Wednesday, 07 June 2006
CIA Spider Web
Here's a pretty striking image of the 'spider-web' the US has woven of illegal detentions and transfers, with collusion of Council of Europe member states:
Posted by flow Frazao on June 7, 2006 at 08:26 PM in America, Current Affairs, Iraq, Scary Bush, War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday, 23 April 2006
Living With War
In case you haven't heard, Neil Young has a new album coming out that's entirely dedicated to George W. Bush. The first single is called "Impeach the President".
“This talk about a 9/11 mentality. No one, George Bush or anyone else, owns the 9/11 mentality. It belongs to the United States of America. It belongs to everyone who was sitting there with their family, watching those buildings get hit by those jets. It belongs to George Bush and his family, it belongs to John Kerry and his family, it belongs to me and my family, my American family. I have a post 9/11 mentality. It’s just not the same as George Bush’s.”
Posted by flow Frazao on April 23, 2006 at 04:17 AM in America, Current Affairs, US News, War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (1)
Thursday, 12 January 2006
Food for the Ears
Some stuff I've been listening to that's worth mentioning:
- The Beastles - dj BC presents The Beatles vs. The Beastie Boys (follow link for mp3s)
- Live From Iraq - 4th25
It took only a few ambushes, roadside bombs and corpses for Neal Saunders to know what he had to do: turn the streets of Baghdad into rap music. So the First Cavalry sergeant, then newly arrived for a year of duty in Sadr City, began hoarding his monthly paychecks and seeking out a U.S. supplier willing to ship a keyboard, digital mixer, cable, microphones and headphones to an overseas military address. He hammered together a plywood shack, tacked up some cheap mattress pads for soundproofing and invited other Task Force 112 members to join him in his jerry-built studio. They call themselves "4th25"—pronounced fourth quarter, like the final do-or-die minutes of a game—and their album is "Live From Iraq." The sound may be raw, even by rap standards, but it expresses things that soldiers usually keep bottled up. "You can't call home and tell your mom your door got blown off by an IED," says Saunders. "No one talks about what we're going through. Sure, there are generals on the TV, but they're not speaking for us. We're venting for everybody."
Watch their video here, if you can stand it. Not a film clip for the meek, which is why it probably won't get much play on MTV. And that's a shame, because these guys are to Iraq what Jimi Hendrix was to Vietnam.
Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2006 at 10:19 PM in Culture, Iraq, Music, War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wednesday, 20 October 2004
Terror Fears Don't Trump Constitution
Guess what? Disagreeing with George Bush no longer serves as probable cause to be subject to a body search:
[...]
"We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War of Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over," Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote for the three-member court. "September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country."
City officials in Columbus, Georgia, contended the searches were needed because of the elevated risk of terrorism, but the court threw out that argument, saying it would "eviscerate the Fourth Amendment."
"In the absence of some reason to believe that international terrorists would target or infiltrate this protest, there is no basis for using September 11 as an excuse for searching the protesters," the court said."
Next up, free-speech zones.
Posted by flow Frazao on October 20, 2004 at 01:01 AM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Thursday, 14 October 2004
The Balloon Arches Of Freedom
This is pretty scary:
Security screeners at the New Jersey airport's nine checkpoints most often missed phony explosive devices hidden in carryon bags sent through X-ray machines, the newspaper reported.
The checkers at Newark, one of the airports breached by terrorist hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, also failed to detect guns concealed in carryon bags sent through X-rays or carried under the clothing of testers who walked through metal detectors, the report said.
The airport's overall failure rate was 24.8 percent in covert tests conducted between June and September by the federal Transportation Security Administration, which hires the screeners and oversees the nation's airport security.
Don't you feel safer knowing that the TSA is stopping almost 75 percent of all the bombs that are smuggled onto airplanes! That's just great.
I mean, do you really think these incompetent terrorists would be able to organize four bombs at the same time in hopes that at least one of them made it onto a plane? Come on! That's crazy talk. Do you really think that just because they were able to coordinate four simultaneous hijackings utilizing 19 people separated by 500 miles they'll be able to slip by the glazed eyes of the minimum wage slaves at the TSA? Keep in mind, the terrorists will have to remove their shoes. This ain't September 10, folks.
But fear not! The Transportation Security Administration is on top of the situation. They've hauled their masturbatory lifetime achievement awards over to the cheese tray of liberty and are doing their very best to protect the balloon arches of freedom from the terrorist menace:
Awards were presented to 543 Transportation Security Administration employees and 30 organizations, including a "lifetime achievement award" for one worker with the 2-year-old agency. Almost $200,000 was spent on travel and lodging for attendees.
The investigation by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, also found the TSA gave its senior executives bonuses averaging $16,000, higher than at any other federal government agency, and failed to provide adequate justification in more than a third of the 88 cases examined.
[...]
The event planning company, MarCom Group Inc. of Fairfax, Va., was paid $85,552 for its work and given an additional $81,767 for plaques, $5,196 for official photographs, $1,486 for three balloon arches and $1,509 for signs.
It looks like George Bush isn't the only one who's not worried about Osama bin Laden.
Posted by flow Frazao on October 14, 2004 at 10:07 AM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sunday, 26 September 2004
Bush Administration 0 for 5000 in War on Terror
Protecting America? I don't think so:
Oh well, at least they finally caught Cat Stevens.
Posted by flow Frazao on September 26, 2004 at 07:16 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thursday, 26 August 2004
Clock in New York's Times Square Counts War Cost
The amount on the clock will grow at a rate of $177 million a day, $7.4 million an hour and $122,820 per minute, said the advocacy group Project Billboard which put it up.
[...]
"Just think of the things you could do with that money," said tour guide Farah Perez. "No way am I voting for Bush."
The message may not reach everyone, however, as the clock sits above a much larger billboard of a woman wearing nothing but a pair of sneakers.
"First I saw the other billboard, but then I saw the cost of the Iraq war and the number took my breath away," said passerby Greg Boris. "Then I went back to looking at the other billboard.
"That money should be spent here in the United States," he added.
Posted by flow Frazao on August 26, 2004 at 08:39 AM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Tuesday, 24 August 2004
Closing In On The Butlers Of Evil
First this:
And now this:
We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. The domestic staff of terrorists will be brought to justice.
Posted by flow Frazao on August 24, 2004 at 11:07 AM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Friday, 20 August 2004
Ladies and Gentlemen...
Yet another truimph in the Bush Administration's War on Terra.
Posted by flow Frazao on August 20, 2004 at 12:20 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Monday, 09 August 2004
Renaming the War on Terror
Here are a couple of snippets from the Q & A portion of Bush's address to the Unity Journalists of Color Convention. All are from the White House's official transcript, and this first one includes detail that's almost too sad to mention:
(Laughter.)
No, that's what they do.
Poor George must be so used to speaking to pre-screened fanatics that he expects everybody to swallow this kind of retardation. Sadly, I can't find an audio clip of this particular section, but don't worry - it's not the only time Bush was laughed at during this conference.
Here's another audio clip where bush is being asked about Indian sovereignty.
Finally, here's one more chunk of Dear Leader's back and forth with the press corps:
THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no, whoa, whoa. With regard to my opposition to quota systems.
Q To quotas, okay. But I've never heard you speak against legacy. (Applause.) Now, the President of Texas A&M, Robert Gates, said that he would not use race in admissions, and then he later said he would not use legacy. If you say it's a matter of merit, and not race, shouldn't colleges also get rid of legacy? Because that's not based upon merit, that's based upon if my daddy or my granddaddy went to my college. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. I thought you were referring to my legacy. (Laughter.)
Q That's why I allowed you to go ahead and bring it out. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: Well, in my case, I had to knock on a lot of doors to follow the old man's footsteps. (Laughter.) No, look, if what you're saying is, is there going to be special treatment for people -- in other words, we're going to have a special exception for certain people in a system that's supposed to be fair, I agree, I don't think there ought to be.
Q So the colleges should get rid of legacy.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think so, yes. I think it ought to be based upon merit. And I think it also ought to be based upon -- (applause) -- and I think colleges need to work hard for diversity. Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong. You said, against affirmative action, is what you said. You put words in my mouth. What I am for is --
Q I just read the speech, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: What speech?
Q In terms of when you came out against the Michigan affirmative action policy, and --
THE PRESIDENT: No, I said was against quotas.
Q So you support affirmative action, but not quotas.
THE PRESIDENT: I support colleges affirmatively taking action to get more minorities in their school. (Applause.)
Q That's a long headline, Mr. President. (Laughter and applause.)
Just to make it perfectly clear - this is George W. Bush coming out against legacy admissions. Isn't that kind of like Superman denouncing Earth's yellow sun? One wonders where he would be without it.
This is the same guy who stood on the shoulders of his father and grandfather to get into Harvard, where he distinguished himself by becoming a cheerleader and a self-proclaimed C student:
I'd like to say that someday we'll look back on all this and laugh, but somehow I think it'll always be pretty scary that we tolerated this idiocy from our President.
Posted by SmooveJ Zao on August 9, 2004 at 09:02 AM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thursday, 22 July 2004
Was This Part Of The $87 Billion?
Looks like Klinger's prayers have finally been answered:
The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free -- something the military says helps surgeons practice their skills.
"Anyone wearing a uniform is eligible," Dr. Bob Lyons, chief of plastic surgery at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio told the magazine, which said soldiers needed the approval of their commanding officers to get the time off.
Between 2000 and 2003, military doctors performed 496 breast enlargements and 1,361 liposuction surgeries on soldiers and their dependents, the magazine said.
Posted by flow Frazao on July 22, 2004 at 12:16 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Monday, 19 July 2004
Get Those Spatulas Ready
Because I have a feeling we're about to see a whole lot of flip-flopping coming from the White House in response to the Sept 11 Commission's upcoming report.
The Washington Post has a handy summary of how the 9/11 commission's findings differ from the Bush administration's previous misstatements and exagerrations (to put it tactfully):
Posted by flow Frazao on July 19, 2004 at 01:58 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thursday, 15 July 2004
Time's Up
In case you'd forgotten, today marks Osama bin Laden's deadline for Europe to surrender:
"I offer a truce to them (Europe) with a commitment to stop operations against any state which vows to stop attacking Muslims," bin Laden said in a recording which CIA officials said they believed to be genuine.
He set a three-month deadline, presumed to expire on Thursday.
I wonder if France is getting antsy.
Posted by SmooveJ Zao on July 15, 2004 at 04:44 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Passengers Give Troops First-Class Seats
"The soldiers were very, very happy, and the whole aircraft had a different feeling," flight attendant Lorrie Gammon told The Dallas Morning News in Thursday's editions.
The June 29 seat-swap on American Airlines Flight 866 from Atlanta to Chicago started before boarding, when a businessman approached one of the soldiers and traded his seat.
When the swapping was done, "the other two first-class passengers wanted to give up their seats, too, but they couldn't find any more soldiers," Gammon said."
Posted by SmooveJ Zao on July 15, 2004 at 12:25 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Freed Swede Speaks Out About Gitmo Torture
The upcoming trials of Guantanamo prisoners are not going to be pretty:
Mehdi Ghezali, the son of an Algerian-born immigrant, told Swedish media in interviews published or aired Wednesday that he was interrogated almost every day at the U.S. naval base on Cuban soil.
The 25-year-old man, who was arrested in Pakistan where he says he was studying Islam, was released on July 8 after pressure from Sweden.
Ghezali told Dagens Nyheter daily and Swedish public radio he had cooperated for the first six months but stopped talking when his interrogators kept asking the same questions.
In April the military changed their tactics, he said.
"They put me in the interrogation room and used it as a refrigerator. They set the temperature to minus degrees so it was terribly cold and one had to freeze there for many hours -- 12 to 14 hours one had to sit there, chained," he said, adding that he had partially lost the feeling in one foot since then.
Ghezali said he was also deprived of sleep, chained for long periods in painful positions, and exposed to bright flashes of light in a darkened room and loud music and noise.
"They forced me down with chained feet. Then they took away the chains from the hands, pulled the arms under the legs and chained them hard again. I could not move," he said. "
As far as I'm concerned, the most striking thing in the article is not the torture. It's how Ghezali got to Guantanamo in the first place:
He said he was visiting a friend in the Afghan town of Jalalabad near the Pakistani border when the U.S. invasion started. He decided to return to Pakistan when he heard that villagers were selling foreigners to U.S. forces.
Pakistani villagers seized him as crossed the border from Afghanistan and sold him to Pakistani police, who turned him over to the U.S. military. He was flown from Pakistan to Afghanistan and arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002, he said.
There have been numerous reports that US forces were paying bounties for "terrorists" in Afghanistan. I'm willing to bet that when the trials start, we'll find that the vast majority of prisoners in Guantanamo aren't related to Al Qaeda in any way, but are merely villagers who were in the wrong place and got rounded up by greedy warlords and traded for money.
Posted by flow Frazao on July 15, 2004 at 11:38 AM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thursday, 08 July 2004
Real Torture In A Fake Jail
Is there ANYBODY in charge in Afghanistan? What the hell is going on over there?
The U.S. military, facing a widening inquiry into prisoner abuse, quickly distanced itself from the three, who had been posing as American agents before being detained Monday. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday "the U.S. government does not employ or sponsor these men."
Afghan officials also dismissed claims by the apparent ringleader, Jonathan K. Idema, that he was a "special adviser" to their security forces, saying the three had posed as military agents on a self-appointed hunt for terrorists.
The Americans and four Afghans who were detained along with them "formed a group and pretended they were fighting terrorism," Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said. "They arrested eight people from across Kabul and put them in their jail."
Another Afghan security official said intelligence and police officials who raided the group's house Monday found the prisoners strung up by their feet.
"They were hanging upside down," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said a report showed the men also were beaten.
Jalali said the Americans had no "legal link" to any Afghan or other authorities.
Still, officials said they were seen regularly around Kabul wearing military uniforms and armed with assault rifles.
Let me get this straight. Some guy who's allegedly former military made his own way over to Afghanistan at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom (or whatever it was called). He somehow managed to procure a military uniform, an assault weapon and a crew of Afghan underlings and he's been running his own jail there ever since??
How was this allowed to happen? Can any sociopathic loser with a Soldier-of-Fortune subscription go become a mercenary in Afghanistan?
Posted by SmooveJ Zao on July 8, 2004 at 09:11 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
The Headline Says It All
Ridge Warns of Election Threat in U.S. But No Details Yet
(link via Atrios)
Posted by flow Frazao on July 8, 2004 at 05:09 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Friday, 02 July 2004
If I Can't Keep My Beer Cold...
... then the terrorists have already won:
Along with this now familiar general warning, the FBI has introduced the specter of a new terrorism threat: booby-trapped beer coolers. A lightly classified bulletin sent to 18,000 state and local agencies last week advised local authorities to look out for plastic-foam containers, inner tubes and other waterborne flotsam commonly seen around marinas that could be rigged to blow up on contact. Also, the bulletin warned, terrorists might attach bombs to buoys. FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials say no such devices have actually been discovered, nor is there any current intelligence that terrorists are hatching plots involving floating bombs."
Happy Fourth of July, everybody!
I'm going white water rafting in Maine this weekend, so there won't be any posts until Tuesday at the earliest. Have a great weekend, and be careful with those beers.
PS - This is a real article from Time Magazine. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.
Posted by SmooveJ Zao on July 2, 2004 at 08:11 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It's Coming
Yesterday, two major American papers gave their op-ed pages over to pieces supporting a reinstatement of the Draft. USA Today had one, as did the Washington Post.
They both lay out seductive arguments for why a reinstatement seems like a good idea. Needless to say, it's total bullshit. For example, here is the final paragraph from the WaPo op-ed by Noel Koch:
First of all, there were plenty of rich kids who managed to dodge the draft, and a fair number of them wound up in political office (see Bush, George W. and Cheney, Dick). Why on earth would this draft be any different?
Secondly, if the draft produces politicians who have "appreciation of the true costs of conflict", then why are we stuck in the current quagmire? The guys sitting in the WH and the Capitol all lived through the Vietnam era, so how come they don't know the difference between a war and a cakewalk?
Furthermore, if the argument had any validity at all then the generals and politicians in charge in the 1960s would have used their own experiences from WWII and Korea to argue against fighting in Vietnam. Hell, a lot of them wanted to invade Cuba knowing full well that would mean war with the Soviets.
The draft is not the solution to this problem. The last thing the world needs is another wall in Washington DC with 60,000 names on it.
Posted by SmooveJ Zao on July 2, 2004 at 08:56 AM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thursday, 03 June 2004
Crazy Here, Crazy There, Tons O' Crazy Everywhere
Don't have much time for blogging today, but get a load of these two articles:
In civil-rights lawyer Connie Rice's words, the officers are simply "shovelling quicksand" - and without more equipment, back-up, effective witness protection, training and, crucially, more officers, they are fighting a losing battle. And she should know. Having worked with the community and the LAPD on various initiatives and reform programmes ever since the 1992 Rodney King case sparked riots, she is now about to begin investigating the newly re-opened Rampart police corruption scandal inquiry.
Aside from a rising homicide rate, Ms Rice warns that the gangs are crossing a line that has not been crossed before: They are now targeting police officers themselves. She says: "It's one thing for gangsters to exchange fire with the police in situations, but we are now starting to see sniping. We are now seeing the ambushing of cops by gangsters and we should be panicking. "We are on the way to a point of no return and we will end up in a Falluja situation. It is already a Falluja situation in some areas. LA
is on the road to Falluja."
Crazy Article #2:
Nabil al-Marabh, once imprisoned as the No. 27 man on the FBI's list of must-capture terror suspects, is free again.
He's free despite telling a Jordanian informant he planned to die a martyr by driving a gasoline truck into a New York City tunnel, turning it sideways, opening its fuel valves and having an al-Qaida operative shoot a flare to ignite a massive explosion.
Free despite telling the FBI he had trained on rifles and rocket propelled grenades at militant camps in Afghanistan and after admitting he sent money to a former roommate convicted of trying to blow up a hotel in Jordan.
Free despite efforts by prosecutors in Detroit and Chicago to indict him on charges that could have kept him in prison for years.
Those indictments were rejected by the Justice Department in the name of protecting intelligence. Even two judges openly questioned al-Marabh's terror ties. The Bush administration in January deported al-Marabh to Syria - his home and a country the U.S. government long has regarded as a sponsor of terrorism.
Posted by flow Frazao on June 3, 2004 at 03:02 PM in Random News, War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wednesday, 26 May 2004
Homeland Insecurity
[...]
The estimate of 18,000 fighters was based on intelligence estimates that al-Qaida trained at least 20,000 fighters in its training camps in Afghanistan before the United States and its allies ousted the Taliban regime. In the ensuing war on terror, some 2,000 al-Qaida fighters have been killed or captured, the survey said. The United States remains al-Qaida's prime target, the report said. An al-Qaida leader has said 4 million Americans will have to be killed "as a prerequisite to any Islamic victory," the survey said.
I'd like to thank George Bush, Congress, and the piss-poor Media for "taking the fight to the enemy". Great job guys. That whole flypaper strategy is working out real well.
I'd also like to take a moment to thank all the spineless Americans out there who were either too chickenshit or too stupid to even consider the idea that this war was a lie. During the run-up to the invasion there were articles being published all over the world casting doubt on the Bush Administration's claims of "hundreds of tons of WMD" in Iraq. By the time we started Shocking and Aweing even UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix was saying that he hadn't found any WMD at all and that he needed more time to determine what the situation was.
But that didn't give the average American any pause at all. Most of you were out for blood. I was called unpatriotic, unAmerican and worse because I insisted this war was a deception. From the very beginning I maintained that the Bush Administration was trampling on the Constitution, destroying our international relationships (freedom fries, anyone?), and had placed us in greater danger.
Sadly, my voice was drowned out by the legions of Americans who believed George Bush's lies about Nigerian yellowcake uranium and Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda. Bush used 9/11 as a pretext to wage his foolish war and most of you ate it up. Seventy percent of Americans didn't even bother to notice that none of the hijackers were Iraqis.
Over and over I was accused of "helping the terrorists". But in the end, who really helped Al Qaeda? Who gave them the perfect recruitment tool? Who gave them the holy war they so desperately wanted? Who allowed American resources to be diverted from Afghanistan and the actual war on terror to the make-believe threat in Iraq?
Not me, that's for sure.
As a resident of a major metropolitan area in the US, I pray to God that none of these Al Qaeda plots comes to fruition. But if they do, there will be plenty of blame to go around. Sadly, the war that you all accepted on blind faith may coming home very soon. And if it does just remember that I did everything I could to stop it.
Posted by flow Frazao on May 26, 2004 at 05:13 PM in War on Terra | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack