Saturday, March 08, 2008

saturday reads

Preznit Sociopath vetoes the Senate autorization bill which would have effectively outlawed waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

Scott Horton: Another Milestone on the Road to Serfdom


How the White House tried to hide the truth about its ineptitde leading up to the September 11 attacks.


PZ Myers on Ben Stein's propaganda film Excrement Expelled.


Zaius Nation: Take Cover! It's Daylight Saving Time!


How to tell that the US is actually in a recession.


Buffy the Mosquito Slayer

Friday, March 07, 2008

friday reads

In the nearly 5-year-old Iraq war about 15 soldiers are wounded for every fatality, compared with 2.6 per death in Vietnam and 2.8 in Korea.


Tomgram - Greg Grandin: Fidel Castro, the First Superdelegate


The Independent takes a look at Japan's concrete ceiling.


Chris Floyd: Crushing the Ants, The Admiral and the Empire


Scott Horton: A Brain-Dead Press


CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.


Job losses: Worst in 5 years


Green Left Infoasis has posted some youtubes from a Noam Chomsky talk from 2001. Drugs, Guerillas, Counterinsurgency: US Intervention in Colombia


McClatchey's Round-up of Daily Violence - Thursday 6 March 2008


Boing Boing TV on the origion and hating habits of the common Internet Troll.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

thursday reads

A gay teenager who sought sanctuary in Britain when his boyfriend was executed by the Iranian authorities now faces the same fate after losing his legal battle for asylum.


A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.


Schoolgirls worldwide suffer abuse, says Amnesty

Thousands of girls around the world are not attending school through fear of physical attack or sexual abuse by teachers and fellow pupils, an Amnesty International report claimed today.

The report, Safe schools - every girl's right, found that girls frequently faced harassment, violence and intimidation by strangers on their way to school and in class by teachers and fellow students.



A couple retiring this year will need about $225,000 in savings to cover medical costs in retirement, according to a study released Wednesday by Fidelity Investments.


A small explosion caused minor damage to a U.S. military recruiting center in New York's Times Square area in the early hours of Thursday but there were no injuries, police said.


Denver Marijuana Arrests Up Despite New Law
Denver voters made it clear last November that they don’t want police spending time and resources busting people who smoke marijuana.

But marijuana activists have said possession arrests are actually going up, and they want to know why.

In Wednesday night’s Marijuana Policy Review Panel, members questioned police and city prosecutors about whether their policies have changed since the successful 2007 ballot initiative to make adult marijuana possession the “lowest law enforcement priority.”

"It's very simple. There's no excuse for it. The people voted for change. Nothing has changed, and that's a problem," said Mason Tvert, with Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation.



If only Congress were as responsible and ethical as steroid-ridden baseball players.


Remixing the London police's anti-photographer terror posters

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

wednesday reads

Omar Khadr's defense lawyers will try to find out whether U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's office secretly leaked a video of the detained Canadian to an American media outlet – an allegation that, if proven, would be a clear violation of court orders and further proof that the process by which Mr. Khadr is being tried is a political, not legal one, his military lawyer says.


William D Hartung: War is hell, But What the Hell Does it Cost?


Bill Quigley - Half New Orleans Poor Permanently Displaced: Failure or Success?


Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported.


Dennis Kucinich wins primary challenge

Burnt Orange Report has the 2008 Texas Presidential Primary Results and Texas Democrats has the unofficial results of the Democratic Party Precinct Conventions.

Precinct 152 : Obama 71.58% - Clinton 27.67% (Travis County Election Night Results)
Texas Senate District 14 Caucus: Obama 67% to Clinton's 32%



RIP Gary Gygax

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Texas Primary




Over one million people voted early in Texas.

tuesday reads

Vanity Fair: The Gaza Bombshell

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.



Venezuela and Colombia were locked in a tense stand-off yesterday, with explosive accusations levelled against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez a day after he ordered tanks and troops to the border.

Ecuador has cut diplomatic ties with Colombia in a deepening crisis over a cross-border raid by Colombian troops.

Washington's roll in the current conflict between Columbia, Venezuela and Ecuador. (h/t Green Left Infoasis)


Kagro X - FISA: All aboard the capitulation express!

Glenn Greenwald - House Democratic leadership: not just complicit but also self-destructive


Independence of CDC Scientists in Question


Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank, may need additional capital from outside investors as losses stemming from the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market increase, the head of Dubai International Capital LLC said.


Food or Fuel



Matt Davies
Journal News
Mar 4, 2008

Monday, March 03, 2008

monday reads

Scott Horton: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the (Ticking) Bomb


Psychologists and the Realpolitik of Torture


Arthur Silber: Read the News, Lose Your Mind


The Trials of Henry Kissinger: The Making of a War Criminal (Video)