Pakistanis find no evidence against ‘terror mastermind’ - "The Briton alleged to be the ‘mastermind’ behind the airline terror plot could be innocent of any significant involvement, sources close to the investigation claim." -- You read that correctly.
Bush's final gamble: giving Iraq a dictator? - "But last week the new nugget: an anonymous “military affairs expert” attended a White House briefing and reported: “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy. Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect, but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”" -- It was never about bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. It was about establising a permanent presence in Iraq.
Bush: Leaving Iraq now would be a 'disaster' - "President Bush on Monday said there would be no quick U.S. exit from Iraq despite his concerns over talk of civil war in the country and the effect the war is having in American society. "If we ever give up the desire to help people who want to live in a free society, we will have lost our soul as a nation," Bush said." -- I used to just not be able to stomach listening to "words" come out of his mouth, but lately I am finding it increasingly more difficult to read his "words" as well.
Fourth defeat seals Bush’s war legacy - "But when one examines the record of the self-professed "war leader", the results are pretty dismal. As of now, President Bush is in the process of losing all four wars that he started."
Officer Called Haditha Routine - "The Marine officer who commanded the battalion involved in the Haditha killings last November did not consider the deaths of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, unusual and did not initiate an inquiry, according to a sworn statement he gave to military investigators in March. ... It also provides a glimpse of the mind-set of a commander on the scene who, despite the carnage, did not stop to consider whether Marines had crossed a line and killed defenseless civilians."
Three Times Three - "Do you not see what has happened to your country? Do you not realize where all of this is going? I can understand those who have walked away out of apathy and I admire those who fight on…but to think that there’s some silver lining in all of this is simply ignoring the reality. Most congressmen from both parties have been long since bought and paid for. The war is not going to end but is, in fact, priming up for the next phase."
Mutiny on Flight 613 - "British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed. The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic. Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. ... It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands - effectively conducting their own 'passenger profiles'."
The Loose Cannon of 9/11 - "The 23-year old from Oneonta, New York returned home from two tours—one to Afghanistan; the other to Iraq—to help his best friends, Dylan Avery (director) and Jason Bermas (researcher), produce the sensational 80-minute, Web-based documentary Loose Change, which seeks to establish the government’s complicity in the terror attacks by addressing some very tough questions: Why wasn’t Ground Zero treated like a crime scene? How did both towers “freefall” to the ground “in 9.2 seconds” in just under two hours? And where are the black boxes from American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175?"
US extends credit line to Israel - "The Bush administration has agreed to an Israel demand that a loan guarantee deal be extended by an additional three years, until 2011."
Rex 84: FEMA's Blueprint for Martial Law in America - "We are dangerously close to a situation where ~ if the American people took to the streets in righteous indignation or if there were another 9/11 ~ a mechanism for martial law could be quickly implemented and carried out under REX 84."
Military recruiters cited for misconduct - "More than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters. Women were raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams."
Cold War Missiles Target of Blackout - "The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War."
The Real Thing Is Getting So Hard to Find - "It's difficult to know what's real anymore. Politicians deceive us. Corporations cover up misdeeds with frothy PR. Photoshop makes it simple to fake photographs. Breast implants and facelifts are as common as Band-Aids. This is nothing new. The pages of history are filled with stories of fraud going back at least as far as the Trojan Horse. The difference today is that high-powered technology can manipulate reality and disseminate falsehoods on a scale never before seen."
Congress Poised to Unravel the Internet - "The telecommunications reform bill now moving through Congress threatens to be a major setback for those who hope that digital media can foster a more democratic society. The bill not only precludes net neutrality safeguards but also eliminates local community oversight of digital communications provided by cable and phone giants. It sets the stage for the privatized, consolidated and unregulated communications system that is at the core of the phone and cable lobbies' political agenda."
Obey your government: Toss that killer lip gloss - "As people obediently lined up at airports across the country to throw away killer lip gloss, expensive perfume and even bottles of fine wine, an irreverent question came to mind: Is there anything the government could order the American people to do in the name of fighting terrorism that would be so ridiculous they would refuse to do it? We are all undergoing government training. And so far we are all passing with flying colors. Whether that is something we should be proud of is questionable. We could look back on it one day as the biggest mistake the citizens of a once free nation ever made. Terrorists aren't the only ones who know how to use fear as a political weapon. The current administration has shown before it knows how to use fear to win elections and maintain power."
Federal Appeals Court: Driving With Money is a Crime - "A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime."
Americans Have Never Confronted 'The Real Enemy' - "And the reason freedom is here one minute and gone the next is because Americans have never really confronted its true enemy. In fact, Americans have been shadow boxing with its real foe for centuries, instead of landing a solid right punch directly in the face of the Jesuit Order and The Vatican."
Sunday school teacher dumped for being female - "The minister of a church that dismissed a female Sunday School teacher after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible says a woman can perform any job -- outside of the church. The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on August 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years."
Crucifix banned by school - "A TEENAGE Christian has been banned from wearing a treasured crucifix by her high school."
THE EVOLUTION OF HOMEOWNER ASSOCIATIONS - "The first thing housing consumers should understand is that associations were never intended to benefit them. They benefit municipal governments, builders/developers and the growing industry that feeds off associations. This $30 billion annual industry includes managers, attorneys, landscape companies, pool companies, CPAs, insurance companies and now, banks as well. One of the main purposes of an association, and the reason they are required to be part of all new construction in many parts of the country, is that of a vehicle for local governments to shunt their responsibilities off onto the private sector, while still taxing the citizens at the full rate. What this means for the taxpayer, homeowner and voter, is that they are not only double taxed but also living under the auspices of another layer of government a private government one that is not bound by the protections afforded in the Constitution."
Scientists Disagree On Link Between Storms, Warming - "Academics have published a flurry of papers either supporting or debunking the idea that warmer temperatures linked to human activity are fueling more intense storms. The issue remains unresolved, but it has acquired a political potency that has made both sides heavily invested in the outcome. Paradoxically, the calm hurricane season in the Atlantic so far this year has only intensified the argument. Both sides are using identical data but coming up with conflicting conclusions. There are several reasons."
2006 Tropical Storm Season Now Below Normal - "What a difference a year makes. After the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the 2006 season is now below normal."
Delusional Democracy Breeds Delusional Prosperity - "Contrary to popular thinking, many revolutions have not occurred because of a widespread desire for freedom or democracy. They have been driven by mass hatred and rejection of economic inequality. The poor have revolted against the rich for eons. For much of human history the lack of freedom was linked to economic inequality. Those in power limited personal freedom so they could control the economy and prevent a fair distribution of wealth, allowing a relatively few to amass riches. Things change. If there is a special American capitalist genius it is maintaining a system with considerable freedom but where economic inequality is staggering. Our freedom subverts the need to revolt against the economy. The unwritten theory seems to be that if citizens have personal freedom they will ignore economic inequality. And it seems to be working well here in the United States of Affluence. ... This new report presents powerful data on net disposable household income inequality. Data on the Gini coefficient is the most common measure of income inequality. This coefficient varies from zero – perfect equality – to one – just one household having all the income. Data for 28 OECD countries over the period 1990 to 2000 showed that the U.S. had the second highest coefficient, at 0.37. Only Mexico, at 0.49, was higher; it is the simplest measure of just how completely screwed up Mexico is and why its citizens, rather than revolting, are fleeing to the U.S (though they tried for political change in their recent election). But as the American coefficient rises, where will Americans run to? ... When will the Second American Revolution begin? How much more economic misery will it take? Maybe just a little more will bring the American population to the tipping point. We can hope."
The Rise of Shrinking-Vacation Syndrome - "Even before toothpaste could clog an airport security line and a full tank of gas was considered an indulgence, Americans had begun to sour on the traditional summer vacation. But this summer, a number of surveys show that American workers, who already take fewer vacations than people in nearly all industrial nations, have pruned back their leisure days even more." -- And we're supposed to be the bastion of freedom. Hmmm.
Pope: Don't work too hard - " "We have to guard ourselves, the saint observed, from the dangers of excessive activity, regardless of the office one holds, because too many concerns can often lead to hardness of heart," the pope said."
US facing wave of murders and gun violence - "In a shift from trends of the past decade, violent crime is on the rise, fueling criticism of Bush administration policies as a wave of murders and shootings hits smaller cities and states with little experience with serious urban violence."
The CIA-Contra-Crack Connection, 10 Years Later - "The three-part series by reporter Gary Webb linked the CIA and Nicaragua's Contras to the crack cocaine epidemic that ripped through South Los Angeles in the 1980s. Most of the nation's elite newspapers at first ignored the story. A public uproar, especially among urban African Americans, forced them to respond. What followed was one of the most bizarre, unseemly and ultimately tragic scandals in the annals of American journalism, one in which top news organizations closed ranks to debunk claims Webb never made, ridicule assertions that turned out to be true and ignore corroborating evidence when it came to light. The whole shameful cycle was repeated when Webb committed suicide in December 2004."
Experts: Sex slaves are often the girls next door - "“It’s a very overwhelming subject for a lot of people to recognize that there is slavery at this time in our country,” said Carole Angel, staff attorney with the Immigrant Women Program of the women’s rights advocacy group Legal Momentum in Washington. “It’s hard for us as humans to contemplate what this means.”"
Sir, can we do something easier? - "Chemistry and physics departments are closing. The number of A-level science students is plummeting. Why doesn't anyone want to do the hard stuff any more, asks Emma Brockes - and does it matter if they don't? ... Besides which, as anyone who has ever sat through an A-level English class on the Wife of Bath knows, "relevance" and inspirational teaching are in short supply curriculum-wide. The arts subjects, however, have no trouble recruiting. So then it comes down to a question of culture; the fact that science is under-covered in the press because most journalists are arts graduates; the fact that children can't see a clear picture of what returns studying science will deliver, in particular how it will increase their chances of getting on TV; and the fact that, so the argument goes, children are getting lazier because all they do is sit in front of computer screens all day instead of playing competitive sport and tackling equations."
I spy with my little cellphone - "What were once the tracking tools of spies and private investigators are now being offered to mainstream America, specifically parents who want to keep constant track of their kids in real time. Already, millions of families have discovered the meddlesome capabilities of their children's mobile phones. ... The most aggressive has been Disney, whose cellphone service, Disney Mobile, debuted in June. The phones' Family Locator feature allows parents to see, via their own phone or a password-protected Web site, the location of their child's phone on a map. The service allows five free Family Locator requests per month, with additional requests costing 49 cents each. ... But high-tech child surveillance goes beyond cellphones. ... That amount will get you a live tracking device that can be covertly attached to a vehicle. Parents can check online or, depending on the product, even by cellphone to see where the car is, Wilcher said. Some devices can also alert parents if a vehicle travels too far or too fast. If, say, it exceeds 65 mph at night or leaves Tarrant County, the parent can be notified instantly by mobile text message or e-mail. Such devices usually come with a monthly fee. ... "People want to know where their loved ones are. It's just a dangerous world out there," King said." -- Fear sells.
Polygamists' children rally for their families - "Calling their lives blessed, more than a dozen young women and girls from polygamist families in Utah spoke at a rally Saturday, calling for a change in state laws and the right to live their life and religion."
Study: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Depression - "A new study reveals that the hallucinogenic chemical in 'magic mushrooms' can help fight off signs of depression as well as anxiety and drug dependence."
Can taxation curb obesity? - "Food and drinks high in sugar should be taxed just like cigarettes, say economists who believe it is the only way to combat the global crisis in obesity."
Parking-lot dentistry is finding its niche - "In casino parking lots in Vegas, mobile dental offices combine technology and the American penchant for saving time."
Caught on Film: A Growing Unease in Hollywood - "“When you hear what people are afraid of, it’s that movies are not special anymore,” said Terry Press, who runs worldwide marketing at DreamWorks Animation. “It’s the single issue no one wants to think about or say out loud.”"
Dolphins are flippin' idiots - "The scientific and marine conservation communities were divided yesterday in response to a South African academic's research showing dolphins are less intelligent than lab rats or goldfish. The study, by the University of the Witwatersrand's Paul Manger, claims the large brains of marine mammals such as dolphins and whales are to help cope with being warm-blooded in cold water and not a sign of intelligence."
Quote of the Day
"Something is always happening. But when it happens, people don't always see it...or understand it...or accept it."
~ John Hobbes, Fallen
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