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Friday, December 19, 2003I've Got An Idea. I call it Carpet Bombing. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see it in action. It's really just google bombing on a bigger scale. I've made a text file (right click and save as) so that no one will have to type all those fucking hyperlinks -- just ad the paragraph tags and whatever other formatting you like. I'm now taking suggestions for additions in the comments to this post. Let's see if this catches on. AFTERTHOUGHT - E-mail me if you use the file so's I can drop you a line when I update it. That way we can all be on the same page. UPDATE! - Ya know, this isn't getting the response I'd hoped for. I guess without a "big blog" backer it's just not gonna work. Oh, well, maybe next time. British Whistleblower Charged. Old news, but I hadn't heard about it. Via American Leftist we learn that the woman who blew the whistle on the US's plan to bug the phones and intercept the E-mails of UN Security Council delegates was charged over a month ago. Katharine Gun, 29, of Cheltenham, was charged by Metropolitan police special branch officers under section 1 (1) of the act. The section states that any serving or former member of the security and intelligence agencies is guilty of an offence if they disclose "any information" about their work without official authority. Fucked up. Aren't there protections for whistleblowers in Britain? Is Nothing Sacred? O'Reilly even lies about his book sales. Kee-Riced! What a fucking ass-nugget. 11,000 Med-Evacs from Iraq. UPI reports that there have been close to 11,000 medical evactuations from Iraq according to Pentagon data, including 2,273 troops wounded in hostile action and 8,581 for non-hostile causes -- a far cry from the official 364 non-hostile wounded reported on the Pentagon's website. I wonder how many of the evacs are because troops have gotten sick from the dirty, rotting food served by Haliburton and depleted uranium currently contaminating Iraq. Freeping The AFA. When Skippy pointed out this poll two days ago, I didn't think much of it. After I voted the results were skewed 130 thousand to about 40 thousand against legalizing gay marriage. See, the American Family Association -- a Christian hate group -- is [supposedly] going to send the results to Congress, so naturally they only made it available to their own members (via their website.) And then the Left found it. When I checked on it via Morons.org just now, the votes in favor of equal rights have taken the lead. That's nearly a hundred thousand votes in two days! Damn, when we get ahold of something we fucking run with it. I give it another day before they pull the poll from the site and never mention it again. We'll have to keep an eye on these fuckers in case they try something sneakier. Morons also has the skinny on the AFA's attempts to doctor the poll. Thursday, December 18, 2003Surprise! Jeb Bush Is A Stupid Asshole. Jenny at Little Red Cookbook has the scoop on Florida's new Christian Prison experiment. Spoiler: it's unconstitutional. More On Electronic Voting. Robert of Mentalspace made me laugh with this one: Frankly the US authorities should take a leaf out of Australia's book. We have been using a very sophisticated piece of election technology for many, many years: the humble pencil. It is easy to use. It rarely malfunctions, and when it does it's simple to fix and cheap to replace. It might take time to count the ballots, but at least people can be sure their vote has not been lost or tampered with. Read the rest. Fuck Michael Savage! Talk Radio Network, Inc. has dropped its lawsuit against Take Back The Media, Savage Stupidity and Michael Savage Sucks. The Quran Written In Saddam's Blood. I'll let Deb explain this: There exists in Iraq today, hidden, guarded and a source of deep controversy, a large, beautifully illuminated Koran written in the blood of Saddam Hussein. How did such a repellent thing come to be? It was because Saddam made a wager with his God: that if his regime survived the first Iraqi war, he would write the entire Koran in his own blood. And it did and he did. Not surprisingly, it is a terrible sin to write the word of Allah in blood (which is always impure by Islamic law.) But, on the other hand, it is forbidden to harm, let alone destroy, a Koran. And so the ultimate fate of what one cleric calls "Saddam's black magic" remains uncertain. This strikes me as terribly, utterly, incredibly -- fucking -- hilarious. It's kinda like the way I feel about books written by people like Ann Coulter -- they're worthless crap not fit for use as landfill, but yet, to me it is a great sin to destroy books on purpose. Quite a dilemma. Of course, an Ann Coulter book you can leave in a box in the attack neglected until the roof springs a leak and takes care of the problem for you. Electronic Voting. Nurse Ratched has the facts. 9-11 Was Preventable. This has been making it's way through the blogosphere. The chairman of the independent commission investigating 9-11 has come out publicly to say that 9-11 was preventable. I got just one thing to say about this: Well, DUH! Excerpt: "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen." This must chap Shrub's ass something awful. Poor guy. Probably thought a fellow GOPer would go easy on him. Wednesday, December 17, 2003Rumsfeld And His 'Old Friend' Saddam. Infoshop: At last in United States military captivity, ousted former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein will soon mark an important 20th anniversary, the kind of anniversary that brings with it an appreciation of the ironies of life, and politics. Read the rest. Jordan Explains The EPA's "Credit System." Jordan of Confined Space: So, imagine that the building next door to you is being torn down and you learn that it's spewing cancer-causing asbestos dust into the air around your home. You quickly call the Environmental Protection Agency expecting to see the building owners hauled off to jail. But the nice people at EPA say "Sorry, the owner of the building next door has bought some asbestos credits from the buildign owner across town who is doing an especially good job cleaning up his asbestos. Deal with it." Read the rest of his post. And speaking of Asbestos: The GOP controlled Ohio Legislature is rolling back compensation eligibility for people hurt by asbestos. Dickheads. Reprint. Apologies to The Mighty Reason Man, but I have to reprint this entire post: Fantasies Hahahahaha. I'm rolling here, man. Convicted Felons Are Gonna Be Counting Your Ballot. From the AP via Factivism: Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold Inc., one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions, and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records. A programmer who went to jail for "falsifying computer records" is working on the computers that manage vote counting in our meager Democratic institutions. And the machines don't produce any paper trail. Yes, good idea. Thank you. Unions, Osama, Dean, Gephardt, and Contracts -- All In One Post! Via Nathan Newman we learn that the Machinists Union, who's funds paid for the Dean-Osama commercial (and let me tell ya -- that kinda shit is what happens when you let conservatives into the damn party,) are asking for their money back. The Laborers Union has expressed dismay over the ads, but has taken no action against the group responsible for them. The Machinists have also called for the ad to be pulled and the names of the organization's financial backers to be released. Gephardt has claimed complete ignorance of the Dean-Osama ad, the organization responsible -- Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values -- and it's financiers. Two of the organizations top officials have close ties to Gephardt though, so I find it hard to believe that the stupid fuck doesn't know anything about them or the ad. I hate Democrats. Newman also has a good post detailing the GOPs attempt to nullify a contract between UPS -- a big GOP contributor -- and its employees. The contract was hard won in 1997, but I guess the Repugs don't care about a contract made in good faith unless it hurts workers and fills the pockets of thier contributors (the rich.) Just another day in the war against working people. Write Your Elected Officials About This. Tuesday, December 16, 2003Well, At Least The Iraqi Torture Chambers Are Gone, Right? From Amnesty International, via Karmalised: A new Amnesty International report charges that in 2002, the Bush Administration violated the spirit of its own export policy and approved the sale of equipment implicated in torture to Yemen, Jordan, Morocco and Thailand, despite the countries' documented use of such weapons to punish, mistreat and inflict torture on prisoners. The US is also alleged to have handed suspects in the 'war on terror' to the same countries. Makes all that talk about the Ba'ath party thugs seem a bit... Oh, what's the word I'm looking for? You know the one, when you say one thing and then do another. There's always these little facts that put everything into perspective. Terrorists Operating In America. Orcinus has more on the Texas Cyanide Bomb Plot. No Arabs here, mind you, just a bunch of White Supremacist fixing to kill lots of people, which is probably why you're not hearing about it on CNN. Scary thought for today: There could be more of these bombs out there, and each one is capable of killing thousands of people. Just Say "No!" To Sweatshops. And do it with your fucking wallet. There's a nice article in the NY Times about the new anti-sweatshop business ventures. Foremost among these, of course, is No Sweat Apparel (go and buy something why don't ya. And if you've got a website -- like a blog -- you should join the affiliate program. I really wish more bloggers would get in on this fight.) Check out this quote from No Sweat co-founder Adam Neiman: "In my opinion, one good boss is no more a solution to the problem of wage slavery than one good plantation owner was a solution to human slavery." Hellz yeah! You'd think the guy was an Anarchist with a line like that. Send A Lump Of Coal To Wal-Mart. Cause they've been bad, bad children this year. You can do it right here. Idiots And Equality. I think Tim of Freespace called me an idiot. I can't tell for sure that he was talking about me -- he wasn't very specific, but judging from the post I think he was responding to my post on the minimum wage (which linked to his post on the subject.) Tim seems to have an abundance of tact. Anyway, the whole post is basically this quote: "There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality that incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." -- Democracy in America Which I thought was interesting. Stupid -- but interesting. The idea that you can have freedom without equality is as ridiculous as the idea that you can have equality without freedom. These two things go hand in hand. If people are discriminated against, they aren't free -- they are slaves in a system that elevates one person over another, giving one individual more rights and freedoms than another. If other people are given an unfair advantage, they're not free either -- they're pampered, slaves to the system that elevated them above the rest. (And "equality in slavery" is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. If you are a slave, then someone is your master and is therefore elevated above you in the system. There is an inherent inequality between you.) I think we can all agree that racial inequality is a bad thing (and if you don't then you can get the fuck outta here, I don't want you within ten clicks of my site.) I think we can all agree that legal inequality is also a bad thing (again, if you don't, fuck off.) These things still exist though (for instance: a majority of drug offenders are white, but a majority of drug offenders in prison are black.) Why? .... I'm waiting for your answer. Oh, nevermind, I'll just say it: Legal, social and racial inequalities exist because their is still economic inequality. As long as our capitalist system elevates certain groups in the system above others, there will always be these systematic injustices perpetrated against those on the bottom (the majority.) Let me put it another way: economic power shields one from social injustice. That is not exactly a radical statement. Rich kids get lighter sentences in court. Rich kids get the best schools. Rich people have the most expensive lawyers and the most well-paid-for defenses in court. Rich people have more pull with public officials (they probably play golf with them on the weekends.) Economic power also facilitates social injustice. The Bush Administration -- all the proof I need. No matter how you feel about the money these people "earned," the fact that it is the very cause behind much (if not most) of the inequality and injustice in our society is undeniable. Libertarians, Conservtives and many Liberals think that this systematic abuse of the majority of the population is just hunky-doory. I don't understand it. There are two kinds of authority, State and Economic, why are these people so intent on fighting the one (except maybe the conservatives,) but not the other. Why is it not okay for the State to take away my rights, while it is perfectly fine when an employer does it? (And one cannot protect you from the other.) How can you accept a system that leaves 17,000 children homeless in New York alone? Equality, like freedom, is a basic human right. All that talk about "hard work" and "rewards" is complete bullshit without freedom and equality. And yeah, I want to bring the powerful down. I want to bring them down because they did not get their power fairly. I want to bring them down because no man, whether he be a government agent or a corporate boss, has the right to hold power over other men. Hard work can lead a strong, intelligent man to be a Dictator, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable for him to hold power over the rest of the population. "Tyranny is tyranny, let it come from whom it may." - Emma Goldman A Model Corporate Citizen. McWane Inc. -- Killing and maiming workers for profit. Income Distribution. Say hello to ^^^Living On Less, which has a good post on the income gap. Excerpt: Fewer than 8 million people out of 222 million who are old enough to work make $100,000 a year or more. Monday, December 15, 2003It's No Fucking Wonder The American Public Is So Fucking Stupid. From the Washington Post: The White House said in a year-end report released yesterday that the invasion of Iraq had produced "clear evidence of Saddam's illegal weapons program" and new intelligence about his ties to terrorist organizations. If someone read this idly or caught a clip on the news they might think that we had actually found WMD and evidence of terrorist links. But we haven't, so Bush is lying. Funny how that people with these two misperceptions are something like 3 times more likely to support the US war in Iraq. You'd think Bush was telling these lies on purpose! Nah. Seriously, it's called Manufacturing Consent. The expert use of propoganda to con the public into supporting a policy that they'd normally balk at. And let me tell ya: Bu$hCo could give propoganda lessons to Joseph Goebbels. Sunday, December 14, 2003Captured. Saddam has been caught. Sounds good to me. Unless, of course, it turns out to be one of the infamous body doubles (none of which have been found.) There was way too much hoopla over the WMD hunt for me to completely trust this report.  
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