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READING

Silent Coup: The Removal of a President - Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin (free online version/download here)

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STOP TERRORISM

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

og = J Orlin Grabbe
u = Progressive Review's Undernews
a = Antiwar

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Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia

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Just consider what current events will sound like two thousand years from now -- the greatest nation on Earth bombing some of the smallest and weakest for no clear reasons, people starving in parts of the world while farmers are paid not to plant crops in others, technophiles sitting at home playing electronic golf rahter than the real thing, and police forces ordered to arrest people who simply desire to ingest a psychoactive weed. People of that era will also likely laugh it all off as fantastic myths...

It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves -- to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity.

This does not have to involve violence. It can be done in small, simple ways, like not financing that new Sport Utility Vehicle, cutting up all but one credit card, not opting for a second mortgage, turning off that TV sitcom for a good book, asking questions and speaking out in church or synagogue, attending school board and city council meetings, voting for the candidate who has the least money, learning about the Fully Informed Jury movement and using it when called -- in general, taking responsibility for one's own actions. Despite the omnipresent advertising for the Lotto -- legalized government gambling -- there is no free lunch. Giving up one's individual power for the hope of comfort and security has proven to lead only to tyranny.

from Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs

* * * *

You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. . .It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

. . . Things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

* * * *

By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, The Louisiana air base had benn placed under siege.

The base's electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.

Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing an federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead the rogue Governor employed proxy guerrillas.

Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana's many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesticides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.

Proles cheerfully grouped in any locale where conventional authority had grown weak. Whenever the net-based proles were not constantly harassed by the authorities, they coalesced and grew ambitious. Though easily scattered by focused crackdowns, they regrouped as swiftly as a horde of gnats. With their reaping machines and bio-breweries, they could live off the land at the very base of the food chain. They had no stake in the established order, and they cherished a canny street-level knowledge of society's infrastructural weaknesses. They made expensive enemies. . .

Louisiana's ecologically blighted areas were ideal for proles. The disaster zones were also impromptu wildlife sanctuaries, since wild animals found chemical fouling much easier to survive than the presence of human beings. After decades of wild subtropical growth, Louisiana's toxic dumps were as impenetrable as Sherwood Forest.

from Distraction by Bruce Sterling

and s-integrator

Saturday, December 07, 2002

Despite 80% of the public comments on the snowmobiles in national parks issue being against their use, the NPS will in fact increase the number allowed [u]
How did such overwhelming opposition to snowmobiles result in such a snowmobile-friendly decision? Officials said that there would be more snowmobiles, but that they would be newer, cleaner and quieter and that therefore any environmental damage would be reduced.

Beyond that, officials say the sheer volume of public comment is not a determining factor. "It was not a vote," said Steve Iobst, assistant superintendent of Grand Teton. The point of the comment period, he said, is to yield substantive, informed letters that alert park officials to something they might have missed in reaching their conclusion.

In fact, the public comment period has become a widely discredited measure of public sentiment because it has been susceptible to what critics call AstroTurf campaigns, the opposite of real grass-roots efforts, in which advocacy groups encourage their members to sign their names on form letters.

This is especially true since the emergence of e-mail. Mr. Iobst said that over the three-day Memorial Day weekend alone, the Park Service received 45,000 e-mail messages on snowmobiles. He said the agency considered those comments in its decision, "but not at face value."

A court decision in 1987 gave officials clearance to ignore mass mailings. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a ruling written by then Judge Kenneth W. Starr, said that a determination of a clean-water issue should not be based on the number of comments, most urging the Environmental Protection Agency to allow them to discharge pollutants into the water.

11:53 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

R.I.P. Ivan Illich [u]
Mr. Illich was perhaps best known for his 1971 book, "De-Schooling Society," which protested mandatory public education and the institutionalization of learning. Along with works like Paul Goodman's, "Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society," published in 1960, it provided grist for a society's growing ambivalence about educational institutions and much else.

Mr. Illich was a priest who thought there were too many priests, a lifelong educator who argued for the end of schools and an intellectual sniper from a perch with a wide view. He argued that hospitals cause more sickness than health, that people would save time if transportation were limited to bicycles and that historians who rely on previously published material perpetuate falsehoods.

His intellectual ordnance of anarchist panache, hatred of bureaucracy, Jesuitic argumentation, deep reverence for the past and watered-down Marxism, was applied to many targets, including relations between the sexes. More often than not, his conclusions were startling: he thought life was better for women in pre-modern times.

11:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

You heard it here first
New findings of both a review of the Warren Commission Report and hearings of the 95th Congress offer positive proof that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy.
So says ballistics expert Edward P. Rem, who received the Purple Heart, two Silver Stars and the Bronze Star in World War II. Mr. Rem says he has proven mathematically that a missed rifle shot caused the preliminary "loud bang" that was heard as it passed unimpeded through the enclosed grassy knoll area at a supersonic speed of 2,200 feet per second. [Washington Times, "Inside the Beltway" Dec 6]
Amazing.

11:36 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Rampant nepotism, willful myopia and bald-faced lying about a potential military foe when the fix is in and bought loyalty: shrubco carries on the Great American Traditions

11:16 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Shootings in Venezuela commissioned by pro-coup General?
- The Venezuelan Navy today regained control of the hijacked oil tanker from its mutinous captain. The last effective maneuver of the upper-class "opposition" was thus foiled and the "strike" (management imposed lockout of workers from their jobs) that began last week has now fracased on every front.

- Friday night's contemptible shooting of civilians in an opposition demonstration by gunmen, resulting in the capture of Portuguese national Joao Gouveia, has taken a shocking turn:

"Congressman of the MVR party (Fifth Republic Movement) and journalist Juan Barreto reported today that Joao Gouveia, the Portuguese citizen accused of having assassinated various members of the opposition concentrated in Plaza Francia of Altamira (the wealthy section of Caracas) entered the country (Friday) at 5:40 p.m. coming from Lisbon. Barreto said that Gouveia confessed that he had been contracted by pro-coup General Medina Gomez to cause a massacre in Altamira, for which he was paid 35 million bolivares.

"Congressman Barreto said that as a journalist he has contacts in various agencies and information that the accused was acting as if he were paranoid, faking that he was mentally ill, but after examined by different psychiatrists who determined he was lucid, finally confessed this morning.

"Barreto reported that in a few hours the video of Gouveia's confession will be made public." [Narco News newsletter, more here, though this is unfolding]

10:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

More referrals
bin laden" arrest extradition "Tom DeLay" Texas
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I guess I'l have to start listing these in the side columns somehow, when the Javajive gets fixed. Too many for here.

I like to collect 'em though.

3:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, December 06, 2002

State budget cuts likely to affect taxes, health and education programs for years [refdesk]

12:51 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Despite the well-oiled strategies already in place to get around the new campaign-finance law, Ken Starr, Mitch McConnell & co are quoting Hamilton and mounting a pointedly states-rights offensive to get it annulled, playing to the Supreme Court's affinities

9:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Important article --

Dale Allen Pfeiffer on the oil endgame, the reality of hydrogen as an imminent substitute and what's behind shrubco's hydrogen gambit
Based on all of this, I submit that Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham does indeed have ulterior motives for his Hydrogen Energy Roadmap. First, I suggest that this distant goal will help to pacify the public once they begin to suffer from the effects of fossil fuel withdrawal. Secondly, this project will allow the elite to transfer more money from the general public to the pockets of the rich. Third, in the words of Karl Davies, this proposal will deflect a stock market collapse once news of declining oil production becomes generally recognized.

Tied to this, it will brace stock prices of the auto corporations and oil majors to help them survive well into the era of oil depletion. And finally, the idea that we are working on a transition from fossil fuels to a hydrogen-based economy will help to destabilize OPEC, hopefully making it easier to deal with that organization and the Arab oil states.
See also the Colin Campbell interview I posted about in October.

9:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, December 05, 2002

Hendrik Hertzberg's short and too sweet piece on "Total Information Awareness" in The New Yorker finally rings the Phil Dick bell I've been striking with some regularity [u]
It's easy to ridicule this -- fun, too, and fun is something the war on terrorism doesn't offer a lot of -- but it's not so easy to dismiss the possibility that the project, nutty as it sounds, might actually be of significant help in uncovering terrorist networks. The problem is that it would also be of significant help in uncovering just about everything, including the last vestiges of individual and family privacy. This is why William Safire wrote the other day that the program should simply be shut down, as was Attorney General Ashcroft's Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), which was going to enlist postal workers and the like as amateur spies.

At a minimum, a temporary shutdown, pending some sort of congressional review and the creation of safeguards, would seem to be in order. It will take years for total information awareness to get beyond the prototype stage. But if a working system ever does get up and running, you won't have to be Philip K. Dick to imagine the possibilities for mischief, especially if carelessness, to say nothing of malevolence, enters the picture. But not to worry. "The privacy of individuals not affiliated with terrorism" will be protected via "technologies for controlling automated search and exploitation algorithms and for purging data structures appropriately."

And who is offering this highly reassuring assurance? Why, the Director of the Information Awareness Office, John M. Poindexter, that's who.

[...]

Philip K. meant his dark visions as warnings, not as bureaucratic charters for George W. Unfortunately, Bush doesn't know Dick.

Mr Hertzberg is way too generous here, and this ominous and yet lunatic project has virtually no potential to do what it's supposed to. The White House and its minions will have to peer past their giddy little bubble of confusion and put away the Funhouse mirrors before doing anything that will really address the issue.

As I perhaps giddily assume that they want to.

Perhaps to them knowledge doesn't exist -- has no meaning -- outside the quest for power.

11:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

You've no doubt heard about or read the story in Esquire based on the John DiIulio letter he sent them, then later recanted

It's written in that peculiarly convoluted style associated with political operatives, alternately stabbing and then stroking its subject. He was clearly trying to cover his ass with the Dark Lords, but couldn't resist the temptation to take a shot at them -- and who could miss that target?

The shameless attempt to recover their good graces is doomed, yet one has to wonder what he was threatened with: the masochistic oddboy at the fraternity, who joins knowing deep down he will be outed and shamed eventually.

Was anyone who has the slightest doubt about the intentions of the White House being for the public good even listening?

It sure wasn't news in these quarters, though one's heart involuntarily jumps at the faintest sign that the wierdest worm since the Nixon Years might be turning.

But the spell seems as deep as this caricature of an administration is cartoonish -- and Sleeping Beauty stirs not an eyelash.

9/11 didn't kill irony -- as Tom Lehrer said, the Nobel committee did that when Kissinger got the Peace Prize (OK, he said satire, but you get the point). But here's a shrub that makes "Knowledge is power" the slogan of an agency called "Total Information Awareness" yet mercilessly chokes off even the meekest, most benign attempt to open the process of their governing to the public. If the shadow of the Throne wasn't so deep, menacing and fraught with vile secrets many sense but dare not utter, one might think the White House was trying to bring irony back to life.

But that worm will turn.

Hopefully before The Monster walks, Mein Führer.

[thanks to Undernews for the Lehrer quote]

10:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

AT&T/Intel/IBM to sell wireless

11:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Appreciation of American culture persists, but discontent and anger at the US grows in Mid East & Central Asia, Canada, France, Germany

The Russians love the US, though.

1:05 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Disaster looms as opening of Three Gorges Dam draws closer
How many will eventually be relocated as a result of the 20-year project is still a matter of some controversy. Officials estimate 1.2 million, but some experts say it will be more like 2 million.

Anticipating that not all these people would leave without a fight, the government assigned a large and visible police force to supervise the demolition and snuff out any overt protest. Residents know that if they don't leave peacefully, the police will remove them by force.

"[Protesters are] just a small minority, although we get a lot of petitions," insists Liu Fuyen, head of the Chongqing resettlement bureau.

But the level of discontent among residents of river towns tells a different story.

[...]

Hong, his family, and 300 fellow villagers were relocated a year ago, to a newly built migrants' village in Fujian Province. But, he says, there was no work to be found because they couldn't speak the local dialect. Hong decided to return to Fengjie and reopen his roadside restaurant until the flood comes.

But it has not been an easy choice. A plague of migrating rats has moved up the hills as the gorges begin to flood. The government has scattered 120 tons of poisoned rice on the ground in an effort to exterminate the rodents.

"I don't mean mice: They are about this big," Hong says, his hands eighteen inches apart. "Every night I see them. They get into the bedding tearing up the quilts and stealing all the food they can find."

Perhaps a more devastating threat to river-dwellers is toxic waste. The land soon to be submerged contains 178 waste dumps, 40,000 grave sites, and a total of 3 million tons of refuse. Chinese environment officials warn that this waste threatens to turn Three Gorges reservoir into a cesspit.

12:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Russia forces evacuation of Ingushetia refugee camps, making 20,000+ Chechens return to ruins of war-ravaged homeland in 14° weather
Russian officials have repeatedly denied that refugees would be forced to relocate against their will and have said that shelter would be offered in Ingushetia for refugees who refuse to go home.

Last week the US State Department said it had been informed that "only voluntary choices" would be offered to Chechens staying in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.

But the Kremlin's own human rights commissioner, Oleg Mironov, told journalists Tuesday that "if the current plan (to expel refugees) is carried out, it will mean one of the biggest human rights disasters in Russian history."

Russia's Federal Migration Service, which oversees the Ingushetia camps, declined to comment. A spokesman for the Kremlin information service, Vladimir Ponomaryov, would say only that, "I haven't seen any official document that would change the official position that any resettlement should be voluntary."

12:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Corporate Media Re-Writes Gulf War History

HBO/TimeWarner/AOL "dramatization" of Gulf War I recounts Kuwaiti baby PR hoax as truth
The fraudulent story of Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted as if it were true in "Live from Baghdad," the HBO film premiering on the cable network this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind CNN's coverage of the Gulf War. HBO and CNN are both owned by the AOL Time Warner media conglomerate.

In the months before the Gulf War began, media uncritically repeated the claim that Iraqi soldiers were removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The story was launched by the testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in October 1990. Eventually, as repeated in the media by the first President Bush and countless others, it blossomed into a tale involving over 300 Kuwaiti babies.

What was not reported at the time was the fact that the public relations company Hill & Knowlton was partly behind the effort, and the girl who testified was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. Subsequent investigations, including one by Amnesty International, found no evidence for the claims (ABC World News Tonight, 3/15/91).
More here.

12:29 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

IDF stonewalls UN on access to Palestinians and denies blame for killing of English UN worker

9:04 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

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8:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

American ISPs watch Bell Canada's experiment with capping bandwidth closely
Leading the way in a closely watched initiative is Bell Canada's digital subscriber line service. Acting on an idea that has floated around the industry for years, the company has put caps on the amount of bandwidth its subscribers can use each month. If subscribers go over the caps, they start paying about 80 cents extra per 100 megabytes.

That's a controversial idea in the industry for a number of reasons. In order to implement it, ISPs have to set up a traffic-monitoring system that can tell exactly how many bits and bytes are flowing in and out of each subscriber's modem. It requires each subscriber to begin thinking about how much bandwidth is being used, a new kind of calculation for people used to all-you-can-eat connections to the Net.

1:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrub appointee Janet Rehnquist -- daughter of the Chief Justice -- has quietly carried out a "wholesale purge" of Health and Human Services [u]
Janet Rehnquist, who previously held the relatively low-level post of an assistant US attorney in Virginia, was appointed in August 2001 to the inspector general's job at HHS, where she is responsible for oversight on the spending of more than $450 billion annually for such programs as Medicare and Medicaid.

[...]

In the 15 months since she took office, Ms. Rehnquist has carried out a wholesale purge of her department, the largest of the 57 inspector general offices within the federal government. Nineteen career officials, including five of the six deputies in the department, have been removed through retirement, forced resignation or transfer.

Some of those who have been removed by Rehnquist have apparently taken their complaints to Congress and other government agencies. The dispute has reached into the Republican Party, with Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, the incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, calling for a review of Rehnquist's actions. Grassley said the loss of the 19 officials could "hinder the performance of an office that has a stellar reputation for fighting fraud, waste and abuse in federal health care programs."

In a bizarre but significant sidelight to the Rehnquist dispute, officials are also looking into whether she illegally kept a gun in her office at HHS. Marcia J. Van Note, a former executive assistant to the inspector general, told investigators that her boss kept a pistol in a file cabinet, and that she had a poster of a life-size human target posted on her office wall. She told co-workers that she used the target to practice her aim, according to a November 11 report in the Wall Street Journal, prompting the office's employees to fear for their safety.

[...]

The Rehnquist dispute also lifts the veil on a practice of the Bush Administration that has received scant coverage in the media -- rampant and unprecedented nepotism. She is only one of the many children of powerful government officials identified with the Republican right who have been catapulted into top jobs.

12:41 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, December 02, 2002

UN accuses Israel of blowing up food warehouse

11:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, December 01, 2002

On 2 books that give good background on Pakistan

11:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Judy Wicks' entrepreneur activism
"I don't want to end up a serf on a corporate plantation," Wicks says. "Profit-driven corporations are gradually taking over our lives, controlling media, government, education, water and food supplies -- you name it. I feel that by organizing small businesses to provide an alternative where ownership is spread widely, I am helping to protect democratic freedom."

Wicks, who melds "food, fun, and activism" at her $5 million-a-year restaurant, already does plenty. She channels 10 percent of profits to good causes, engages customers in volunteer projects as varied as her menu, serves organic fare raised by local farmers, runs her restaurant solely on windpower, and pays all her workers a living wage -- for starters.

Voted one of the most powerful women in Philadelphia, Wicks also has chaired the Social Venture Network (SVN), a national organization of entrepreneurs, investors, and others working to create a just and sustainable world through business.

She's having a good time while she's at it. It's not profits that drive Wicks, it's people. "Good business is not about money. It's about authentic, human relationships, with your customers, your employees, the farmers who supply you," says Wicks. "A socially responsible business considers how its decisions will affect them, not just the bottom line. By staying small, I have tried to go deeper with all the relationships involved in my business -- to enjoy the human experience, which is more valuable than money."

11:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Ben Cohen's True Majority [Alternet story]

11:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Pentagon's public disinformation office (Foreign Section) -- the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) -- was "officially" dismantled back in February. But Rumsfeld (to the surprise of no one with a brain) recently blustered publicly that that was disinformation too
According to a transcript on the Department of Defense website, Rumsfeld told reporters:

"And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And 'oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.' I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have."

A search of the Nexis database indicates that no major U.S. media outlets-- no national broadcast television news shows, no major U.S. newspapers, no wire services or major magazines-- have reported Rumsfeld's remarks.
Well, that groovy old Prince of Darkness has spoken, hasn't he? Isn't he just too John Wayne cool?

"I'll blur the truth til you can't tell the difference with a microscope, pilgrim. Ya gotta problem with that?"

11:26 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Justin Raimondo does his take on the Saudi-9/11 connection Newsweek and ambitious Demos have recently pounced upon

He figures the neo-cons are desperate to start any kind of war and everyone else is pointing to the oil card and the Bushes ties giving the Saudis cover.
But it isn't all about oil, it's all about Israel -- and the internal political dynamics of the U.S. Ariel Sharon and his American Likudniks thought the Israeli elections -- now set for January -- would take place against the backdrop of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the climactic victory of the IDF over their Palestinian antagonists. A six-month delay wasn't in the plan, never mind an indefinite postponement.
I certainly think Israel and their neo-con collaborators in the White House are integral to what's happening re Iraq.

I also think that -- having read Forbidden Truth -- that it's hard to at least not consider the long-term financial commitment of many rich Saudis to supporting Islamic organizations that have ties to terrorist cells. Mutual support between tribal families -- and within families -- is hard-wired into Arab society. If you think bin Laden is being shunned by his family or the Saudis in any real way, you're kidding yourself.

Which is not a reason to attack the country. It's still terrorism we're talking about. And the Anglo-American Imperial decisions made over the last century involving the Mid East and Asia.

What's happened is that the 9/11 attacks have begun to thrust into daylight agendas that have been covert by the US, the Israelis, and various Arab factions. The oil endgame, the sudden awareness of the water issue, the adjustment to a post-Cold War world all are at play here. "Holy War" -- played with equal cynicism by all parties really in charge -- is just the psyops strategy for the move by multinationals and their collaborators to privatize and control resources. And power.

As usual.

3:04 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Surprise Surprise

SEC hogtied by Corporatocracy it's supposed to be policing
Although the agency has managed to file a record number of cases this year and has adopted a series of tough rules, officials say the commission's divisions have lost ground in their efforts to keep up with the growth of business and the expansion of stock ownership to a new investor class.

Two of the most important units of the 3,100-person commission, its enforcement division and its office of compliance inspections, are understaffed by hundreds of officials, experts say, sharply limiting their effectiveness. Its corporate finance department cannot keep up with the deluge of company filings. Its market regulation division has for years been unable to persuade the agency's five commissioners to adopt rules of enormous consequence to the way the markets set stock prices.

And a new accounting board that is supposed to fall into place early next year is beset by budget and staffing difficulties that threaten to undermine its effectiveness.

Many of the problems facing the agency, experts say, are traceable to powerful corporate interests on Wall Street and in the accounting profession that continue, both directly and through the help of well- placed allies in Congress, to exert enormous influence on the rule-making process.

As a result, the commission's budget has remained relatively small, less than half a billion dollars, and inadequate to the task. A new law called for a spending increase of 77 percent. But officials now fear that any increase will fall far short of its needs because the agency has no leader to fight for its interests and faces a White House that has wavered over its commitment to raise the S.E.C.'s budget and a Republican Congress that has other priorities.

11:36 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

SoftwareMobsters make an offer he can't refuse

Microsuck hires a guy scheduled to give his opinion against the company in the Euro anti-trust lawsuit against the company

3:22 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Video News Releases (VNRs) have been part of the "news" for a while; now CBS is producing their own PR segments for affiliates [Undernews/PR Watch]

These are press releases companies pay for that appear as news items. News as infomercial.

Avoid TV news.

2:29 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Berlusconi Inc employs laws introduced by Mussolini to arrest and silence opposition after huge anti-war demonstrations recently [u, Nov 22]
The timing of the arrests, directly after the Forum and demonstration, make clear that the Italian state is moving rapidly to suppress the mass movement emerging against war, as well as seeking to neutralise critics of global capitalism and the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

According to newspaper reports, the state prosecutor's office in Cosenza had conducted a one-and-a-half-year investigation leading to the arrests. This probe produced a 360-page file on the activities of the anti-globalisation protesters and included detailed surveys of 60,000 emails, the systematic surveillance of Internet sites, the shadowing of suspects, film recordings and wiretaps.

Prosecutors are attempting to prove links between the "no-global" movement and other anarchist movements that have been active in the so-called "Black Blocs," which were a source of provocations and violence in recent demonstrations at the Global Forum in Naples and the 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. In fact, recent investigations by independent legal organisations and filmmakers have made it clear that police provocateurs and intelligence agents were heavily active in infiltrating the Black Blocs.

The arrests sparked off immediate protests throughout the country. Several thousands joined spontaneous street demonstrations last Friday in Rome and Milan calling for the immediate release of those arrested. Further mass protests are planned this week in southern Italy and the city of Naples where many of the arrests took place.

2:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Undernews pumped this article by terrorism psychologist Diane Perlman -- and rightly so
Some people reading this will misunderstand my intention to attempt psychologically sound ways of reducing the escalation of violence, which is about to spin out of control. Those who are committed to revenge and punishment, even if it provokes retaliation that endangers us, will dismiss this article. They are operating on the axis of right and wrong, good and evil, us and them. They will always be right, but the violence will escalate.

As we used to say in the days of the Soviet-American arms race, it's like shooting a hole in their side of the lifeboat. There is no way out using this paradigm.

In order to emerge from the imminent cycle of retaliation, we are required to operate from a new, transcendent paradigm principled upon tension reduction, violence prevention and conflict transformation. It is off the right-wrong axis.

[...]

The connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda is created by us; we are driving them into each other's arms. Osama has suggested that if we invade Iraq, he will respond in kind. There is every reason to believe him. The only way to reduce terrorism is to address the root causes and to transform our use of power in the world.

History is filled with military blunders. Going to war would be a megablunder. Misinterpreting Osama's message fuels the irrational drive toward war. With asymmetrical warfare and weapons of mass destruction, the consequences are unthinkable. By exaggerating the threat and censoring the message of the conditionality of violence, we collude with the forces that promise permanent world war.
Of course this strategy presupposes that the White House and whoever pulls their strings actually don't want to incite a reaction. And aren't running both sides in an Orwellian maneuver to create police state conditions under the guise of "security" and fundamentalist "righteousness".

2:05 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I love this: a military exercise called "Internal Look"

Looks like Qatar will be the 51st state.

Or maybe not.

12:10 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Selected referrals (I'm getting enough again)
"Jimmy Spencer", hydrologist
navy microbes and maggots
"a russian owned" and "new york"
Detroit suicides connected to casino gambling
"america's most wanted" highway captive
"jan hendrik schon" paper full text -guilty -lie -misconduct -question
Does acid rain efect human health
topless hairdressers + berlin
sustainable development concept "small school"
halabja attack video clip
oman in rubbernecking
Jackie sneezed
samantha morton blog
video dvd anthrax movie
punk di kelantan
pics cities streets watts
kosovo girls raped pics
andrew fastow psychological analysis
pro spank welts
"america's embattled economy"
SooN! Military referrals! See what they're looking for at the 'gon!

12:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

That's one of the great things about living in America: moral superiority is so damned cheap.

-- James Crumley

This country is going so far to the right you won't be able to recognize it.

-- John Mitchell, 1973

Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, or the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it.

-- Sam Smith

REVIEWS

from Sassafrass (9/23/02)
"Unconventional viewpoints at 'charging the canvas'

Opinions that will ruffle feathers, from someone who clearly knows their way around information and the blogosphere."

Blog of the Day
1/18/02

WEEKLY QUOTE

They tell us it's about race, and we believe them. And they call it a "democracy," and we nod our heads, so pleased with ourselves. We blame the Socias [gangsters], we occasionally sneer at the Paulsons [latest crop of craven pols] but we always vote for the Sterling Mulkerns [good old boys]. And in occasional moments of quasi-lucidity, we wonder why the Mulkerns of this world don't respect us. They don't respect us because we are their molested children. They fuck us morning, noon, and night, but as long as they tuck us in with a kiss, as long as they whisper into our ears, "Daddy loves you, Daddy will take care of you," we close our eyes and go to sleep, trading our bodies, our souls, for the comforting veneers of "civilization" and "security," the false idols of our twentieth century wet dream. And it's our reliance on that dream that the Mulkerns, the Paulsons, the Socias, the Phils, the Heroes of this world depend upon. That's their dark knowledge. That's how they win.

-- Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed it; that the vast clandestine apparatus we built up to probe our enemies' resources and intentions only served in the end to confuse our own purposes; that the practice of deceiving others for the good of the state led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that the vast army of intelligence personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences to them and us.

-- Malcolm Muggeridge

NOT IN OUR NAME
(link to list against Iraq War)

charging the canvas

The Link Section