Powell's Former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson Calls Pre-War Intelligence a 'Hoax on the American People' - ""I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council," says Wilkerson, who helped prepare the address."
Specter: Administration broke law - "Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says President George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance program appears to be illegal."
For Some, Spying Controversy Recalls a Past Drama - "As the Senate prepares to hold hearings on Monday on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, old Washington hands see a striking similarity to a drama that unfolded three decades ago in the capital." -- With some of the same characters.
Some companies helped the NSA, but which? - "Even after the recent scrutiny of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance project approved by President Bush, an intriguing question remains unanswered: Which corporations cooperated with the spy agency?"
History repeats itself with U.S. wartime leaders - "Presidents have often asserted disputed powers in the name of national security."
Bush's $2.8T Budget Proposal Cuts Domestic Programs - "President Bush today proposed a $2.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2007 that would cut billions of dollars from domestic programs ranging from Medicare and food stamps to local law enforcement and disease control, while extending most of his tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date."
Russia Warns Against Conflict With Iran - "Russia's foreign minister warned against threatening Iran over its nuclear program Monday after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reportedly agreed with a German interviewer that all options, including military response, remained on the table."
The rhetoric of democracy - "The constant association of the rhetoric of democracy with torture, preemptive war, secret prisons, and imperial expansion threatens to poison the word itself, just as the neo-conservative advocacy of "humanitarian" intervention in the interests of empire has rendered the term humanitarian itself suspicious."
The New Texas Family Planning - "Slashed budgets and anti-abortion politics undermine women's health care." -- I liked the picture.
White House Letter: Bush is thinking ahead, already, to retirement - "Most of what Bush said was an abridged version of the State of the Union address for local television markets. But he also wandered off into a loopy aside about why math and science students should not think of themselves as the "nerd patrol," declared once again that his foreign policy was in part based on an "Almighty" whose gift to the world was freedom, and mused about his age."
Europe's Defamation of the Prophet - "For thirteen centuries Europe has never fathomed Islam and has defamed the moral character of its Messenger Muhammad (pbuh)--9/11 was the cataclysmic excuse to re-launch the Inquisition against Muslims--“convert to our civilized aspiritual secularism where “sacredness” is dead or reap the political, economic, media, and military onslaught. If “God is Dead” in our society, so must your faith be killed.” Indeed the only freedom of speech left in the west is bashing Islam otherwise it does have its limits. In Europe you can be prosecuted for questioning the extant of the Holocaust or criticizing Israel’s policy given western indoctrination that such “freedom” is Anti-Semitic.” Israel and its bloody history is now the “Holy Grail” for the civilized west, the champions of human rights. Being civilized begins with education and manifests in rational behavior. The rampant ignorance of Islam in Europe leads to an irrational fear and thus prejudice. Descartes would turn in his grave if he knows that his motto has been transformed into “I don’t think, therefore I’m civilized.”"
was it WORTH it? - "Once you determine what's valuable to you, decide whether you're prepared to trade one thing that's valuable to you for something else that's valuable to you. Then see if you're prepared to trade what's valuable to you for what's valuable to someone else. Everything is relative. And as long as people insist on maintaining their own SUBJECTIVE values at the expense of someone else's we'll be forever embroiled in conflict."
Faith is a Moral Failing - "Let's be brutally honest. To describe FAITH as a "failure of reason" is a half-truth at best. There are those who assert that their religious convictions are grounded in reason and evidence alone. But I've never actually met such a rare creature myself. Even the most cunning Jesuitical sophistry seeking to rationally justify religion does not entirely leave out faith as a component. And not faith in the sense of "hope" or "confidence" or any other wishy-washy alternate definition. By "faith" in this context, I mean (and honest believers also mean) believing something because one chooses to believe it, without regard to the absence of evidence/reasons to believe."
Website bans Congress staff over alterations - "LEGISLATIVE aides, press officers, researchers and other Congressional staffers have been blocked from writing for the online encyclopedia Wikipedia after it was discovered that they were breaching the website's ethics code and removing politically inconvenient or embarrassing information about members of Congress."
Teens Reveal Too Much Online - "On websites such as MySpace, teenagers can find people around the world who share their love of sports, their passion for photography or their crush on the latest Hollywood star. But authorities say teens are increasingly finding trouble in an online environment where millions of people can, in seconds, find out where they go to school, learn their interests, download their pictures and instantly send them messages."
40 States Re-Examining Eminent Domain - "Is this the work of a cruel government? Or the best hope for resurrecting an ocean resort town that is finally showing signs of reviving after decades of hard times? Echoes of the debate are happening across the country, after a U.S. Supreme Court decision brought new attention to governments' ability to seize property through the tool of eminent domain. Some 40 states are re-examining their laws - with action in Congress, too - after the court's unpopular ruling."
Music fans tell industry: Cut prices, make better music - "While one-quarter of the nation's music fans say they've downloaded songs onto their computers — legally or otherwise — a new nationwide poll suggests music executives should look elsewhere to explain their business woes. Three in every four fans complain that compact discs are too expensive, and 58% complain that music in general is getting worse, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine. ... Many fans also say they just don't like what they're hearing. It may not be surprising to hear older fans say music just isn't what it used to be when they were growing up. But the poll also found that 49% of music fans ages 18-to-34 — the target audience for the music business — say music is getting worse."
Monetize Your Roof - "Click on the aerial view of a cityscape on Google Earth or Microsoft's Live Local, and most of us don't discern much more than a cluttered expanse of buildings and car-lined streets. But where others see a sprawl of empty rooftops, Colin Fitz-Gerald sees a cornucopia of unused advertising space."
Ray Bradbury: L.A.'s future is up in the air - " SOMETIME IN THE next five years, traffic all across L.A. will freeze. The freeways that were once a fast-moving way to get from one part of the city to another will become part of a slow-moving glacier, edging down the hills to nowhere."
Rat brain 'can smell in stereo' - "Rats can home in on smells using a method similar to the stereo processing of sounds, scientists say."
Quote of the Day
"History teaches us that man learns nothing from history."
~ George Frederick Hegel
No comments:
Post a Comment