never were meant to transport troops on bomb-laden roads. They were designed for sandy beaches.

They're being misused because, nearly 2½ years after we invaded Iraq, we still don't have enough heavily armored transport vehicles. Some soldiers themselves make "hillbilly armor" out of sand bags and scrap metal.

OK. Mr. Neuharth, why didn't you cover our anti war demonstrations heavily? Why did you join the yapping hounds of war? Now you want to pull out of the deadly Iraqi cul de sac! Well, kind of late, isn't it? And note how your own lying sack of shit paper today covers this story that happened today in Iraq, the soldiers in that heavily armored vehicle being burned until only some bone scraps remained? Where is the AP photo?

It isn't on the front page. It isn't in the middle pages. Where is it? It proves your contention to be ridiculous. No armor is going to save anyone at this point. They know how to toast any vehicle and even our tanks are being blown up with impunity now.

The real question is always, why does our media hide vital information? For weeks, I have tracked as many photos of vehicles being blown up, they are hard to find!---and they show clearly, we are in serious trouble now.

Pentagon sources say that attacks are double what they were last year and those were double over the beginning of the war which dates from when Bush pretended to fly a jet and announced, "Mission Accomplished." One mission has been a roaring success for Bush and the Texas oil barons and the Saudi princes who Bush kisses: the price of oil is through the roof.

I found the story of the soldiers who died, screaming as their tank ignited, here it is in USA Today:

In ongoing violence, five U.S. soldiers were killed in roadside bombings, including one on Sunday, and another was killed in a shooting over the weekend, the military said.

Paragraph 4! After chat about the nifty constitution we are ramming down their throats. Here is the picture Mr. Neuharth decided to use today:
Pretty gripping, no? Like, don't the media want eyeballs? Don't they want us to sit up and look? Psychologically, pictures of fires excite people and this is why people run to see houses burn down. Pyromaniacs abound because our most primitive urges attract us to fires and the photo I opened this story with is certainly amazing and horrible and we need to look.

Everyone inside that tank burned to death. Yes, they were cooked. And in a week, the few bones and odds and ends will be put inside a big coffin that won't be opened for viewing and it will be buried after it comes home at night and no media outlets will be there to photograph them coming into Dover because they really don't care.

They are still, even as they pretend to be against the war, pandering to the worst in us.

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RICH BLOG READERS

2005-08-13T11:39:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

OK. Where is the loot? According to the news today, we are rich! From Yahoo:

Good news for Web log publishers with aspirations of making money off their sites--compared to the average Internet user, visitors to Web logs, or blogs, tend to be younger and to belong to a wealthier household, a study has found.

Blog visitors are also more likely to shop online and to connect to the Internet using a broadband connection, according to the study "Behaviors of the Blogosphere" conducted by comScore Networks. Unsurprisingly, blog visitors are also more active online, visiting almost twice as many Web pages as the average Internet user.

ComScore defines blogs as "mostly amateur online diaries." In terms of unique visitors, FreeRepublic.com ranked first in the first quarter, followed by DrudgeReport.com, Fleshbot.com, Gawker.com, and Fark.com. By visits, DrudgeReport came in first, followed by Fark.com, FreeRepublic.com, Gawker.com, and Slashdot.org.

"ComScore found that blog visitors represent a demographically attractive advertising audience. Blog visitors are disproportionately likely to be affluent, young, and broadband-enabled," reads the study, published this week.

This is bad news for Fed Ex and their fellow ilksters. Corporate America spends more time snarling at us rather than courting us. For we bloggers are at the center of this! Readers of blogs can't read blogs unless bloggers blog. Try repeating that line three times, fast!

Of course, right wing blogs are heavily visited because there is a paucity of multiple blogs. Namely, the left has the joy of many choices. For example, Atrios and Kos exist but all the auxilary spin offs surround them in a great cloud of blogging. Liberals tend to be pickers and choosers rather than followers. This is why competition to make liberal blogs look good and be user-friendly is so ferocious. I, for example, used to visit a great number of liberal blogs but have stopped doing so except reluctantly because of bad graphics or template or some such. Namely, I can afford to be very choosy now.

Drudge, for example, was a simplistic site built up to funnel trash. It remains ugly and squat. It is of interest to the right wing because it is a Rove funnel and this is where they get their marching orders, namely, how to frame today's news. They then repeat this information to each other in group brain washing sessions at the Freeper site. They are so insecure, they can't argue with anyone and any dissention is ruthlessly eliminated.

Why anyone would want to read repeat indoctrination is beyond me. But then, on the left, we attack trolls, eliminating them only if they mess up the ability to comment via service attacks or other destructive measures such as harrassing posters at home or pretending to be another poster so they can defame them.

An unpleasant crew.

Proof of the rising popularity of blogs is that about 50 million U.S. Internet users (about 30 percent of all U.S. Internet users) visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005, up 45 percent compared with 2004's first quarter, according to the study.

The most popular type of blog is the political one, according to the study, which was sponsored by blogging software and service vendor Six Apart and by blog publisher Gawker Media.

Hey! We are popular! And no wonder. America is very divided. Bush, the "uniter," turned out--astonishing!--to be a huge divider. Because of this and because the mainstream media meddles about, waxing and waning, whining and dining, no one wants to listen to them anymore.

The spoiled rotten right want to be Thumper the Chest Bunny Rabbits. They want to sound big and manly and strong while they hide at home, obviously, with lots of money stashed under their Game Boys. On the other hand, I bet most of them don't "head their households" but rather are in school and mommy pays the rent. And they have plenty of money to spend thanks to her.

They are prime customers of corporate America. The lefties don't interest corporate America because we are rather angry with them and so we won't reward them by falling for their advertizing blitzes. So corporate America will aim all their firepower at the "buy Coors Beer and be a man, not a you-know-what" crowd.

Anyway, welcome to my blog. We are the elite of the elite!

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PAYOLA FOR CRAPOLA

2005-08-05T12:52:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

What with the media making frantic over bloggers and computer P2P users and Chinese copywrite violators and all sorts of flim flam, they keep getting their balls caught in their own machinery.

From Inhome:

A US judge has finalised the settlement of a lawsuit brought by disgruntled movie-goers who accused Hollywood's Sony motion picture studio of using a fake critic to trick them into seeing mediocre films, lawyers have said.

Sony Pictures Entertainment agreed to pay USD 1.5 million to resolve the class-action suit filed in 2001 claiming the studio invented a bogus critic to heap praise on its movies, the movie-goers' attorney Norman Blumenthal said yesterday.

Maybe we could sue over all the bad movies we watch? Heh. One way to get back, no?

The suit was filed following a report that Sony's Columbia Tristar unit had used glowing reviews allegedly written by the non-existent David Manning that heaped gushing praise on films including Hollow Man and A Knight's Tale. Angry fans accused the studio of misleading them with quotes from the non-existent critic Manning who, in 2001, proclaimed Australian actor Heath Ledger was 'this year's hottest new star' following his role in A Knight's Tale.

"The Knightmare of Sony Street, II" couuld be a fun movie. The fact that the movie moguls made up a critic who could flack for them shows how very far behind Bush they are. He just goes out and buys pundits and reporters who then pretend they are not working for him.

By the way, this is old stuff.

Reporters have been very happy to work for those they are supposed to be investigating. Take this example, From Radio Democracy Now:

Amy Goodman and her brother, fellow journalist David Goodman, have co-authored an opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun today called Hiroshima Cover-up, challenging the New York Times coverage of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago.

They are filing an official request with the Pulitzer committee to strip New York Times correspondent William Laurence of the Pulitzer he was awarded for his reporting on the atomic bomb. Laurence was not just a reporter for the Times, he was also on the payroll of the US government. He wrote military press releases and statements for President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, all the while faithfully parroting the line of the US government in the pages of the New York Times. His reporting was crucial in launching a half century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb. It is high time, the Goodmans say, for the Pulitzer board to strip Hiroshima's apologist, William Laurence, and his newspaper, the New York Times of their undeserved prize.

You would think the NYT would be very angry about this just like they are oh so angry about Judith Miller...not. Operation Mockingbird was instituted so the CIA could sneak false information and rank propaganda into the news stream by using the cover of real reporters acting as if they were indepenent agents.

Our government spends billions abroad, corrupting and buying the alligence of traitors in many other countries which is why China, none too happy with us this week despite their private visits with the Bush clan, Rice and Bolton, From the New York Times:

China said today that it had formally arrested a Hong Kong-based newspaper correspondent and accused him of spying for Taiwan, the latest in a series of signs that China is tightening controls on the media.

The government here can't use the thrifty Chinese methods. Thanks to our Constitution, we have "freedom of speech," sort of, maybe. Anyway, they have to pay people like Armstrong Williams a huge bribe to flack fake reviews of steaming piles of GOP tripe. They have to be very sneaky but this doesn't bother them.

It is ~~our money~~ Chinese loans we will have to pay back, not their money.

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DARKNET

2005-08-02T09:45:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The greatest wonder of computers is how they can be wrest away from the Powers that Be and harnessed by us to do whatever we want if we can figure out how to do it.

Since our rulers are conspiring to destroy us or at least put us in chains, the computer/internet interface is our battlefield. The war has broken out in the open this month on several fronts. Aside from the rulers yelling about blogger ethics, a real joke, yes? They are desperately trying to stop us from using our computers like tools and get us into just using them passively.

This battle features lawyers and politicians who listen only to those with lots of money except if the peons get too restive then they do our bidding for a few months then sneakily return to doing business as usual with the real rulers.

The latest entry onto the cyber battlefields is Darknet.

Cymru's Darknet:

Tracking compromised machines can be difficult. Security solutions often don't scale to the size of larger networks. Technologies such as IDS are flawed, producing copious false positives. When solutions are scaled to fit the larger providers, they often require considerable care and feeding, thus taking time away from problem mitigation. There must be a better way!
Enter the Darknet! A Darknet is a portion of routed, allocated IP space in which no active services or servers reside. These are "dark" because there is, seemingly, nothing within these networks.

A Darknet does in fact include at least one server, designed as a packet vacuum. This server gathers the packets and flows that enter the Darknet, useful for real-time analysis or post-event network forensics.

Any packet that enters a Darknet is by its presence aberrant. No legitimate packets should be sent to a Darknet. Such packets may have arrived by mistake or misconfiguration, but the majority of such packets are sent by malware. This malware, actively scanning for vulnerable devices, will send packets into the Darknet, and this is exactly what we want.

Darknets have multiple uses. These can be used to host flow collectors, backscatter detectors, packet sniffers, and IDS boxes. The elegance of the Darknet is that it cuts down considerably on the false positives for any device or technology.

The goals of the Darknet are simple - to increase awareness, and to ease mitigation. With a Darknet in place, it is far easier to determine the amount of naughty traffic on a network, as well as the sources of said traffic.

Note how much of this latest fighting is about routers? I do believe this is where we should keep our focus. For routers are the backbone of the internet. The governments across the planet need to control routers in order to control our access to the information on the internet. Information like this blog, for example.

All governments are worried about the internet. They all have to work in concert with the big corporate entities to see that denizens on the net don't get too uppity. At the same time, the providers of data and content all want to feed us with a bottle dropper and not let us glom onto the creative energy the computer complex gives us. They don't want us messing with their stuff. Yet they won't give it to us in a form which exploits the speed and power of the computer complexes we now own.

The glacial rate which has been created under archaic systems irritate people who want to enjoy content. Getting it to people swiftly and yet profitably is a problem. For the content makers need to make money. But they don't want to change the data stream to make it more convenient and consumer-friendly.

From Wired

Hollywood is terrified of your computer. Movie industry bigwigs know your PC can help you create your own movies, or, worse, copy and tweak theirs. So, like a jealous lover, the entertainment industry worries: Is your computer offering you the fulfillment we can't? Are you going to buy fewer of our movie tickets, DVDs and CDs?

Author J.D. Lasica says Hollywood is waging battles on several fronts to make sure that doesn't happen. In his comprehensive, sometimes chilling new book, Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, Lasica details the entertainment industry's strategies for maintaining control of content in the rip-mix-burn age.

Silverman writes well about this. I will note here that China has dealt with the riddle of costly content by simply doing what America did to Britain for many years back in the 19th century: steal copywritten materiel. Gilbert and Sullivan were constantly suing Americans over theft of their operettas. Dickens and even Tolkien in the 20th century had to sue Americans stealing copywrites.

The software provided by MovieMask and its rival, ClearPlay, quickly came under attack by Hollywood, which argued that even in the privacy of their own homes, consumers don't have the right to mess with trademarked films. Though Congress came down on the side of ClearPlay (the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, passed last April, kept scene-scrubbing software legal), Hollywood's aggressiveness surprised even Lasica.

"(Hollywood's) view still is in the vein of, 'We are the artists. We are the creative professionals. You are the audience, and you don't have the right to change anything that we do in any small way,'" he said. "But that's just a holdover. It's 20th-century analog thinking -- that there isn't a place for the audience in the movie-viewing experience, that we are just passive receptacles for the artists. That won't work in the digital age."

Turf wars between the entertainment and technology industries are nothing new. Music companies sued to thwart the player piano in 1908. AM radio broadcasters marshaled their forces against the coming of FM. VCRs very nearly went extinct in 1984 until a 5-4 Supreme Court vote (with Sandra Day O'Connor passing the tiebreaker) kept them legal.

Always, when a new medium is created, the old systems fight it off as fiercely as possible. Yet they always end up making oodles of money anyway, once they clear their brains and figure out how the new system works. All recording systems have been attacked. Yet they always expand the market! This is pretty obvious yet is a lesson that has to be learned again and again.

From the NYT:

Briefly buoyed by their Supreme Court victory on file sharing, Hollywood and the recording industry are on the verge of confronting more technically sophisticated opponents.

At a computer security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, an Irish software designer described a new version of a peer-to-peer file-sharing system that he says will make it easier to share digital information anonymously and make detection by corporations and governments far more difficult.

Even the NYT, servant of the corporate entity, has sat up and noticed the possible existence of Darknet.

The Irish programmer, Ian Clarke, is a 28-year-old free-speech advocate who five years ago introduced a software system called Freenet that was intended to make it impossible for governments and corporations to restrict the flow of any kind of digital information. The system initially used a secure approach to routing between users and employed encryption to protect the information from eavesdroppers who were not part of the network.

Unlike today's open peer-to-peer networks, the new systems like Mr. Clarke's use software code to connect individuals who trust one another. He said he would begin distributing the new version of his program within a few months, making it possible for groups of users to establish secured networks - available only to them and those they choose to include - through which any kind of digital information can be exchanged.

Though he says his aim is political - helping dissidents in countries where computer traffic is monitored by the government, for example - Mr. Clarke is open about his disdain for copyright laws, asserting that his technology would produce a world in which all information is freely shared.

Ah, the free speech movement! I remember it all very fondly. I remember a Black Power advocate being banned from the University of Arizona for using the word "Fuck" in public. I then recorded as many statements as possible of coaches of the football team yelling "Fuck" at the players, my boyfriend at the time was a tackle. Heh.

We forced the university to recind the banning.

One of our rulers, China, is none too pleased about this uppity Irishman's creation. Heck, Homeland Security, our neo-Nazi organization set up to spy on us is none too happy, either. Time, once again, for the despots of the world to unite to crush freedom of speech.

As usual.

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THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH CONSPIRACY

2005-07-30T08:05:00.000-04:00

Today is very interesting. Daliwood, one of our wonderful readers, gave me amazing information. I went off to confirm it on the net last night and didn't go to bed until after 1 am. I used a wild combination of key words, googling an increasing stream of key words like "listing" and "Thunderhorse" and "oil rig", "Texas", "Gulf, hurricane Dennis" and finally got a rigger's chat room and Resource Investor.com.

Evidently, they have been covering this story for two weeks.

Now, I watch oil news like a hawk. I muck around in rather obscure corners, seeking information, looking for data and photos. Note I have mentioned nothing about this matter. But the key thing is, not one of our news media have, either! This is a key to what is going wrong with our nation.

The price of oil is hitting everyone. I watch it rise relentlessly. The stock market went up this week on all sorts of data that was produced before the oil rig collapsed. So everyone thinks, the oil problem is solved. No need to change course or even worry! The government data showing we have slid even further behind in our quest for automotive efficiency was deliberately withheld by Bush and Cheney and only appeared in the news, with little comment, because someone brave leaked it to the press, who then didn't say much about it all!

My magic article was about all of this.

Here are more photos of the rigs collapsing courtesy of Resource Investor:(From MediaLib.com)

Another reader of my blog, Stealth Badger, gave me the urls of Investor Resource (which I found also on my own last night, you can bet, it became part of my "must read" bookmarks!). Here is what he said,

Thunderhorse has been listing at 20 degrees for a bit over two weeks now. I'm terribly surprised it's still at that angle, but the fact that it hasn't gotten worse means BP probably dodged a bullet, so to speak.

What I don't understand is why these companies are holding on so tight to fossil fuels, despite the obvious dead-end they represent, in more ways than one. Especially ExxonMobil, the CEO of which believes that some exploration into alternative fuel sources by Exxon in the 80s gives him enough expertise on the subject to dismiss it as categorically worthless.

They see putting a half a billion dollars out in the middle of the ocean as a good investment, where they KNOW every storm that passes by is going to smack the hell out of it, but don't see getting out of the oil trade as necessary for long-term survival.

Our economic system has been, and is, staggeringly myopic and monomaniacal.

I want to thank my readers for this sort of information. This isn't "people giving opinions" but rather, people searching for information and sharing it. And we are reduced to doing in on this small blog because our oil overlords and Bush and Cheney who are the same, are keeping this stuff hidden from view. The mass media cooperates with them.

Don't want to panic us!

They will blandly talk about how the price of oil is going up mysteriously and I do note in my readings, seeing quite a few articles accusing oil futures traders for this. The stock market shot up despite this news existing and I cannot fathom anyone feeling that we will "be going strong" with this data flowing in!

The oil explorations going on in the oceans are vastly more vulnerable and dangerous than on land. In the North Sea, rigs have collapsed spectacularily. It is dangerous work on those rigs. They are much move vulnerable to terrorist attacks than rigs on land and much harder to guard in heavy ocean traffic areas like the Arabian Gulf.

The press pretends the public want to see photos and stories about missing white women on vacation in Aruba but don't want to see this. This is a big, fat lie. If it is true, then the ostrich attitude is perfect for us being decapitated. Even if the masses in America don't want to see this, it should, like the torture pictures we tried to ignore, be shoved in our fat faces. The media isn't merely a money grinding machine, it is there to inform us even if only 10% of the viewers/readers understand the importance of the news and acts accordingly.

Hiding it is a crime. It endangers my life, your lives. It endangers our collective efforts to stay alive and well. This deliberate refusal to cover many important news stories and worse, the refusal of the pundits to connect what looks to me to be obvious events is a crime. They aren't clueless because no one tells them anything! I used to waste two hours every day sending emails for years to the major media, patiently explaining how things work in tandem, suggesting sources, suggesting lines of investigation.

Nothing. I used to get cheeky, breezy replies from reporters, then after 9/11, silence.

My very last email I ever sent to a reporter tallking about coming events was sent at 8:49 am, Sept. 11, 2001. In it, I said, "Because of our pressuring the NYT, WP and Wall Street Journal, the ballot counting being done by this consortium is now finished by they won't reveal that Gore won by over 20,000 votes in Florida and thus, the Supreme Court ruling was false and should be overturned. You can bet, Bush knows this, too, and will have some spectacular attack on NYC to kill this story. So keep your eyes open."

Then my phone rang.

You know the rest. Now how did I know this information? I went to my library yesterday, seeking it. And found it. As a child, I read C.S. Lewis, all his works, and memorized most of them. And here is was, the blueprint for taking over the earth:

This excerpt finishes with the hero marveling how millions read what he writes even though he is clueless about the subject matter. He also marvels about how his misinformation is being slurped up by the major media uncritically. And how they also hide news even from himself. He wonders at the magical change in his status, for he now works for a secret cabal that has great influence but needs human tools to do the work so their own fingerprints won't appear in public.

In America today, many wonder about the interlocking conspiracies and machinations of the Real Rulers. These people exist, they are very much real and they outrageously manipulate information and events so they can run things for their own benefit. They allow us to live but periodically, even that is pulled out from under us, two very spectacular examples are WWI and WWII.

Both wars ended up endangering them and they escaped being executed or assassinated by the skin of their collective teeth. This is why WWIII hasn't happened...yet. For events often escape their controls. You can bet, if they wanted WWIII, it would happen no matter how many humans across the planet march to stop it. They don't need to listen to us, do they?

Right now, they want peace but not quiet. So we must be afraid, be very afraid but not be afraid at all. We must go shopping and be happy but be scared enough to let the police do their brutal work, let the terrorists do their part of the game, let this whole thing trundle along while they set up the next step in this vast game to see who will inherit the earth!

We see the tension in their actions. They reveal and hide simultaneously. They must use courtiers like Murdoch, who they actually despise, doing his job, manipulating the news. You can bet, if he oversteps their boundries or says the wrong thing or whatever, he will, like some of his contemporaries, suddenly fall off his yaught or his jet will crash or his palace will burn down with him inside.

He knows this and is very careful to serve them well.

These rulers don't want us to panic about oil. This is why Bush called the only Representative in the House who finally put the words "Hubbert Oil Peak" into the Congressional Record, into the Oval Office and he sat there with a smirk and pretened to be surprised to hear all the data and information about the Hubbert Oil Peak and the poor Congressman, a smart man but a fool, thought he was giving Bush vital information that Bush didn't already know.

Geeze. You know, Bush has known about this the same number of years I have: 31 years. I lectured about this matter for years, back in the seventies. Then the media suddenly stopped talking to me when Reagan took over and only ABC has broken the silence.

Why did Bush pretend to be unaware of the most important issue wracking the oil industry? Well, readers of this blog know why. And this is why we all know there will be another "terrorist attack" on America. To unite us against some pathetic peasant community that happens to be sitting on some oil.

DARK MAGIC

2005-07-29T10:08:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today, the BBC has an article about the psychology of magic. Understanding this is important if one wants to understand how the real world works and why people are so easy to fool.

From the BBC:

Magicians have been using a clever mix of dexterity and deception for centuries to astound and captivate their audiences.

But how do they fool people who know they are going to be duped?

Well, cutting edge-psychology is now being applied to this most ancient of entertainment forms, to understand how these masters of legerdemain trick the complexities of the human brain.

The techniques involved have been discussed this week at the Science Museum's Dana Centre, being held to mark the centenary of the Magic Circle.

In America, I have attended magician conventions. I used to build things for some of them in New Jersey. One of my children was once a stage magician who was very good at it.

Her teacher loved her ability to take in people because she looked utterly innocent as she manipulated magic boxes and her trained dove, Sava, and she was very good with the magic rings. She could manipulate the adult sized rings with her small hands.

She would do this close up. Sceptical adults would be allowed to "examine" the rings within inches of their noses if they wished...so long as she held the rings! Turning them round and round while carefully putting first one hand then the other over the critical joints took skill. She fooled everyone.

Even people sitting within ten feet of the magic box couldn't detect how we did the tricks. Everyone knows they are tricks by when you ask them how they know, they can't explain. They just know. Builders and performers of tricks know very well how it all works and we use not only misdirection but black velvet and mirrors and odd hinges and springs to make things move in concealed ways.

A side story: at one convention, a man was lecturing about making balloon animals for parties. My very young son was sitting next to me on the first row. He was the only tot there. "Ask for an animal," said the lecturer. "I can make any animal!" So my son clapped his hands with joy and said, "I want a kangaroo!"

The magician gave him a dirty look. "I can't make that," he said. All the magicians in the audience roared with laughter.

Magicians can actually be a lot of fun. Most if not all are extremely intelligent and hard working. The sense of wonder and a child-like joy in creating a secret world runs strongly in this community. Tradition matters a great deal, too. All magicians know they stand on the shoulders of all previous masters of the dark art.

"The really good performers," he said, "the ones who know what they're doing, have an incredible grasp of psychology", and use it to convince you to see their version of events.

My daughter taught one of the Cosby Show kids how to do some simple magic tricks which were used on TV in one of the episodes. These rope and card tricks were developed for close work with the observer sitting inches away. Elegant yet simple. Tying ropes in knots that aren't really knots is very ancient yet fools the eye (except maybe Eagle scouts!) with amazing ease.

Many of their mind tricks of the trade are surprisingly simple and boil down to misdirection - of gaze, attention, suspicion or even memory.

Body language is key. An audience can be misled about the location of an object by tensing or relaxing hands to make them look full or empty.

Another important social cue is direction of gaze and head movement. If a performer looks in a particular direction, the natural reaction is to follow, giving him a brief window to make his move.

It is vital that when the audience realises they have been had, they cannot properly recall the fine details in the series of events which led up to the effect, and so deconstruct it.

"For example," said Professor Wiseman, "a magician might cut some cards and say 'Right, they're mixed up now'. Then he'll do something else and then say 'Now, remember I shuffled the cards at the start'.

"That word - 'shuffled' - has gone in, and people think 'Yeah, that's right, the cards were shuffled'. But they weren't, he just cut them. It's cut to mix to shuffle. Small steps. If you had gone from cut to shuffle, it's too much and people notice."

And magicians are not the only ones playing tricks; your mind is at it, too.

"People think the way their perception works is simple," said University College London neuroscientist Geraint Rees. "They think it's like having a viewing room inside their brain with a little man sitting there monitoring a big bank of video feeds from outside, but it's not so straight forward."

Many humans are astonishingly naive about the inner workings of the brain. Whenever I fix a house, inevitably, the homeowner will claim I broke or messed with something. I always take pictures before I start because of this. This isn't anyone trying to cheat me (except once and a while, alas) but because of how the brain works.

They get used to seeing the dents, scratches, cracks over the years and "edit" them out of their minds. When I fix whatever is broken, they look at it critically to see if the fix is OK and thus suddenly see what they managed to ignore, suddenly. I have learned that even innoculous actions like moving a vase or picture will cause problems because the homeowner will suddenly notice some defect and instantly blame me. I now make people move absolutely everything.

People are always suspicious of "strangers" or people changing things. So in order to make huge changes, the decievers have to first lull the audience via information flows. This is what magicians call "prattle" and what our media calls "pundits". I remember the Gore/Bush debates. Gore sighed three times while Bush slurped and snorted like a pig out of a poke. He annoyed me to death with his snuffling sounds.

The pundits immediately pounced on the three Gore sighs and talked for days about how rude and nasty he was. No one mentioned the Bush horrors. I was amazed and very annoyed. The immediate polls of people who actually watched the debates gave it overwhelmingly to Gore.

Three days later, it was given to Bush! Thanks to media magic.

People forget things as events flow so the magicians running our media will manipulate information, killing bad information and trumpetting good information. Before the internet, people were stuck either dragging out old newspapers which was nearly impossible or just giving up in the face of united manipulations of reality.

Now we have the net and it is still very hard! I could hardly find a trace of the Reagan speech in Japan that netted him a fortune, for example, and I tried a zillions different word combinations! This manipulation of reality is collapsing thanks to bloggers and the international interface of the internet. Things hidden totally at home like the number of soldiers being killed in Iraq, this information does show up in China or France so we can access it.

Harvard Scientists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris are keen students of what is called "inattention blindness".

They have a test which involves showing subjects a video of two basketball teams, one wearing white and the other black. Subjects are told to count the passes between the white team and most become so focused, they fail to notice a woman walk across the court with an umbrella.

"We have a limited processing capacity and can only perceive what we attend to," said UCL psychologist Dr Nilli Lavie.

"If the information we are paying attention to is taking all of our capacity, it doesn't leave capacity to perceive anything else."

This is very obvious in the media. They will focus on runaway brides or missing teens in Aruba and ignore important things. They do this deliberately and worse, the populace demands they do this because they want distractions, not knowledge. This is why we have magic show audiences. They know it is all an artifice but they still come and they want to be amazed but still feel smug. I would help magicians develop routines by sitting in the audience for them and noting the conversations and what the audience focused on and what they said afterwards when I asked "innocent" questions. We would go over this carefully and adjust the presentation accordingly.

The media does this! They "cover" for each other. When one of them slips up like Judith Miller, they all back the one thus exposed. They conspire with the real string pullers behind the scenes and then go back out into the audience to see if they can pull off another switcheroo.

Dr Lavie specialises in inattention blindness. "The skill of a good magician is to make a very interesting, dramatic act with complex actions and interesting verbal utterances," she said.

"He loads your attention with all this information, but it's irrelevant to the act that he presents. It is so you don't notice the deception."

However, humans being natural sceptics go to magic shows knowing they are going to be deceived so they pay special attention to everything. But being overly focused can also be turned to the illusionist's advantage.

Saying something is something is very important. I have proven this works in real life over and over. I once had to overwhelm a bigger man. I was wielding an artist's paint brush that happened to be dipped in red paint so I yelled, "This is a knife and I am going to stab you," and I struck him in the chest with it. He slapped his hand over the paint, looked and yelped, wailing, he ran down the street.

Magic strikes again.

I have found if I say, "This is (fill in the blank)" in a stern and commanding tone, people always take my word for it. This is what North Korea has done to us for several years. In the end, they got what they wanted. The USA suddenly discovered just yesterday that we are being manouvered into basically ending the Korean war which never had a peace treaty, you know. Technically, it is still ongoing. This isn't what "Axis of Evil" Bush wanted, you know. But using magic and patient work, the North Koreans are going to get what they wanted from day one.

Today, it is the edgier performers like Derren Brown and David Blaine that people want to see.

They are both charged with wresting magic back from the grip of the likes of David Copperfield, Paul Daniels and Lance Burton - the poster boys for high-camp family entertainment.

Yes, Blaine and Brown will astonish, but they will also unsettle; they take you on a journey to the parts of your childhood inhabited by the scary clown, not Peter Pan and the fairies.

In reality, their tricks are the same as those played out over generations. Blaine's genius was to strip out the outdated paraphernalia of corny catch-phrases, tuxedos and Vegas-scale stunts and work on the effect instead.

His TV show was successful because it was street magic with the safety catch off.

Every five years or so, a new magician starts his journey and always, always, it is "stripped down" and "in your face" because...he hasn't the money to do the big shows which they all, all of them, end up doing when they can. David Copperfield started out small and edgy. I remember him in the beginning!

He sprang his tricks on unsuspecting passers-by, and then lingered on their reaction, focussing more on their discomfort at what they had experienced than the trick itself.

Transporting modern cynical audiences back to a childlike state of wonder is a tall order even for these kings of cool. But Wiseman believes Derren Brown is doubly astute, using people's natural scepticism and demand for answers to his advantage.

"If he passed himself off as having psychic abilities, he wouldn't be half as successful," Professor Wiseman insists.

They all do that. No good magician "focuses on the trick" ---they focus on the audience. This used to be true of the media who used the Nielson ratings, for example, and other "scientific tools" to see if their magic was working. This is why they are in near hysteria right now. Their tricks are being uncovered and the light of day is shining into the mirror and black velvet lined magic box and this irritates and infuriates them. They seek ways of shutting us down and shutting us up.

As far as fake psychic abilities are concerned: if you want to be massively rich, convince people you are a real psychic! The desire to believe this is incredibly strong in humans. If you claim you can channel/revive the dead, this can bring tremendous power and indeed, nearly all the religions today are based on this very thing! This is the ultimate power. Pretending it isn't is...part of the magic tricks being pulled right in the middle of this article about tricks.

See? Just watch my hands. I am going to shuffle the deck of Tarot cards....

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WAR IS HELL

2005-07-28T07:53:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Normally I set aside articles as I roam the news services. Sometimes, early in the morning, I read a headline, go off, come back to retrieve the article and it is gone!

Today's mysterious story is about the patriotic rebels (yes, they are! We may not like them but they are!) blew up a bunch of American soldiers and at least two died. I notice that there were zero headlines about this anywhere once I decided to find the article and looked for "soldiers dead" and found virtually no papers or media reported the blow up except at Antiwar.com, of course.

Wave those black MIA flags, America! Whoo.

The spectacular train blow up disappeared down the memory hole, too! It was supposed to be spectacular. You would think there would be photos of this, would you? It would be on CNN which just adores war explosions. CNN would run them day and night, missiles and bombs falling upon cities, right? Big thing for them, bombs bursting in air, we sing about this with glee.

Nope. No explosions. No bombs.

In Ohio, in an interview with the press, a voter who isn't going to vote forPaul Hackett, the Iraq war vet who is now against the war, said, "It's a positive thing for him," Mr. Hartman, a substance-abuse specialist with a nonprofit group, said after meeting Ms. Schmidt. "But we're not at war here." Bush pretends we are not at war. He wants to talk about Social Security and wants us to exercise and have more tax cuts. He only talks about the war if forced at gun point. Recently he gave a speech about the war that said nothing and he didn't even urge his besotted followers to join up.

One can't be very surprised that Ohio voters think we are not at war. There is near zero war headlines. I can dig out stories using the internet's vast powers but 90% of the news of it comes from overseas.

My buddies, the Chinese communists, have great news coverage. Heh. Good grief. From Xinhuanet:

A US military helicopter was destroyed when a fire broke out during a hard landing in southeast Afghanistan, but there were no casualties, the US military said onThursday.

The twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook made the hard landing late Wednesday due to brown-out conditions as the crew attempted to land forces near the Pakistani border southwest of the town of Spin Boldak, a military statement said.

"A fire, which is believed to have started from the hard landing, destroyed the aircraft. No one was injured," the statement said.

You can bet, the Chinese are tracking this very closely. They helpfully let us know that at least a dozen helicopters have been shot down or destroyed in Afghanistan. Bet they can tell us all the casualties, too.

This is top secret. I keep a generalized track of this. Unlike all previous wars, the wounded are not counted as "casualties", only the dead. Indeed, they are not mentioned.

The dead?

They get buried deep inside the story! Hidden from view, the specters of war, anonymous, their names no longer revealed later, usually, at the bottom of the story after we read about pipelines and speeches about the constitution of Iraq which is taking away the civil rights of minorities and women, and happy happy talk about troop withdrawals.

Indeed, nearly all of the headlines in America today concerning this non-war was about troop withdrawals. Desperate for popularity, under fire because of Rove, Bush has his media whores trumpeting the planned troop withdrawals. I have a long memory. I remember when troops were at 120,000, they talked about troop withdrawals a year ago. Many headlines blared this information. Today there are 143,000 troops and a host of armed mercenaries. So the news?

Troops will be drawn down to 120,000 by next spring. Oh boy. I can't wait!

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LEARNING FROM MORONS

2005-07-27T13:36:00.000-04:00

Why roaches are winning.

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I keep swearing I won't pay attention to Friedman of the NYT but just like it is hard to ignore a roach when it scuttles over one's dinner platters, so I have to occassionally swat at Friedman.

From the NYT:

John Mack, the new C.E.O. at Morgan Stanley, initially demanded in the contract he signed June 30 that his total pay for the next two years would be no less than the average pay package received by the C.E.O.'s at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. If that average turned out to be more than $25 million, Mr. Mack was to be paid at least that much. He eventually backed off that demand after a howl of protest, but it struck me as the epitome of what is wrong in America today.

We are now playing defense. A top C.E.O. wants to be paid not based on his performance, but based on the average of his four main rivals! That is like Lance Armstrong's saying he will race only if he is guaranteed to come in first or second, no matter what his cycling times are on each leg.

Geeze. What is it with these mindless cyberroaches working for the mass media? Next, will he suggest our CEOs take up bike riding so they can energetically run over bobbies and fall on their faces?

How many miles does Friedman peddle on his trike? One circuit around the Pond in Central Park but only if his mommy hails a taxi to take him home?

I recently spent time in Ireland, which has quietly become the second-richest country in the E.U., first by going through some severe belt-tightening that meant everyone had to sacrifice, then by following that with a plan to upgrade the education of its entire work force, and a strategy to recruit and induce as many global high-tech companies and researchers as possible to locate in Ireland. The Irish have a plan. They are focused. They have mobilized business, labor and government around a common agenda. They are playing offense.

Um, Ireland raided our corporate enties for jobs. They underbid our own people and were some of the first to gain via outsourcing some pretty nice computer jobs. Indeed, how on earth can we imitate them? Who is going to outsource jobs to us?

The Cubans?

And if you were president, would you really say to the nation, in the face of the chaos in Iraq, that "if our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them," but that they had not asked? It is not what the generals are asking you, Mr. President - it is what you are asking them, namely: "What do you need to win?" Because it is clear we are not winning, and we are not winning because we have never made Iraq a secure place where normal politics could emerge.

He jumps from yapping about Ireland to talking about Cheney and the energy bill that fixes nothing even though he thinks it is a fine bill (what???) when suddenly, he veers aside like a sheep being ordered to run off a cliff and launches into this stuff about Iraq.

It is natural to think "Iraq" when thinking "Cheney" and "oil". But still, that paragraph makes no sense at all. Didn't Bush try to outsource the Iraq war work to Ireland and the rest of Europe? And remember, they said no except for the French who said "non"? Didn't Tony Blair finally do the cheap labor part and for his pains, got bombed?

And what is "normal politics"? Dropping bombs on civilians and then invading and occupying their country against their will isn't "normal", is it?

Maybe it is...to the cockroach empire. They occupy whatever and where ever they want.

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SPAM SPAM SPAM

2005-07-26T23:54:00.000-04:00

Cast of Spamalot on Broadway (BBC)

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Probably my all time favorite movie is Monty Python's Holy Grail. I laughed myself into oblivion when I first saw it and repeat watching simply increases the brain damage. I'm not dead yet!

On the web, the love of Python is enduring and intense. From the very beginning of the internet's existence, the alternate reality of the Python gang has had great influence. This is why annoying emails are called "spam". "We've got spam spam spam spam spam scrambled eggs spam.." is of course, so famous, it is now a religious chant like doing one's Hail Marys.

Spam news for today comes from Mother Russia. From Mosnews:

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

Kushnir, 35, headed the English learning centers the Center for American English, the New York English Centre and the Centre for Spoken English, all known to have aggressive Internet advertising policies in which millions of e-mails were sent every day.

In the past angry Internet users have targeted the American English centre by publishing the Center’s telephone numbers anywhere on the Web to provoke telephone calls. The Center’s telephone was advertised as a contact number for cheap sex services, or bargain real estate sales.

Another attack involved hundreds of people making phone calls to the American English Center and sending it numerous e-mails back, but Vardan Kushnir remained sure of his right to spam, saying it was what e-mails were for.

He must qualify for this year's Darwin Awards. Talk about not getting a clue! I know that the vast majority of web users would just love to see this happen to the people who want us to help them fix bank accounts in Nigeria or think women need Viagra offers or fake Paypal and Ebay account fixes, if we could deep six the people flooding our cyberworld with this tripe, you can bet, they would not be on Noah's .com when the flood waters rise!

Maybe computer designers can come up with a computer that works like a roach motel. Someone starts to send spam and they get stuck to the keyboard or something. Fly paper.

Well, I am certain great minds will come up with some solution besides Gates making us pay him a penny each time we write, hey, wait, I think it could work if I were to get a penny for each spam. Heh. Gates has enough money already. I bet there are legions of people out there in the cyber world who would like to get a penny for each email.

I think I will send out a zillion emails about this...(clunk...club to the side of the head).

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RATS CLINGING TO SINKING SHIP

2005-07-23T10:06:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I would imagine that even slightly intelligent right wingers would be swimming madly away from the USS Bush Titanic. But they hang on, squealing in protest. Bush's numbers fall, they squeal louder. Their heroes are exposed as moral depraved lunatics, the rats run around in cicles, biting ankles. Their lies about lying lie in ruins.

Time for Tierney, newly hired by the New York Times, to make a fake frontal assault on our sense of fairness and the laws of the land! From the NYT:

The current zeal for sending doctors to jail for writing painkiller prescriptions may seem baffling, especially to the patients who relied on the doctors for pain relief. But if you consider it from the perspective of the agents raiding the doctors' offices, you can see a certain logic.

During the war on drugs in the 1980's and 1990's, federal and local agents risked their lives going after drug gangs on the streets. As their budgets for drug enforcement soared, they arrested hundreds of thousands of people annually and filled a quarter of American prison cells with drug offenders.

Heh. Nothing like getting Bush caught on his coke lies or Schwarzenegger on film toking on a joint to get the right wing to denounce the war on drugs but not change anything! Now that Rush is caught up in the net, Tierney, obeying a call from his owner, has piped up to talk about not enforcing drug laws in this area.

The D.E.A. announced that in two years, there had been 464 OxyContin-related deaths, but most of the victims had taken other drugs, too, so the cause of death was uncertain. Ronald Libby, a political scientist at the University of North Florida, notes that even that figure is a minuscule fraction (0.00008 percent) of the number of OxyContin prescriptions written, and that it's dwarfed by the more than 32,000 people who die in the same period from gastrointestinal bleeding from other painkillers, like aspirin and ibuprofen.

The OxyContin crisis was fanned by sensationalized press coverage and by popular fears that unsuspecting patients getting this painkiller were being turned into dangerous addicts. While it's true that chronic-pain patients taking opioids for a long time require higher and higher doses, the drugs typically don't give them a high or interfere with their lives. Instead, the drugs enable them to function.

Note how he glides from all drugs to the one that matters: Oxytoxin. He belittles the medical data, mocks the laws, mentions everyone but Rush, pretends to be an outsider dispassionately talking about social ills when all he is merely an enabler of a criminal right wing goon who is useful to our rulers.

If enough doctors are jailed or scared into not writing prescriptions, it's conceivable that this drug war could have more impact than the ones against heroin and cocaine - doctors, after all, are harder to replace than crack dealers. But even if there's less OxyContin on the street, is that worth the suffering of patients who can't get the painkillers they need?

Maybe some OxyContin addicts would be helped, but consider the progress the White House's drug-policy agency found last year in a field survey on drug use in Cincinnati:

"Because diverted OxyContin is more expensive and difficult to purchase," the agency reported, "users have switched to heroin."

Behold the psychopathic cannibal in action! The doctors who wrote Rush the Lush all those prescriptions illegally are in trouble. And they will squeal on Rush so why prosecute them? Why put Miller in jail, for that matter? All she is doing is hiding the facts concerning a grave federal crime committed by the President who wanted to destroy the lives of those who opposed his public policies!

Cannibals.

Worse! These crummy cannibals are now whining about heroin which is now super cheap. Before we invaded Afghanistan, it was hard to get, expensive, and the Taliban crushed the poppy growers and prevented them from smuggling. In return, we killed them and took over and now 90% of the heroin in the world comes from our province of Afghanistan!

Tierney is a cannibal who is too fearful to hunt with a spear.

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CNN REPORTER WHISPERS THE TRUTH

2005-07-16T21:05:00.000-04:00

From Crooks and Liars:

CNN's "That's Bullshit" Coverage

Lou Dobbs Tonight, (7/15/05) as Lou was introducing a piece on the Rove story.

Lou says, "...Rove testifying that he first learned about Plame from columnist Robert Novak, a CNN contributor. Danna Bash reports." Immediately after that you can clearly hear a female voice on mic whispering "that's bullshit". Then Dana Bash continues with her report.

Video-WMP only (it's low quality)

(Thanks to Wendy)

If they don't edit this out in the re-broadcast I'll have a QT version also.

Please go to this website and click on the audio. It is really funny. Seems Dana, forced to read her script which is prepared from GOP speaking points, couldn't hold it back anymore and told the truth. This is what we live for on the web, to catch moments like this which is when the mask slips and we learn that our tormentors who pretend to be reporters, actually know they are screwing the pooch. They do this for the money which is why we call them "media whores."

Dana could hold a press conference to explain to us why she knows the crappy news she reads is "bullshit". This would go along ways towards fixing what is broken.

But then, the media whores will return to attacking bloggers for not being real reporters! Heh. Too bad.

Here is her bio:

Dana Bash is CNN's White House correspondent, responsible for covering the activities of the president and the administration, domestically and internationally. Named to this position in November 2002, she is based in the network's Washington, D.C., bureau.

Since being named White House correspondent, Bash has reported from the nation's capital and from locations around the world covering President George W. Bush and the administration, including the 2004 presidential campaign and the capture of Saddam Hussein. Previously, Bash was the Capitol Hill producer for CNN, where she had primary editorial and newsgathering responsibility for the network's coverage of the U.S. Senate.

Since 1999, Bash has covered every major story on Capitol Hill, including the Republican dominance in the 2002 elections, the war on terrorism, campaign finance reform, the Florida recount and the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. Frequently cited on-air by anchors and reporters, she also provided live reporting during the evacuation of the Capitol building in the days after Sept. 11, 2001. In 2003, Bash provided viewers the latest information about the war in Iraq.

Bash was one of the first journalists to report that Vermont's Sen. Jim Jeffords would leave the Republican Party in May 2001, giving control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats. In 2002, she broke the story of the government's secret intercepts of Al Qaeda translations on Sept. 10, 2001, for which received the prestigious Dirksen Award from the National Press Foundation.

Actually, I was the first to know Jeffords was leaving the party. I was in the hall of the Senate office building just outside the doors of Trent Lott's big office. I was arguing with him and I said, "You won't be here much longer" and he said, "How do you know," and I retorted, "Jeffords told me you were not going to be around much longer." This was in late November, 2000.

Heh. He let it slip because everyone was freaking out over the failed election and we had no winner and he blurted this out to me when I came into his office unexpectedly, talking about voting machines and voter fraud. So I went online and told Joe Conason who then asked Jeffords who then denied it. Rats. But he did tell me and he did do it, as promised.

Dana isn't a bad person, by the way. She is smart and she wants to move up in the world. I only hope she reconsiders who she sleeps with and what secrets she tries to keep from us ordinary bloggers. She isn't outwitting us exactly.

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MEDIA BLACK HOLE

2005-07-14T23:08:00.000-04:00

From Buzzflash.com

The biggest giants of the news world are stumbling and falling, as they implode, it reminds me of slow motion pictures of the World Trade Center.

I am in a gloomy mood tonight because whenever Bush is on the ropes, people die.

So I googled my own past tonight. Old names of dead people who crossed swords with the rulers slithered across my screen, bringing floods of thoughts and some considerable pain.

From Reuters:

Publisher Knight Ridder Inc.on Thursday said quarterly earnings fell 14 percent due to circulation declines, while rival Tribune Co. (TRB.N) relied on cost cutting to help it post higher profits.

Circulation declines at both media companies underscored the problems the industry has faced in subscription drives since do-not-call lists began blocking telemarketers. At the same time, more readers are getting their news from new media such as the Internet rather than traditional newspapers.

Knight Ridder shares fell 30 cents to $62.11 while Tribune shares rose 29 cents to $35.69 on the New York Stock Exchange.

``With Tribune's very tight cost controls, we found some encouragement in that,'' said A.G. Edwards analyst Mike Kupinski. ``A little glimmer of hope in there.''

Tribune, owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune and operator of 26 television stations, reported profit rose to $233.4 million from $96.4 million, helped by the cost cutting.

But the swing was heavily influenced by special items in both periods. Revenue fell to $1.46 billion from $1.50 billion a year ago. Morgan Stanley analyst Douglas Arthur described cost controls at the media company as ``very impressive.''

But he added in a research note that there remained ``brutal'' pressure on its revenues ``from massive circulation declines and a disappointingly choppy ad environment, coupled with significant ratings and ad woes in TV.''

Here is a letter to the editor I got past the censors way back in 2000, talking about the failing election even as it was going over the cliff. From the Monitor magazine:

The Unexamined Man

Thank you for the article about Bush's free pass with the press and the refusal of the press to cover the missing AWOL years.

I was part of a team of people who used the platform provided by Salon.com's Table Talk folders to work on research and dissemination of hard facts to the press. We covered every single possible base, all large, medium and even small news organizations. We did open battle with the NYT and George Magazine. We used one fact after another.

They refused to understand the story or they claimed that since the Bushes and the Bush supporters were stonewalling them that this means no one can ask questions.

I demanded they put in headlines saying, "Bush refuses to talk about missing years...Questions are raised about possible criminal activities during this time".

This, we patiently explained, would force Bush to cough up his full military record which we were unable to access. Even the NYT refused. They said that it wasn't that interesting. Worse, one of the reporters for George Magazine told us, "Yeah, he probably was arrested for cocaine trafficking but they won't talk so we had to ignore this". I said, "Why didn't you say this in your story?" He refused to answer me (no doubt, imitating Bush perfectly).

We now have a bonafide criminal for President. Americans might ignore this but I seriously doubt the rest of the planet will ignore this.

Elaine Supkis

My battle with George Magazine was hilarious and brutal. They kept editorializing about me and misspelled my name in three different ways! I won my fight only they surrendered secretly in a phone call, telling me the magazine was going under and that I was right all along and they were forced to lie. Alas, I couldn't get that published by anyone.

The fight over the Bush AWOL issue lasted for years. Subterranean, occasionally a fin would cut the water surface and the populace at large would wonder what is going on, then back down below, a battle that was pretty bloody. Here is a recent example of this alternative action at work on a blog. From Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly:

In a George Magazine article of October 19, 2000, Peter Keating and Karthik Thyagarajan identified the "torn document" as a "an Air National Guard statement of days served by Bush that is torn and undated but contains entries that correspond to" "an April 23, 1973 order for Bush to report to annual active duty training the following month."

http://web.archive.org/web/20001019063017/www2.georgemag.com/bush.html

Someone mentions the torn document. It should be famous but is unknown except to web denizens who watched our online battles with the Bushes and the media giants. This document which showed Bush went AWOL was coughed up one fine Sunday when Marty and I were busy baiting the George Magazine reporters and they suddenly put on line, for a minute, a replication of this document which we captured and began to analyze. This started a very furious fight with me declaring victory, as I recounted here, on this much later forum of Kevin Drum;

Hi, everyone. Read the READER'S COMMENTS about the George Magazine article. Note that the reporters talk about Marty and myself (misnaming me, naturally!).

The "torn document" documents a CRIME: when Bartlett went with Bush to the records room in Texas and "scrubbed" the reports.

In the WH, Bush blubbers that "people SCRUBBED my records" as if this meant "Handed over to people like Marty, Rogers and (Elaine)" when his subconscious self was screaming "we destroyed the reports about my drug abuse!"

Posted by: Elaine Supkis on February 8, 2004 at 8:38 PM | PERMALINK

This really happened on the Sunday before the last week during the 2000 election. We knew we witnessed a crime. We spent a frantic week trying to call a press conference and we got McCain and Kerrey to appear in DC on C-span to demand an investigation of Bush.

It was canned. McCain refused to talk to the press and slithered off for he was offered great goodies if he shut up. I was furious.

None of this made the news! Not a peep. And I was yelling nonstop! I went to DC and yelled all over the place!

There are so many exciting things going on...underwater. Like we see in the news, occasionally the sharks rip off legs or torsos of people and it makes the news but most of the time they lie low in the water and watch. Right now, today, we are seeing the fins of the sharks as the media circles Rove. No shark is going to connect all the many dots. They won't talk about the stuff I obsess over. They will pretend to be innocent even if they end up telling me the truth...secretly. They will revert to lying in public or worse, pretending to know little while sniggering about being in the know.

The press is dying.

Long live the blogs!

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GREAT DETECTIVES

2005-07-03T09:54:00.000-04:00

The news media people love to know things we don't know. They gossip. They party with each others and our ruling elites. They have that most valuable thing: information. They choose if and when to share it with the rest of the world. This dividing line has been broken, partially, by the internet and the flock of bloggers and forum visitors.

The sordid mess of the run up to the illegal Iraq invasion is full of dangerous knowledge/hidden information that was used as per usual by the rulers and their minions in the press. In particular, when Ambassador Wilson made a dust up over the forged yellow cake documents, an issue which still molders in its media grave since the agency that made these forgeries, though known by both reporters, media owners and our rulers, isn't investigated nor talked about...in public.

The conspiracy to silence and shock and awe critics of the war came to full bloom against Ambassador Wilson because he was attached to the ruling class and therefore was most dangerous...he was in the know! No mere outsider barking at the gates.

It was pretty easy to attack him but some of the media dogs hesitated because outing the wife of the ambassador was utterly illegal so the rulers had to call upon one of their own, old Mr. Novak. He grumpily complied with the implicit promise that he would be pardoned and not go to jail.

This game fell apart spectacularily so the press decided to cover it as little as possible and if covering, not connect any obvious dots which would lead to not only impeachment of both Bush and Cheney but in extention, their possible trials at the Hague. So everyone watched, hoping nothing would happen.

It happened. Namely, the poll showing a near majority of Americans want to impeach Bush for lying us into an unnecessary war.

From Editor and Publisher:

MSNBC's O'Donnell first offered the Rove revelation Friday night on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show. Today, he went beyond that, writing a brief entry at the Huffington Post blog:

"I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's e-mails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

"McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

"Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow."

Before the "election" this reporter knew that it was Karl Rove who broke federal laws and he knew a great deal about what was going on! He didn't "want to be dragged before a grand jury," poor baby, so he conspired to cover up a crime! You know, doing this usually leads to prison, at least in the real world.

Of course, our rulers have no intention of imprisoning this wicked man. They will protect him unlike the people around the Clintons who were ruthlessly pursued by a vengeful Starr and some actually went to prison, like McDonnell, rather than lie to a grand jury! Starr hasn't been prosecuted for his prosecution, of course.

But this matter isn't about lying about a blow job. This is about lying about uncovering the identity of a CIA job. A dangerous job dealing with investigating WMD programs!

I also am agast at this smug reporter who sat like a hen on his scoop, "too many people know this" in particular, steams me. Every time we bloggers break through the boundries set by the media, like with the Downing Street Memo conspiracy to not talk about it, when we force the issue they all sigh and say, "Everyone (who runs America) knows this already, it is old news." They then chuckle at our audacity to be in the know.

Here is the text of what O'Donnell said on Friday:

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury--the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other McLaughlin Group panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper.

He recognizes here on TV that he is a material witness to a crime and his sighs about being bothered with a grand jury questioning is palpable here. Far from being an outraged citizen who wants rule of law and doing one's duty, he is inconvenienced by the possibility that his dinner dates and cocktail arrangements and hob nobbability will be cramped by him sharing his club's great trove of information with citizens.

According to published reports, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, has interviewed President Bush and Vice President Cheney and called Karl Rove, among others, to testify before the grand jury.

"The breadth of Fitzgerald's inquiry has led to speculation that it has evolved into an investigation of a conspiracy to leak Plame's identity," the Chicago Tribune observed on Friday, "or of an attempt to cover up White House involvement in the leak."

When we had the laughable 9/11 commission that refused to pursue many interesting questions concerning the attack on America which Bush called "his trifecta (I won!)" Bush and Cheney insisted they testify in secrecy, together and not under oath. This boon was granted to the duo and they happily lied their heads off after insuring the grilling would last only two hours. It should never had happened. The commission should have resigned when they refused to do it the normal way.

Clinton was forced to testify in public under oath. "Whatever 'is' is," is a famous quote from the video. All the details were fed to the public in raw form. The word "penis" which was verboten in the news as pornographic was everywhere.

The glee with which the press "leaked" all of Starr's information and allegations and such was barely concealed. This feeding frenzy was totally illegal. Grand juries are charged with not leaking information and the prosecutor was well known as the leaker to the point that Starr was investigated. But the charges were dropped when no reporters would tell the Grand Jury who leaked to them specifically.

Now they are at it again, only this time, many humans were brutally killed, our government is rapidly going bankrupt with the huge sums being wasted in Iraq, innocent people were murdered and are dying daily thanks to this little conspiracy. So this isn't a small matter, it is of grave concern. Many wars are started by hysteria like the Cuba adventure, or Vietnam. But this is beyond those war hysterias, this was manufactured with deliberation from the top, not war mongering from the press below. And the crimes against those who opposed this war are intimately intertwined with the crime of the war itself.

This will be bigger than Watergate, everyone. But only if we keep hammering on it.

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4th OF JULY FOR DUMMIES

2005-07-02T08:36:00.000-04:00

As we zero in on our national celebration of our greatness it is time to reflect on what we have become. To see us for what we are, we go to our allies and former rulers, the British, and view their take on our news.

Open up the BBC front page and it has several important headlines: Live 8 Global Concert to raise awareness of Africa/US planes bomb Taleban stronghold/Iraq envoy accuses US of killing are the three top headlines. Go to any American paper and seek these headlines out! The only war ones are about the "missing troops". No mention of Africa in any shape or form. Seems playing concerts isn't breeching our media barriers, is it? The NYT just put up a picture with a caption, at least. CNN has the concerts on its front page but says they are for "global poverty", not Africa. The logo for the concerts shows an 8 shaped as a guitar resting on top of Africa! At least CNN mentions the demonstrations at the G8 meeting.

The NYT hands over vast tracts of print real estate to some of the shallowest, stupidest writers on earth. From the NYT:

The critics have not been kind to the prose and the plot, but they miss Saddam's strength. He's a marketer. He is said to have finished the novel just as the war was beginning, when American leaders were fantasizing about their troops' being welcomed as liberators. But Saddam knew enough to give his novel a surefire title for the post-invasion era: "Get Out, You Damned One."

It's a naked appeal to xenophobia, an impulse that's far more ancient and widespread than the yearning for democracy that President Bush talked about this week. Yet it's been curiously underestimated by conservatives who used to pay close attention to just this sort of instinct.

The reason why we are so hated by so many is because we are the world's most powerful zenophobes. We think we are number one and our way or the highway and we poke everyone in the eye and tell everyone how to live and then scream in rage when anyone dares to suggest we change things at home. The ultimate zenophobe is an invader who takes this to other lands and then murders lots of people. We are on a killing rage today in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are killing and we are killing. The more we kill them the more they resist us and kill us. Being rank zenophobes, we can't understand why they are killing us.

We invaded their countries.

Getting this fact through dense right wing heads is nearly impossible. If you tell them, "This is what a patriot does to invaders, look, the 4th of July celebrates the day we declared war on our own governors and started fighting them!" falls on deaf ears.

"You support terrorism," is the stock reply.

In those early days, when the memory of Saddam was still fresh, you could walk down a street in Baghdad and be greeted by an Iraqi stranger thanking you for bringing freedom. But even back then there were plenty of Iraqis like Saleh Youssef Sayel, who proudly told me of the reaction of his 5-year-old son, Mustafa, to an American soldier.

"The soldier tried to shake his hand, but my son refused," he said. "He knew enough English to say, 'No. You go.' Later he told me he wanted a gun to kill Americans. This is a natural feeling. Nobody wants a stranger in your house or your country."

The natural impulse to dislike outsiders is so strong that it barely matters who the outsiders are.

Even little children understand invaders are not friends and should be shunned until they leave. The minute we invaded Iraq we became invaders. Duh. And trying to keep a grip on that country has driven us into acting like Nazis. This is part of being a nasty invader.

From the BBC News:

Iraq's ambassador to the UN has demanded an inquiry into what he said was the "cold-blooded murder" of his young unarmed relative by US marines.
Samir Sumaidaie said his 21-year-old cousin was shot as he helped marines who were carrying out searches at his village in the restive Anbar province.

Seems his cousin was happy to see Americans, showed them the rifle, all Iraqis are armed, note how Americans are very proud of being armed at home, ask the NRA! Our redcoats invaded his home, took the gun, took the cousin and shot the other one in the neck and then stomped off. You can bet, a swarm of relatives are now hunting Americans! And they will bag some before long. Nearly all of Iraq's Sunni are now on a crusade to kill as many Americans as possible.

From the Albany Times Union:

A fire broke out Friday at a power station that supplies a Baghdad waterworks, shutting it down and leaving millions of residents without drinking water, officials said.

The blaze came a day after Baghdad's mayor decried the capital's crumbling infrastructure and the lack of clean water and threatened to resign if the Iraqi government won't provide more money.

$300 billion is being spent in Iraq by our mad money grubbing military and they can't run the water or electricty. Our failure to run things is now total. We have nothing to show for our invasion. So why on earth do we stay?

Back to the NYT village idiot:

Because marriage between cousins is so common in the Middle East - half of Iraqis are married to their first or second cousins - Arabs live in tightly knit clans long resistant to outsiders, including would-be liberators. T. E. Lawrence learned that lesson when trying to unify Arabs early in the last century.

"The Semites' idea of nationality," he wrote, "was the independence of clans and villages, and their ideal of national union was episodic combined resistance to an intruder. Constructive policies, an organized state, an extended empire, were not so much beyond their sight as hateful in it. They were fighting to get rid of Empire, not to win it."

My family has been here since the Glorious Revolution failed in England in the 1600's. We have many first cousins marrying each other. This is why many of my relations look so much like my family. I met several Steeles still living in the Hudson Valley and we look the same, we joke about this. We also fought in the Revolution. And we bristle if people tell us how to live and you can bet, anyone invading our lands will be summarily dealt with.

I happen to have read more than once, "The Seven Pillars of WISDOM". It is a powerful book. In it, Lawrence laments his duties that force him to betray those tribal people who trusted him. He is tormented by this knowledge that he is faking their heartfelt revolution. He knows Britain and France have drawn up secret protocols to divide up the lands of the Ottoman Empire without consultation with the people living there and thus the modern map of the Middle East, fractured and unstable, were created.

This is why there is always wars there! And revolutions. Anyone wanting to control any of these false colonial entities must be ruthless.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. We broke away from an empire. We are now an empire. We are the red coats. We are the bad guys. The Iraqis are the Minute Men fighting a well armed empire.

Back to Tierney's wierd analysis:

Today's liberators in Iraq like to attribute the resistance to Islamic fascists' fear of democracy and hatred of the West. But those fascists know that an abstract critique of Western ideology isn't enough to attract followers. In their appeals they constantly invoke the need to expel foreigners from their soil, a battle cry that is the great common denominator of suicide bombers around the world.

Maybe, as President Bush hopes, Americans can stay long enough in the Middle East to jump-start democracy and reduce the long-term risk of terrorism. But in the meantime, they're bound to face resistance, no matter how noble their intentions.

During the Civil War, Union soldiers were amazed to see poor Southerners without any stake in the slavery system defending it in suicidal charges. But there was a simple explanation, as a barefoot, emaciated Confederate captive famously put it when a Union soldier asked him why he kept fighting: "Because you're here."

Well, America is splitting up again thanks to right wingers particularily in the south. They hate what America is: liberal. And they hate the American flag so much they have to pass laws protecting it. Seriously, they hate the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. The Civil War was over the Constitution which is why the southern states got rid of it and replaced it with the confederate statutes. Our intentions towards Iraq were never noble. They were craven from the first day. We claimed Saddam was attacking us when he wasn't and we claimed he had weapons which he didn't.

Our pretense that we are now bringing democracy is ridiculous. Democracy is not done at the point of a gun.

The sickness of the soul of right wing America is right here in Mr. Tierney's column. He calls patriots in Iraq "fascists" because they want to unite their people against foreign imperial invaders! How dare they! Obviously, this demented writer for the NYT knows no American history.

Let's review the 4th of July: we declared war on the British empire. We then ambushed marching troops in Concord and the war raged. People had to choose sides or move or die. If one supported the empire, one could be tarred and feathered and driven out of town or one's barns were burned. This was neighbor against neighbor as well as army against army. Many pro imperialists fled to Canada and Britain.

This is what we are celebrating this month.

From the BBC:

American fighter planes have bombed a suspected Taleban hideout in the same area of eastern Afghanistan where US servicemen are missing, officials say. A senior Afghan official told the BBC 25 people had been killed in two air raids on a house in Chechal village.

US military spokesman Lt Col Jerry O'Hara told the AP news agency: "We conducted an air strike on a target we deemed we had to hit immediately."

He said the target was an "enemy compound" in Kunar province. Lt Col O'Hara said the attack was carried out with precision-guided weapons on a target that was "intelligence driven".

Basically, we bombed a village and killed people and you can bet, this war is just beginning, not ending. Being an empire, we are basically cowardly and use aerial bombs as much as possible against people who have no airforce, no antiaircraft guns, nothing. They are naked to our superior imperial violence.

Yet they fight on. They want us out. They will kill any neighbors who dare to betray their countries and cooperate with foreign invaders. They are Minute Men. They are Patriots.

We are the Red Coats.

WE'RE NOT NAZIS! Screams the Right Wing Media

2005-06-22T15:07:00.000-04:00

O'Reilly's nearest and dearest, it seems.

After sucessfully ignoring the lynching apology in the Senate whereby mostly Northern Senators apologized for the crimes of the Southern Senators nearly all of whom refused themselves to apologize, the media reverted back to what they love doing the most: screaming Nazi-style abuse at Democrats and liberals whenever any of them dare mention the gross similarities between modern Republicans and old style Nazis.

Here is just one series of examples from one top neo-Nazi Republican, Mr. O'Reilly--at Mediamatters.com:

From the June 17 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: Well, I mean, you're telling the world, senator, that we're a repressive country because you don't like coerced interrogation. Now, the FBI report, for those of you whom missed it, centered around a detainee who was chained to the floor in the fetal position. You know what the fetal position is -- that's not an uncomfortable position. Most of us sleep in a fetal position. OK? So picture the fetal position, most of us sleep that way. But the guy's chained. Now he can't move, he's down there.

Then they either make the room unbearably hot or unbearably cold. And they keep the guy there for 24 to 36 hours in that position, so they can't go to the bathroom. OK? So that's what the FBI guy reported. That's what's got Durbin conjuring up images of Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin. So you make the call, you make the call. It's up to you. I'm not gonna tell you what to think.

I'll tell you what I think! The chief form of torture used by the Nazis was exactly this sort of torture. They could, like our troops, also put leashes on people and make human pyramids or kick them to death or electocute them or waterboard them. But in the long list of things Nazis loved to do, making people stay, naked, in hot/cold cells shackled in awful positions was number one favorite.

If anyone doubts me, read any memoirs of survivors of this sort of "mild torture". We even brought over SS and Gestapo officers after the war so we could learn from them. Thus the "School of the Americas".

Not satisfied with endorsing and laughing at true Nazi-style torture, the next day, he has to wave his banner high and become a full blown Nazi:

From the June 20 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: And when he [Durbin] went out there, his intent was to whip up the American public against the Bush detainee policy. That's what his intent was. His intent wasn't to undermine the war effort, because he never even thought about it. He never even thought about it. But by not thinking about it, he made an egregious mistake because you must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq war and the war on terror and undermining it. And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9-11, is a traitor.

Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care, couldn't care less.

Posted to the web on Wednesday June 22, 2005 at 2:53 PM EST

My, oh my. So, for talking about torture and recognizing that our secretive prison system that is totally outside our own Constitution and the Geneva Conventions is wrong, our punishment should be...torture and execution?

O'Reilly spits on our Constitution when he calls for punishment of free speech. This, of course, crashes into his own contentions that we are bombing and murdering Iraqis so they can have free speech and democracy. But he wants to imprison us here at home for having free speech.

Is this obvious fascist being thrown off corporate TV? Practice what you preach, dude! Since free speech like this sort of vile, AntiAmerican talk, should be punished the very least by his owners not paying him good money to say these things! He can call for putting us in prison from some street corner or insane asylum but not on a major TV station broadcast to all the world! No.

This is bad, a naughty no-no. Will any Senators dare stand up in Congress and denounce the company that pays this anti-American? Will this be denounced? Will he be forced to resign like Dan Rather?

Of course not. He is the faithful voice of the Real Rulers. They have given up on trying to persuade us. Now they want to scare us.

I am not scared.

To contact corporate headquarters:

Westwood One
Bart Tessler
Sr. VP, Network News / Talk Programming
202.457.7998

All of this is owned by Mr. Murdoch. Here he is talking about us bloggers

Anyone who doubts this should read a recent report by the Carnegie Corporation about young people’s changing habits of news consumption and what they mean for the future of the news industry.

According to this report, and I quote, “There’s a dramatic revolution taking place in the news business today, and it isn’t about TV anchor changes, scandals at storied newspapers or embedded reporters.” The future course of news, says the study’s author, Merrill Brown, is being altered by technology-savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways.

Instead, as the study illustrates, consumers between the ages of 18-34 are increasingly using the web as their medium of choice for news consumption. While local TV news remains the most accessed source of news, the internet, and more specifically, internet portals, are quickly becoming the favored destination for news among young consumers.

44 percent of the study’s respondents said they use a portal at least once a day for news, as compared to just 19 percent who use a printed newspaper on a daily basis. More ominously, looking out three years, the study found that 39 percent expected to use the internet more to learn about the news, versus only 8 percent who expected to use traditional newspapers more.

And their attitudes towards newspapers are especially alarming. Only 9 percent describe us as trustworthy, a scant 8 percent find us useful, and only 4 percent of respondents think we’re entertaining. Among major news sources, our beloved newspaper is the least likely to be the preferred choice for local, national or international news going forward.

What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel.

Yes, Mr. Screaming at Us for Talking About Fascists Murdoch, you are not entertaining, nor are you reliable nor are you up-to-date with any information that is meaningful. We skim through your dungeons online not to be informed or entertained but to pick up ammo so we can shoot back at you.

Indeed, many of the mainstream web portals imagine all that traffic is due to people running over to them to bask in the glorious information they are providing.

Hahaha. The few times any magazine or newspaper or TV station checked on "comments" sections was to shut them up or shut them down. This is why there are nearly none left. And writing comments was a waste of time since no editor or publisher or owner ever read any of this stuff we poured over them for the last 15 years.

Now we are back to sending emails and making phone calls which they dislike but still sometimes in a rare fit, answer. Of course, it is nearly only the right wingers who get the answers. Silence greets our missives. So we bloggers toil away, magnifying each other just like here, magnifying Media Matters which was started by a disgruntled warrior on the right wing media front!

Go git 'em! Rrralf.