Wil Wheaton published Now I’m Pissed, a raw response from a Californian to Enron. It seems Enron was responsible for the collapse of California’s energy market. And deliberately so. They exploited every loophole they could find, with cute-sounding strategies like “Death Star” and “Get Shorty”. Recent memos found in Enron documents, are a “smoking gun”. The SFGate’s article Enron memo describes how traders drove up state’s power prices says:

“Referring to a strategy called “Death Star” by Enron... [More]”

Noam Chomsky has been interviewed several times over the last 2 months with regard to the unfolding situation in Israel. The situation has garnered a lot of attention in both the U.S. and World press, but anyone with a good amount of familiarity with the situation there would fail to see any new developments. The level of violence has escalated, but not to previously unseen levels, and certainly there have been no ideological shifts on the part of any of the major players.

In an interview, Noam... [More]

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is visiting Cuba over the next five days and has been heartily welcomed by Cuban President Fidel Castro. The Newsday reports in Like Old Friends… that his visit is ostensibly to talk privately about Cuba’s human-rights record, but is also being interpreted in the usual rhetoric from all sides of the political spectrum. Of particular interest to many is the lifting of the almost 50 year old economic U.S.-led Western embargo of Cuba.

Recent statements by the... [More]

I was referred by Plastic from Time To Pay The Piper to this amusing parable by William F. Buckley on the National Review called A Parable: The Tenth Man. In it, he poses the current tax situation and relative tax burdens of various members of society as a group of ten men eating dinner. Each man represents a tenth of society. It’s supposed to educate you about last year’s tax cut. I’ll reproduce it here for you:

“Every night, ten men met at a restaurant for dinner. At the end of the meal, the... [More]”

With the President still enjoying huge ratings in most polls, others are feeling much more confident in taking the “with us, or against us” message to new fronts. Former Secretary of Education, William Bennet, has founded Americans for Victory over Terrorism. The aim of the organization is to “take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing”, or basically, to educate America’s citizens about their wrong-headed liberal views. It’s principles... [More]

Iraq is due to be rolled on next. It’s been almost ten years since all-out war there. Bombings are still going on there now (“…in 1999/2000, according to the Pentagon, the US flew 24,000 “combat missions” over Iraq”). What have the sanctions been like there? John Pilger published this article on March 21st, 2002 about the state of Iraq today, after over a decade of sanctions. He discusses the supreme irony of the U.S. and Britain, two powers with plenty of blood on their hands, imposing... [More]

Wired Magazine’s April issue has Peace Is War which covers in detail the degree to which the U.S. military stranglehold exists.The author, Bruce Sterling, attributes much of the power to not just an immense arsenal, but also to multifarious space-based military capabilities. In fact, he’s christened the Persian Gulf War as Space War I and the Yugoslavian carpet-bombing as the Second Space War. Space War III is in its final stages right now and was exacted upon Afghanistan.

Secretary of Defense... [More]

Next stop for the War on Terror Express? Iraq. Why? Ostensibly because Iraq refuses to allow inspectors into the country to look into the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Forget the incredible irony of the double-standard at work here. Forget that Iraq has been under crippling sanctions for over a decade. Let’s just take for granted that fewer weapons of mass destruction in this world is good.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the agenda of the U.S. The previous unalloyed statement needs a... [More]

The Washington Post reports on the problems related to retracting textbook lessons long in circulation in Afghanistan.

While the stated policy (ie. the constitution) is to keep religion and education separated, this is of course not applied to propoganda material. Textbooks which taught counting with tanks and bullets and were filled with Islamic tenets extolling the glory of holy war against the Soviet invaders, were specially made in the US at the University of Omaha. While the aid package... [More]

The LA Times recently leaked a document called the “Nuclear Posture Review” (excerpts, briefing). In it, contingencies are discussed about using nuclear weapons in the current campaign, under which conditions they’d be used and against whom and which types are needed and must be developed/tested further.

I suppose the obvious questions is why can’t the U.S. just say they wouldn’t use nuclear weapons? I mean, I thought they were the good guys. I understand about carrying a big stick, but when... [More]

Well, let’s recap. Almost a year ago, it was reported that Ashcroft Holds Prayer Meetings at White House. These are Pentacostal prayer meetings, are not enforced on staff, and in no way blur the separation of church and state. Ahem.

More recently, John Ashcroft’s Perilous Nipples by Mark Morford of the SF Gate explains that Ashcroft is afraid of nudity:

“…order[ed] his very own Justice Department to spend $8,000 to purchase heavy blue drapes to cover the two large, noble, partially naked... [More]”

The New York Newsday reported a Stunning Turn of Events… recently. In a somewhat transparent attempt to provide some continuity from the attack on Afghanistan to a continued war in Somalia, the Pentagon announced recently that a GPS from a soldier killed in Somalia (and whose name Black Hawk Down has entered into the public consciousness) has been found in Afghanistan. Whereas this should be more than is needed to satisfy an unquestioning public, an Army reporter noted immediately that the... [More]

The New York Newsday is reporting that Vatican Reaffirms Anti-homosexual Stand. In a stunning turnaround of events, the church has admitted that it has deep-rooted problems and has accepted all blame for them, vowing to do better and fix their problems. Just kidding.

“Noting that most reported cases of sex abuse have involved priests and boys, Catholic officials in Rome have reaffirmed their stand against homosexuality, saying gays should not become priests.”

I knew it was the gays. Damn it,... [More]

By this point, you should have heard of the new hit spin-off from the Department of Defense (formerly called the War Department) called the Office of Strategic Influence. As reported in the New York Times in Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad, this office would be in charge of:

<q> … developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and... [More]

America Sells Itself Out for Stability on the New York Newsday is a fantastic piece by Ralph Peters, “a retired Army officer and the author of two books on strategy”. He very succintly and calmly points out that quite a lot of the U.S. problems in the world today stem directly from a foreign policy that supports ideals exactly opposite to those the U.S. espouses.

While the premise is not new, his approach is much more factual and far less hyperbolic. He arrives at the modern-day reality that the... [More]

John Pilger published an article on March 7, 2002 in the New Statesman about President Chavez of Venezuela. It seems that Venezuela is having trouble learning the lessons of its neighbors in the 20th Century. The story is the same as that told many times before. Democratically-elected left-leaning government nationalizes private oil industry and implements land reforms (which involves giving unused lands away to those that might make use of it) in order to address crippling poverty in over 80%... [More]

Sometimes it’s so hard to keep track of U.S. foreign policy. Especially when trying to figure out where tax money is being spent on making war. There are so many levels of funding available:

1. Foreign aid to oppresive regimes to “stabilize” the local government (think Saudi Arabia)
2. Overt military aid in the form of actual hardware (think Israel)
3. U.S. military “advisors” in the field (think CIA and who knows where they all are)
4. U.S. Troop deployment (bases in over 100 countries, but recently,... [More]

Examples abound of things that are happening (or have happened, fait accompli) that are morally and ethically offensive, but that’s that and move right along. Nat Hentoff wrote Big John Wants Your Reading List for the Village Voice revealing that Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act (oh yeah, it passed, remember?) “…would grant FBI agents across the country breathtaking authority to obtain an order from the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court . . . requiring any person or business... [More]”

I remember that immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center, it was generally agreed upon in the mainstream press that irony was dead. I also remember thinking that that was ridiculous. Irony is alive and well. Recent events have borne that out, with increasingly dangerous and heavily ironic things happening all of the time.

Now, in recent days, I’ve seen something that leads me to think that the “irony is dead” mantra was simply a case of mistaken identity. It’s irony’s close... [More]

The New York Newsday published Democrats Raise Questions On War a little while ago. It seems that some have in Congress (especially that troublemaker Daschle) have had the temerity to ask about long-term goals of the administration. This drew the baleful eye of the guardians of a patriotic America in which we all act as one and do not ask questions because it interrupted their slavering, gleeful capering over their new shiny hoards of weapons and money.

It seems the relatively straightforward... [More]

The latest Adbusters issue has Intimidation discussing the Orwellian clampdown that is taking shape in Western society today.

“The supposedly immovable object called citizens’ rights met an irresistible force called “preventative justice.” And it got crushed. … The program isn’t to break bones, but to set limits − what we can say, endorse, speak up against”

More and more we hear the story of the man who was detained for hours or days because he made another person “nervous”. That nervous... [More]

So, how’s the environment been doing lately? With which side of the war on the environment has the U.S. decided to cast its lot? Well, the new Hummer is out. It’s got a 6.0 V8 engine. What kind of fuel economy does it get? Well, that’s a good question. Here’s the answer found on the official Hummer site (emphasis added).

“Because it is a class 3 truck, a type of vehicle that is often classified as a work truck, the EPA does not rate the mileage.. Typically, work trucks site and idle while... [More]”

In a glorious case of turnabout-is-fair-play, the Libertarian Party has launched its own ad campaign, similar in style to the one launched by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that equates buying drugs with supporting terrorism. One of the ads (PDF document), featuring the haggard visage of the U.S. drug czar (who is highly in favor of punitive controls of drugs − i.e. continuing the drug war) with the caption:

<q>This week, I had lunch with the President, testified before... [More]

The Smithsonian Magazine ran Crackdown! (abstract only, sorry) in their February 2002 issue, talking about the red scares in 1919 and 1920. Though they don’t make an explicit connection to today’s situation, the timing of the article makes the implication clear: if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. (I know, sooo melodramatic).

<q> Invoking the wartime Espionage Act of 1917 and the 1918 Sedition Act, Palmer sought to flush out “Reds” and socialist supporters remotely... [More]

Media Mergers

Mega Media Merger Mania on AlterNet covers a February 19th federal court ruling that deregulates the media industry even further. Two rules were struck down:

<q>The first is a 60-year old Federal Communications Commission rule that limits the number of broadcast TV stations a single company can own. The cap is currently set so that a single company cannot reach more than 35 percent of the national TV audience. The second FCC rule prevented a company from owning both a cable... [More]

Alternet has a quick interview with Noam Chomsky called Noam Chomsky on the Drug-Terror Link. Several questions are asked about the U.S. government’s latest attempts to link drugs with terror. He reminds us that, in fact, the connection is there, but mostly that the U.S. has been a huge proponent of drug operations throughout the world since World War II.

<q>Terrorism is now being used and has been used pretty much the same way communism was used. If you want to press some agenda, you play the... [More]

The “Axis of Evil” described by George Bush in his first State of the Union has been received differently throughout the world. Those nations that were included in it were surprised to be singled out, considering several countries the U.S. is allied with are far worse proponents of terror than they are. Just not the good kind of terror. The kind the U.S. is willing to support. Are you listening, Iran? Also, if you might have ICBM capabilities, then your evil existence justifies (no it doesn’t)... [More]

So I’m sitting there reading the morning paper the other day, flipping through the sports section. Suddenly, right after the page listing the lovely adult stars that are coming to a club near me, I see a half-page ad letting me know that if I use drugs, I’m funding terrorism. I quickly checked to make sure which drugs they’re talking about and, luckily, the pack of cigarettes and bottle of scotch I’d been steadily working my way through weren’t on the list.

What was on the list, you ask? I... [More]

DAWN published an interview with Osama Bin Laden, given on November 9, 2001. In it, he declares:

“I wish to declare that if America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as deterrent.”

The Telegraph has an analysis of a video that has been circulating for the last few weeks in Islamicist circles. I can’t tell from the quotes if this is the same interview of not. A lot of the quotes match up, but the Telegraph is a... [More]

It’s only the Constitution by Nat Hentoff on AlterNet provides more details on John Ashcroft’s plain for domestic vigilance. One of the more interesting provisions is “roving wiretaps”:

<q> … a single warrant for a suspect’s telephone must include any and all types of phones he or she uses in any and all locations, including pay phones. If a suspect uses a relative’s phone or your phone, that owner becomes part of the investigative database. So does anyone using the same pay phone or any pay... [More]