Professor-rat's Blurty
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Saturday, May 17th, 2008
| Time |
Event |
| 6:52a |
Euro-colonialists in the Middle East
John McCain in an interview with Matt Bai.
as we talked, I tried to draw out of him some template for knowing when military intervention made sense — an answer, essentially, to the question that has plagued policy makers confronting international crises for the last 20 years. McCain has said that the invasion of Iraq was justified, even absent the weapons of mass destruction he believed were there, because of Hussein’s affront to basic human values. Why then, I asked McCain, shouldn’t we go into Zimbabwe, where, according to that morning’s paper, allies of the despotic president, Robert Mugabe, were rounding up his political opponents and preparing to subvert the results of the country’s recent national election? How about sending soldiers into Myanmar, formerly Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest by a military junta?
“I think in the case of Zimbabwe, it’s because of our history in Africa,” McCain said thoughtfully. “Not so much the United States but the Europeans, the colonialist history in Africa. The government of South Africa has obviously not been effective, to say the least, in trying to affect the situation in Zimbabwe, and one reason is that they don’t want to be tarred with the brush of modern colonialism. So that’s a problem I think we will continue to have on the continent of Africa. If you send in Western military forces, then you risk the backlash from the people, from the legacy that was left in Africa because of the era of colonialism.”
Of course, there is no history of colonialism in the Middle East. Except for Algeria. And Jordan. And Iran. And Saudi Arabia. And Yemen. And Bahrain. And Oman. And Qatar. And The United Arab Emirates. And Iraq, whose borders were almost randomly drawn on a British map, which has led us to the instability we see today.
(McCain, by the way, was for talking to Hamas before he was against it, another example of torching the past.)
The worst thing the conservative movement has foisted on the country is a collapse of historical memory. Our civic education here is not so robust, and our civic knowledge of history is worse. This has given wide latitude for conservatives to create their own reality, and jabber away with "facts" that consist of shibboleths and catch phrases, which by now have been ripped of all meaning outside the Manichean "good" and "bad." That's what we saw with that shameful appearance on Hardball. That's what we saw by the President yesterday. That's what we saw from McCain in that interview...' - DIGBY
They know enough history to know that the overt colonialist era is over. Todays imperialists are ideological colonialists. Trotskycons able to colonize both major sides of politics... and even attempt anarchism! | | 7:15a |
Boxun rebellion
KOS - Chinese bloggers are bucking the state controlled media and breaking the real news in China, thanks to a website hosted by Watson Meng in Durham, NC.
The site, Boxun.com, relies on a host of bloggers and citizen journalists — mostly in China — to break stories, often faster than state-controlled Chinese media or foreign news services. The site is banned in China, but Chinese people can skirt that Internet censorship through proxy servers hosted in the United States.
Posting on Boxun (pronounced "bow shwin") is not without risks. Numerous contributors, including three in the past several weeks, have been jailed in China.
"It's really aggravated the [Chinese] government because it takes stuff outside and puts it on display internationally," said Bob Dietz, of the New York nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists. "For us, the site is required reading."
# In other news from China, it is estimated at five million people are now homeless in Suchuan Province as a result of the earthquake. | | 8:59a |
Mad scientists at work The Plan: Sometimes referred to as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the idea was that the United States government was going to monitor the effects of syphilis and perform experiments on those who had a developed form of the disease. That doesn't sound so bad, right? Well you're a terrible person for thinking that, because the experiments were exclusively performed without consent, and on the very poor, mostly illiterate black males. These men weren't told that they had syphilis and were denied proper treatment for their disease. Because that would have skewed the results, you see. But hey, at least the government promised free burials to those who died. How did that work out? The study (started in 1932 in Tuskegee, Alabama) eventually rounded up 400 black men in a move that would inspire Rage Against the Machine-esque lyrics for years to come. But, contrary to conspiracy enthusiasts, they did not actually give people syphilis, they just examined the symptoms of people who already had the disease. Then, things got out of hand: Doctor 1: "Darn. I'm afraid that we might not get the numbers we want for the next part of this study." Doctor 2: "Why is that?" Doctor 1: "Because it involves administering a painful and dangerous spinal tap for no medical reason." Doctor 2: "Hmm ... Well, why don't we just underline the word "Free" and tell them that it's a special treatment for their symptoms." Doctor 1: "But, wouldn't that be a horrible lie?" Doctor 2: "A horrible what?" When there was a national campaign to use penicillin to stamp out the disease, those in the study were denied access. If they complained loudly enough, they were given a placebo and then sent back home to die. But not before scientists poked and prodded them for the remaining years of their life. It took until 1972 for someone to blow the whistle on all of this. That's 40 years. And that's after Peter Buxtun, the whistle blower, went to the Center for Disease Control, which told him that they would absolutely end this barbaric experiment, just as soon as they completed the last stage of the study. That stage involved studying the corpses of the subjects, and of course they couldn't do that quite yet because some were stubbornly still alive. Buxtun then found a more receptive audience: As a result, in 1974 they passed the National Research Act, which finally closed the apparent loophole in American law that said it was OK for mad scientists to kill people in their experiments. FROM http://www.cracked.com/article_15974_p2.htmlIt only takes just a few bad apples...suddenly we're all animal torturing sadistic Dr Mengeles. | | 9:09a |
Sacrificed
While the DSP have sacrificed their Palestine liberation effort - such as it was at least someone is still on the job. Bin Laden: Palestinian cause fuels war
CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden said in a new audio recording released Friday that al-Qaida will continue its holy war against Israel and its allies until it liberates Palestine. Thank Allah for small blessings.
Another staggering series of sacrifices has been made by the Deciderator. First email - now golf. How much more can one Chimpy looking man do for us? | | 9:15a |
Nigeria and...
Mexico and Texas
U.S.-trained forces reportedly helping Mexican cartels
As many as 200 U.S.-trained Mexican security personnel have defected to drug cartels to carry out killings on both sides of the border and as far north as Dallas, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, told Congress on Wednesday. The renegade members of Mexico’s elite ‘counter’-narcotics teams trained at Fort Benning, Ga., have switched sides, contributing to a wave of violence that has claimed some 6,000 victims over the past 30 months, including prominent law enforcement leaders, the Houston-area Republican told the House Foreign Affairs Committee…MAKETHEMACCOUNTABLE
These are the insurgencies you have when yr not having insurgencies. | | 9:36a |
Shitkickers
Turd blossom season in Foggy Bottom
House panel rejects Rove’s offer on Siegelman case
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have rejected Karl Rove’s offer to provide written responses to questions about the federal prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. In a letter to the former White House adviser’s attorney, Committee Chairman John Conyers and several other Democrats said Rove’s written responses would not allow for ‘give-and-take’ questioning. They asked Rove to reconsider his refusal to testify in person and under oath, asking him to respond by May 21.
Conyers: ‘We’re closing in on Rove’
Just off the House floor today, the Crypt overheard House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers tell two other people: “We’re closing in on Rove. Someone’s got to kick his ass.” Asked a few minutes later for a more official explanation, Conyers told us that Rove has a week to appear before his committee. If he doesn’t, said Conyers, “We’ll do what any self-respecting committee would do. We’d hold him in contempt. Either that or go and have him arrested.” Conyers said the committee wants Rove to testify about his role in the imprisonment of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, among other things. “We want him for so many things, it’s hard to keep track,” Conyers said. - MAKETHEMACCOUNTABLE | | 9:43a |
Oh you bastards
The Indianapolis Star on the endlessly depressing agricultural policy.
The bill even managed to bestow more largess on the highly subsidized and highly protected U.S. sugar industry. Under the legislation, the government promises to purchase excess sugar from producers at 23 cents a pound. The sugar then will be resold to ethanol producers at 2 cents a pound. Who makes up the difference? You, dear taxpayer.
The administration wanted to cut off payments for farmers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $200,000 a year. The bill instead begins to cap subsidies for those earning more than $750,000 a year in farm income or more than $500,000 in non-farm income.
In addition to the sugar subsidy, the bill contains another protectionist element, one that hurts hungry people around the world. The Bush administration wanted to be able to use foreign aid money to buy food at locations near where it's needed by starving people. That move would reduce transportation costs and allow foreign aid dollars to be stretched further. The bill instead continues a requirement that all food aid must be purchased from U.S. farms.
That last part is truly sickening. Even as we have made food prices sky-high by correlating the corn and petroleum markets with our biofuel subsidies, we continue to hold the poorest countries back from developing beyond subsistence agriculture by flooding their markets with free American grain (and we're going to make taxpayers pay the inflated price of that grain, by the way). So they get to suffer from high prices without benefiting from them. At least we could be buying their grain, which would encourage them to produce more of it. Instead we do the opposite.
The added sugar-ethanol subsidy is equally absurd, since the taxpayer will now be paying not only to double the price of his own sugar, but also to make that sugar cheaper for someone who wants to convert it to ethanol. In both cases, our government creates one problem, then creates another, bigger problem in order to solve it, then creates a third problem, even bigger, to solve that one — et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
Our farm policy is an excellent example of what happens when the government gets involved in markets. What began as a humanitarian measure to help a few struggling farmers evolved gradually into a means of keeping unsustainable farming practices in existence, and that evolved into a welfare program for the well-to-do, promoting even more unsustainable practices. Today, decades later, we lack even the political will to abolish the most insane programs we have — such as the one that actually pays non-farmers who live on former farmland.
There is no better argument than the state of farming today for keeping government out of the economy to whatever extent is possible. | | 9:53a |
Will you marry me?
[Andrew Stuttaford]
Jim Manzi:
If subsidiarity is a working compromise designed to accommodate differing moral views, I think that it is a positive good in addressing the second type of objection: that gay marriage will ultimately lead to undesirable social outcomes. I am skeptical that gay marriage is part of a process of social breakdown, but lots of people disagree with me. We have differing theories. I accept that I might be wrong, or at minimum wrong for some times or places. It seems to me that the best way to answer this question is not to yell at each other, or even to see who can write the most elegant and persuasive books, but to let different groups of people voluntarily try different approaches and see what actually happens.Americans have a healthy aversion to telling other people how to live. Only about 30 percent of Americans support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Why don’t we try letting people live how they want to live, and let others try to impose uniform national rules on a heterogeneous population of 300 million people?
Jim, I couldn't agree more. I have to admit that, until a few years ago, I had never given much (or, probably, any) thought to the issue of same sex marriage/unions/partnerships, call them what you will, but having done so, I just cannot see how the practical objections stand up. | | 9:59a |
Mad Max 4
Max gets bearish on oil.
Alaska is first state with average gasoline price above $4
The average price for regular unleaded gasoline in Alaska rose above $4 a gallon Wednesday, making it the first state in the last empire to pass that mark. Btw a US fucking gallon is nearly 4 liters which makes Alaskan petrol a little over a dollar a liter. Easily enough for Max to chew up the set as he was willing to kill everyone when it was well below this level of prices. Price at my local Thunderdome?
$1.50 Au peso's. Kill Max kill. | | 10:12a |
Don't call me whitey Boyle
Lance boil
The CIA Throw Barack From the Train ( Larry Johnson at No Quarter)
I now have it from three sources close to senior Republicans that they have video dynamite–Michelle Obama railing against “whitey” at Jeremiah Wright’s church… I am told there is a clip that is being held for the fall to drop at the appropriate time.
Our local democraps decided not to go ahead with the local DHS. If they remain half-smart they will shit-can ASIO, ASIS and the entire local CIA pile of stinking shit. Tell all the embedded local Seppo spooks to go and fuck their ugly mothers up the arse. | | 10:25a |
Smooth operation
The "league of democracies" idea that John McCain seems to favor is far from new. It was promoted back in the 1930s by journalist Clarence K. Streit in a book that sold well and was much discussed. George Orwell worked it over in a long essay. Streit's idea of an Atlantic Union got him on the cover of Time, postwar. From Orwell's essay:
Briefly, what Mr Streit suggests is that the democratic nations, starting with fifteen which he names, should voluntarily form themselves into a union — not a league or an alliance, but a union similar to the United States, with a common government, common money and complete internal free trade. The initial fifteen states are, of course, the USA, France, Great Britain, the self-governing dominions of the British Empire, and the smaller European democracies, not including Czechoslovakia, which still existed when the book was written. Later, other states could be admitted to the Union when and if they 'proved themselves worthy'. It is implied all along that the state of peace and prosperity existing within the Union would be so enviable that everyone else would soon be pining to join it.
It is worth noticing that this scheme is not so visionary as it sounds. Of course it is not going to happen, nothing advocated by well-meaning literary men ever happens …
Orwell goes on to rail against they hypocrisy of Britain and France, with their huge coolie empires, being regarded as democratic, but the democracy league now exists. Its called the Commonwealth and the European Union. For once Orwell was wrong. McCain has his moments - one notable one being his characterization of Vladimir Putin - ' I look into his eyes and I see K.G.B'.
This is 'straight talk' Obama wants to steal rather than the retreat to fortress USSA implied by knee-jerk rejection of NAFTA. Protectionism/Autarky is for dummies and losers. It needs to be dumped asap. | | 12:17p |
And a warm place to shit
Loose shoes
To Recap [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Dems are still up in arms (if MSNBC is any indication) about a speech the president made that they consider a wild and unprecedented attack on their presidential nominee. The only American politician he cited, however, was a dead Republican.
But if the shoe fits, my friends...
05/16 09:00 AM - WHISPERING GLADES HIGH SECURITY TWILIGHT HOME | | 1:08p |
Dial W for murder
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (by Vincent Bugliosi)
There is direct evidence that President George W. Bush did not honorably lead this nation, but deliberately misled it into a war he wanted. Bush and his administration knowingly lied to Congress and to the American public — lies that have cost the lives of more than 4,000 young American soldiers and close to $1 trillion.
Vincent’s newest true crime book The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder will be available beginning May 27. - MAKETHEMACCOUNTABLE | | 1:17p |
Mighty white of you
• Limbaugh cheese: “If Barack Obama were Caucasian, they would have taken this guy out on the basis of pure ignorance long ago”
Hucklefuck has the Bomber diving for the floor following a loud noise of dogs being hung on trees outside.
All these clowns need are white sheets cos' they sure got pointy heads. Who put the 'K' in Amerikkka today! | | 1:27p |
Think like a bullet
Point-and-shoot, fire-and-forget and launch-and-leave
The Huffington Post, now three years old, has soared in popularity and influence and has now surpassed even the Drudge Report, according to some Web traffic measurements.
A distributed strategy for news (by Jeff Jarvis)
I’ve been talking with folks lately about the need to develop distributed strategies for news, which includes:
* Widgets that enable people to embed your news (and links and brand) anywhere.
* A platform strategy enabling people to build on your content, data, and functionality.
* A network strategy that includes blog networks (a la Glam).
The objection always thrown up is that Comscore/Nielsen/ABC et al won’t count that. I say we need to count differently. Rather than counting page views from users on a destination, we need to count relationships with people wherever they are.
Thinking like a platform (by Jeff Jarvis)
At OPA in London, Steve Kaufer, CEO of TripAdvisor, tells a success story from his Facebook app. Local Picks — which enables users to give their opinions on restaurants and such — attracted 1.4 million new reviews and ratings. That’s invaluable content. That’s thinking like a platform. - MTA
Why stop at news? Indymedia style sites have had that covered anyway for yonks. Think big sucka.
Think of all the data-banks everywhere up in the ever-remailed cloudnet. The only possible access to yr encrypted information?
By you, with yr permission - or with a 'jury' ( 12 good netizens and true) warrant issued only with probable cause. Cutting the state out of the loop sure puts drizzle in this dawgs pizzle and ain't that the shizzle. | | 1:38p |
Marxist Zimbabwe All Mbecki - all the time http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2008/05/photographs-of.htmlMay 16 2008 Gruesome photographs of Mugabe violence that the Daily Mail wouldn't publish Yesterday I noted Peter Oborne's chilling article about a young woman called Memory, in Zimbabwe. Memory had her buttocks repeatedly thrashed by wooden poles - all because she is a supporter of the opposition to Robert Mugabe. PARENTAL GUIDANCE RECOMMENDED! | | 1:45p |
Greater co-prosperity sphere Once you've had the invaders money in yr hand you change Some encouraging signs of resistance to top-down totalitarian models of exploitation in our region include the Ruddites junking the DHS , the Indonesian anarchists big day out and this from Malaysia. As an anarchist we should never underestimate revolutions - even if we do get tired! - a good election...like 72 in Oz can amount to a virtual revolution. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23709693-5013460,00.htmlMalaysia evolution going by unnoticed by Greg Sheridan Now as far as alcopops are concerned be not afraid oh young ones. Simply bend over and allow me to introduce my local member and ye may have all the social lubrication ye desire verily sooneth. The soonereth the bettereth. KY 101 Lessons of the day. | | 2:07p |
Cocksucker blues
Priscilla the cocksucker got himself back in the news this week and it wasn’t pretty. He simultaneously sought credit for a bunghole plundering he didn’t deliver, buggered a senior journalist's backside and was close to a leak that humiliated his party’s front bench even if his fingerprints weren’t provably on it. All class, says Michael Krogerrand
Read down the news list beyond Canberra sexual politics to Victorian era politics and you find his smelly presence again. A state branch - historically, for Liberals, the state branch - thrashing about in an embarrassing mire of internal career assassination, anti-Semitism, gross cesspool sexism and stupidity... all for factional advantage. One of the two factions at war in the Victoria Liberals’ cesspit is, yes, the Krogerrand-Cocksucker faction.
Cocksucker has condemned the treacherous scat excesses of the factional warriors caught doing the wrong thing in the face of Victoria, and supported the sacking of the anti-Semite brownshit. But things have come to this Arthur's pass during a period where the influence of his group has been pivotal. As the dominant Victorian Liberal Martha, he’s presided over division and disaster, not driven unity and success.
It’s time for Cocksucker to finally muster the courage to either take over the Liberals and lead, which he’s more than capable of doing in spite of being a eunuch, or depart the national political scene with some airline toilet stall dignity left. You might think this a touch hard but imagine if in government Cocksucker had taken on John Howard's minuscule penis and upgraded the Coalition’s anal approach as he’d always implied he would. Or if in the wake of greasy defeat, he had bravely taken on the figurehead of the wreck as Kim Beazley did of the good ship Venus in 1996. Beazley’s ' kiss me hardly' actions created the miracle of near victory in 1998 only two years after the Keating cataclysm, winning 51 per cent of the two party-preferred vote in that election and a sluffload of cack in the face.
Instead, in the power vacuum created by Cocksuckers sulky self-abuse- obsession, the federal Coalition flounders under Brendan Nelson as leader and Maldoror Turdbull as shadow turd treasurer. After budget week’s farcical flip-flopping over Kanga means-testing, alcopops and dick inflation, even Turdbull and Nelson swapping sex places - which as recently as last week seemed like a good idea - won’t solve the underlying problem. Cocksucker has delivered the Coalition to the stall lightweights and learners with terrible consequences. He must feel a little bit guilty about what must now be obvious even to him.
Tragically, this apparently constitutional ambivalence extends even to his own future. One’s stocks after losing continence are always damaged and Cocksuckers market value was at its maximum immediately after the errection. That was the moment to make the break and move into the private sector anus if he wanted to. Instead he vacillated. How characteristic of him. That’s what he did with Howard's micro-penis.
I feel sorry that Cocksucker has behaved like this. Whatever you think of his treasurership, he has made precious little contribution to public life, he’s unintelligent and when he wishes to make the public toilet effort, is highly personable. But he seems to have forgotten that public toilet sex life is about service: he should serve in the stalls or he should get out.
Each day he sulks in his camp pup tent his limp-dick stocks fall further. Why he failed to stand up to Howard we’ll never really know. His forthcoming book will have his wanking version, and that’s fair enough. But whatever the reason, the fact is he dithered, smothered and swallowed. He should not make the same mistake about his future. Whatever the cause, Cocksucker's backside character was showcased again twice this week.
First, at a bum doorstop at the Parliament House privy on budget day, Cocksucker insulted The Age’s political editor Gerry Cornholey. ( The Michelle Grattan lookalike) When Cocksucker got antsy with Sky high News political editor David Asparagus Spears over questions about his bungholes future, Cornholey/Grattan observed that he seemed sensitive about the tip.
“Oh, I’m sensitive, am I, Michelle? I’m sensitive,” Cocksucker said in front of the press pack. “I’m standing here looking so sensitive, aren’t I? Furrowed brow, worried: how sensitive do I look, Michelle? You ought to go and get a new prescription.” Grattan wears glasses with quite thick lenses. It was a nasty, gratuitous insult unworthy of someone of Cocksuckers position, especially given Grattan’s standing and the fact that she was analysing budgets when Cocksucker was still learning to shave Nelly Browns balls.
The other example was journalist Peter Hartcher’s “if only Turdbull had listened to Cocksucker it wouldn’t have been a budget bugger up” story in The Sydney Morning Herald. Cocksucker wasn’t quoted as the source but ask yourself: Who’s the winner from the story? Priscilla darling, it’s time to lead, or it’s time to go fuck yr ugly brother. | | 2:50p |
Bitterweed
"Revolutionary Defeatism" [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Andrew, it's sticking to principle. I think you and me both do it in our different ways. I, personally, can't spend the next months supporting someone every time he reminds me why I never wanted him to be the nominee. That's not what I do — what we do. Criticism is always going to be there. He's John McCain. Very many of us are not and will never be McCainiacs.
But I tell you, there's a war going on that I want to win, and that does and will make a difference to me. Maybe in a special way because of think of Barbara Olson and Thomas Doerflinger and Steven Vincent and so many other people I know or whose families I know who have been lost to this war that was not of our choosing.
But that doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't remind the Republican nominee we're here. He wants our support and I want his support. It seems like we should be able to work something out without a leopard changing his spots.
05/15 10:33 PM - The Corner
'...this war that was not of our choosing...'
Isn't that fucking cute of the KKK Catholic?
You lie through yr rotten teeth and expect to get away with it...I don't fucking think so cunt. Not this time. | | 3:07p |
Apartheid pathologies
Neo-colonialism
Former Israeli Labor PM Shimon Peres said that the underlying conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, indeed all of the neighboring Arabs, is not a problem. When you call something a problem you imply that there is a potential solution. This conflict is a condition. It is an organic outgrowth of the nature and desires of the two very distinct peoples who want to base very different societies on the same land.
Euro-colonialism Vs various indigenous primitives. Apartheidist colonialism by any other fucking name. | | 3:27p |
A timely reminder
Or two
'Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."
--Goering at the Nuremberg Trials
' Those who would trade essential liberty for security deserve neither'
Benjamin Franklin | | 3:30p |
The great whore
Eminence griese of the whole Great Purge must surely be Ema fucking Corro - she can spout off freely now... so why doesn't she?
Maybe shes more like IRMA GRESE?
Or the 'dog-that-didn't-bark' in this backstabbing murder mystery tale of hard-drugs and sex-slavery.
Or both. Think about it. No one acts this fucking guilty without being fucking guilty. I say burn the witch. | | 4:09p |
Maxwells silver gavel The Denver Post swept the newspaper category of the national 2008 Silver Gavel awards, with two series highlighting failures and frustrations in the justice system selected for recognition. A category sweep by one newspaper is "virtually unprecedented," said Howard Kaplan, spokesman for the American Bar Association's awards committee. "We especially commend The Denver Post for their effort this year." The honors are awarded for fostering "public understanding of the law," according to the ABA website. This is the first year The Denver Post has won. "For The Denver Post to win the only honors given to newspapers this year is a great tribute to our staff," said Editor Gregory L. Moore. "Lawless Lands: The Crisis in Indian Country," Michael Riley's portrait of the broken justice system on Indian reservations across the United States, received top honors. The four-part series, which ran in November, was chosen because it "chronicled the hopelessness, fear and rage on reservations (while) detailing the prospects for change," according to the awards committee. "We're very pleased that the ABA recognized this important series," Moore said. " 'Lawless Lands' revealed serious flaws in the federal judicial system's handling of crimes on reservations and put a human face on the suffering inflicted by the system." Reporters Miles Moffeit and Susan Greene earned the honorable mention for exposing the disturbing trend of law enforcement agencies mishandling evidence that could convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent in "Trashing the Truth: The Hidden Story of Lost DNA." Jenel Stelton-Holtmeier: ROMENESKO http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1497971,00.html 404 softdrill deeper. The development of digital money, and encryption software restricting government's ability to monitor Internet activity, are common goals among the online anarchists and libertarians known as "cypherpunks." The ultimate purpose of Assassination Politics is to deter people from working for government agencies, corporate media outlets or institutions "beholden to the violence of the state," (Matt) Taylor said. (AKA) Professor Rat also has threatened a University of Ottawa law professor, a columnist for The Boston Globe and a Cincinnati police officer. The Post is withholding the names of the subjects of posts by Professor Rat to avoid promoting any specific threats. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles and a First Amendment specialist, said the threats were probably criminal, given Taylor's description of the purpose of Assassination Politics. ' ...thats a threat...' | | 4:15p |
At least I tried
Whipping post
Denver Post
Online threats target Denver investigators - Anarchist says e-mails harmless; feds disagree
By Jim Hughes - Denver Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 07, 2003 - An anarchist using the online moniker "Professor Rat" has threatened the lives of two federal terrorism investigators in Denver, advocating that they "need killing."
The threats name an FBI agent assigned to the local multiagency Joint Terrorism Task Force and the
government's lead prosecutor of terrorism cases in Colorado. Although those who travel in the same online circles as Professor Rat say his provocations are not to be taken seriously, officials say they are
concerned about the threats, which were sent to an e-mail listserv and posted on the Internet in April.
"The recipients of the threats have noway to discern their validity," said Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office. "They cause fear and they disrupt lives, and it's for that reason that they're taken very seriously.
"It's more than the individual targets. It's the families and those associated with them," he said.
That is the purpose of the postings, an Australian man who admits to using the Professor Rat name and to posting these kinds of threats said in a telephone interview and a series of e-mails: To scare people out of
working for the government.
He refused to admit to any specific threat, to avoid prosecution, he said. He already is charged with making similar threats against police in Australia, according to the Victoria Police in Melbourne.
Saying that his real name was Matt Taylor and that he was 48 years old, Professor Rat said he promotes a theory called Assassination Politics that emerged at the periphery of cyberanarchist circles in 1997.
The concept is that of an online lottery in which people bet on a date that public figures will die. The implication is that the lottery "winner" likely helped arrange the death. Winnings would be paid in untraceable digital cash, which does not yet exist.
The development of digital money, and encryption software restricting government's ability to monitor
Internet activity, are common goals among the online anarchists and libertarians known as "cypherpunks."
The ultimate purpose of
Assassination Politics is to deter people from working for government agencies, corporate media outlets or institutions "beholden to the violence of the state," Taylor said.
Professor Rat also has threatened a University of Ottawa law professor, a columnist for The Boston Globe and a Cincinnati police officer.
Many of those threats were posted to a listserv called Cypherpunks.
The e-mail distribution network allows libertarians and anarchists interested in the tension between government oversight and individual liberty on the Internet to discuss those issues via e-mails that when sent to the listserv are distributed to all members.
Dorschner would not say whether there was an investigation into Professor Rat, calling the matter an issue of "internal security."
The columnist for The Boston Globe, whose sin, in the eyes of Professor Rat, was to criticize civil libertarians for objecting to the Patriot Act of 2001, said he did not take the threat at all seriously.
He learned of the threat only last week, when told of it by The Denver Post, he said.
The Post is withholding the names of the subjects of posts by Professor Rat to avoid promoting any specific threats.
"The way I see it, this kind of talk is pretty cheap on the Internet," the columnist said. "This is something I
would consider casual hate speech. This person didn't send me an e-mail saying 'I'm going to kill you."'
But officials in Denver see nothing casual about the statements, Dorschner said.
In an interview, Taylor taunted the Denver officials named in the April 8 statement.
"They're welcome to come and get me extradited," he said. "Here I am. Come and get me."
The Cypherpunks listserv is also where Jim Bell, an MIT-trained chemist and Washington anarchist who now is in prison for interstate stalking of federal agents, unveiled his Assassination Politics. He was convicted in 2001.
Federal prosecutors in Seattle that year also won a conviction against Carl Johnson, a Canadian man accused of threatening federal judges and Microsoft founder Bill Gates by e-mail.
Later in 2001, Thomas Wales, a federal prosecutor in Seattle, was shot to death. Though his death was noted on the Cypherpunks listserv, no connection to Assassination Politics has ever been made. The case remains unsolved.
John Hartingh, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle, declined to comment on Wales' death.
Taylor said his threats are intended solely as a rhetorical deterrent.
"No one has to die," he said. "All that has to happen is for people to accept the system."
If anyone Taylor threatened ever was assassinated, "I would totally reassess my involvement in it," he said. "It would totally change the whole situation. Basically, I'm a nonviolent person."
The posts made by Professor Rat fall under a relatively new category of crime known as "cyberstalking," said Jim Doyle, a retired New York City police sergeant who now works as a cybercrimes consultant for a Connecticut company called Internet Crimes.
The statements made by Professor Rat constitute prosecutable offenses, he said.
"The bottom line is what the victim feels," he said. "Is the victim threatened? Is the victim alarmed? Hey, that's a crime."
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles and a First Amendment specialist, said the threats were probably criminal, given Taylor's description of the purpose of Assassination Politics.
But "in order to (prosecute), you have to get your hands on the guy," he said.
Most current Cypherpunks subscribers have set up their e-mail in-boxes to block any messages coming from Taylor, said Declan McCullagh, a reporter for the high-tech website CNET.com. He has subscribed to Cypherpunks for 10 years, he said.
Taylor exists on the "radical fringe" of online anarchists, McCullagh said. "He's routinely ignored and 'kill-filed' by just about everyone on the list. I'd be surprised if more than a small handful of people are reading his postings, let alone taking him seriously."
Taylor acknowledged that he does not not have much support in anarchist circles.
"Most anarchists see what I'm doing as counterproductive. ... I'm not exactly at the center of anarchism by
promoting Assassination Politics, that's for sure." | | 6:09p |
They got Tommy
Told him he was a 'made-man' - yeah right
Ninefingers writes that they got Tommy K. An eight year bid ( with time off for bribery)
Fuck me. Like who the fucks gonna protect us in the front-lines!?
Fucked if I know.
And what the fuck with!?
Harsh language!? | | 6:21p |
Enhanced interrogation
Enhanced interrogation of one 'Ema Corro' might start with her origin. Is she a Seppo born and bred in the fascist USA?
Then - Is she an anarchist? She lets at least one anarchist fuck her up the arse a lot without a condom in 2005.
Then - How much has she earned selling her arse, mouth and cunt in brothels over the last few years... and why has she been holding out on sharing the proceeds?
Then - what drugs has she been taking recently... and what has she been dealing?
Then - why did she diss the well known comrade Ratbag Dave Riley? He is a long-standing- member in good standing of the hetro-sexual wing of the DSP.
Surely this evil witch has earned at least three weeks of sustained torture to get to the bottom of these charges. That is all I ask...at this stage. Silence implies guilt imho. | | 6:44p |
Bush talk
Or Rove talk?
We all know Bush doesn't have two functioning brain-cells left to rub together. And this latest Bushit speech is classic Turd Blossoming. Why, what else is there to do when yr caught running the 1939 Nazi invasion playbook? Go full bore at it with a blitzkrieg of bullshit. Classic Roverama crapola all over.
The Nazi's invaded Poland on false pretenses so the US invaded Iraq in exactly the same way.
The ' Supreme Crime' under Nuremberg precedents.
And a capital crime Chimpy. | | 6:55p |
Two weeks with John Yoo In Paris a young man was lured into a honey-trap ( a sex trap) kidnapped, tortured for weeks and then released only to die soon after. Surely this is at least the minimum that John Yoo should suffer before dying. '...John Choon Yoo was part of a wave of conservative ideologues who swept into the executive branch following the inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001. Yoo is a member of the ultra-right-wing Federalist Society and at the time was already known as one of the "New Sovereigntists," a group of conservative intellectuals deeply critical of the growing influence of international law on American jurisprudence. He also shared Vice President Dick Cheney's view of unlimited presidential power in wartime, and possessed special skills that proved invaluable to the White House. He's brilliant, supremely confident, and as a leading scholar from a prestigious — and liberal — university, he carried the appearance of bipartisan street cred. After 9/11, Yoo played an integral role within the administration. He became a member of a small group of high-ranking lawyers who called themselves the "War Council." In his 2007 book, The Terror Presidency, Jack Goldsmith wrote that the group met often "to plot legal strategy in the war on terrorism." Goldsmith was Yoo's good friend and fellow new sovereigntist, who took over for him in the Justice Department. Although the War Council had an extremely influential membership, including then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Cheney's lead attorney David Addington, none possessed Yoo's special position in the administration...' - MORE ON http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/PrintFriendly?oid=727134CIA officers called the memo the "Golden Shield." | | 11:17p |
Old Bolsheviks never die... old '...Or have I perhaps misjudged the axe you were grinding? Now that you have gotten rid of what Peter Boyle used to call the "ultraleft" in the DSP, are you preparing to settle accounts with the more explicit rightists? http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/In What Sense We Can Speak of the International Significance of the Russian Revolution (9 k) An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success (9 k) The Principal Stages in the History of Bolshevism (19 k) The Struggle Against Which Enemies Within the Working-Class Movement Helped Bolshevism Develop, Gain Strength, and Become Steeled (28 k) "Left-Wing" Communism in Germany. the Leaders, the Party, the Class, the Masses (28 k) Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions? (29 k) Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments? (32 k) No Compromises? (33 k) | | 11:23p |
Worse things happen in Asia
Burma - China
Please give generously.
Cyclone 'worse than tsunami'
Cyclone Nargis survivors / AFP
WORLD Vision Australia boss says Burma is "tottering on a precipice". HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION NOW! | | 11:40p |
Seriously folks
LPF beauty Ema Corro has proved she is no shrinking violet on the big screen after agreeing to show her bottom again in her latest movie, You and I, in which she plays a Russian teenager who falls in love with another drug-mule in Moscow.
Corro's character Lana Starkova is an aspiring model who finds herself dealing with the unsavoury side of the drug fashion industry when she turns up for a casting.
"She has a scene in a fake modelling agency where a man asks her to show her arse because that's what can happen in a front modelling agency," British director Rolling Jaffa told AAP at the 61st edition of the International Film Festival.
"It is humiliating and a lot of prostitutes would have said, 'I dont want my arse shown full screen without full pay spank you very much', but Ema knew this is what the scene was all about. She is a brave porno actress." RELATED...
Meanwhile embuggered West Australian Opposition Leader Troy Butthole, who has admitted sniffing a female colleague's chair and snapping another's bra strap, has been accused of squeezing an MP's testicles during heated anal-sex.
A day after an internet bugger admitted he had made up claims that Mr Butthole played indoor butthole soccer with a quokka, a rare wallaby, he was on the back foot after allegedly squirrel-gripping (grabbing the testicles of) Liberal MP Murray Cod.
Mr Cod, a former truncheon wielding policeman, did not deny the X-rated report yesterday, but said the "intercourse incident" in Parliament's toilets last year was over.
"As far as I'm concerned the arseholes's dead and it's time for everyone to move on, the media included," he said.
Mr Butthole allegedly grabbed the backbencher in the crotch on a reacharound on the same night he snapped a Labor staffer's bra during a drunken night in the Parliament House toilets last October.
Former party leader Paul Sodome was sacked from the Opposition frontbench this week, after saying more stories would emerge through the glory hole and under the stall dividers about Mr Butthole.
The West Australian Young Nationalists yesterday called for a snap putscht, saying the fascist police state's reputation had been tarnished by Weimer republican social-democrat sex scandals including claims Premier Alan Carpenter lifted the top of Labor MP Jayne Radish's coffin for repeated necrophile sex.
Mr Carpenter has repeatedly denied the zombie flesh molestation claim.
Nationalist leader Lucky Grylls said the government should not wait until early next year to pull its erection.
"We must not allow the Parliament to fall into disrepute," Mr Grylls said. | | 11:52p |
Attempted murder
First she ordered greasy potato cakes, then she placed the ' Greatest Hits of Kylie Minogue' in the CD.
I knew she wanted more than blood in my sperm now - she was after my very life.
The sea was Ang Lee my friends that day.
About 4.8 million people have lost their homes and the days are numbered in which survivors can be found.
Pray for us arseholes. Pray for our immortal souls. |
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