friday reads

Naomi Wolf - Blackwater: Are You Scared Yet?

In little noticed news, Blackwater, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Arinc were recently awarded a collective $15 billion — yes, billion — from the Pentagon to conduct global counter-narcotics operations. This means that Blackwater can be deployed to engage with citizens on a whole new level of intimacy anywhere around the world — including here at home. What is scarier than scary is that Blackwater’s overall plans are to do more and more of its armed and dangerous ‘security’ operations on U.S. soil.

Glenn Greenwald: The U.S. military's role in preventing the bombing of Iran


Burmese troops today broke up street gatherings, sealed off Buddhist monasteries and shut down internet connections, in an attempt to snuff out the most serious protests against the country's military dictatorship in two decades.


Jena 6 defendant released on bail.


Digby wonders if The Village has run out of smelling salts.


Paul Krugman

Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we’ve learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work.

William Rivers Pitt: Dan Rather's Magnum Opus