Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
[enter classic Radiohead theme] In a Chinatown alley, ex-cop finds body sliced in half. All your elements fall into place: the classic diner, Blade Runner's rainy neon, bullets stopping in midair, "Gigawatts!!", hacking the NSA, the plucky Ensign Ro from late Star Trek: The Next Generation, Soviet telepathy researchers, the blonde quantum physicist, a red sports car, a kung fu fight in a government lobby, a shower scene, reference to the Fortean Times, and a top notch HollywoodOS. Venetian blinds and your other comic-style noir visuals...
"Everybody knows that the agencies supposed to protect us never talk to each other. So some of the best, scariest intelligence agents solved the problem. Now they spy on the spies. They get all the pieces, they put them together and they stop whatever's coming, whatever the cost.... You are needed. I am needed. You never know who's on the Global Frequency."
So its a lot like Google.
Miranda Zero: "Don't eat the Kung Pao chicken, Barry, It's mine... Hang up on me, and I will kill your entire family!"
A leaked television series pilot that never got on the air has been making the rounds on BitTorrent the last few days. The live-action show, Global Frequency, is based on a comic book series (and the pilot was based on the Bombhead issue).
Supposedly, it leaked out of the Warner Brothers television studio, after they declined to pick up the series for production. They didn't want to put down $2 million for yet another sci-fi series that would barely pick up viewers. Also, there apparently were executives getting moved around the studio, causing them to back off new projects. But I kind of suspect over-enthusiastic producers have cajoled the network lawyers into letting them introduce a show about a decentralized spy agency over BitTorrent. It would be a very sharp marketing strategy.
Read this post by one of the producers and tell me that isn't what's going on.
The show immediately sparked discussion and seems to have been well-received. In an era of crappy sci fi offerings, this little pilot was surprisingly fun and well-executed. It's a pretty good follow-up to Mulder and Scully, but this time they aren't working for the evil FBI conspiracy. There's a lot more comic-book-style visual flourish, although I think the gloominess was provided by shooting in Canada. The special effects, while cartoonish in their intent, were very well done.
The video is quite high quality, although it is very dark.... but it all happens at night, anyway.
The writing has the geeky, at times clumsy, ironic edge to it that we haven't really seen done well since Hercules. Exploding sunglasses. And a nod to the Blues Brothers with a police car flying through the air. And the part where coins spontaneously jump off a counter and roll away... About the only thing missing was some white doves in slow motion. But there is plenty of slow motion. The command center is a wall of LCDs in a Diablo-like basement.
Best line: "I'm not melted."
BoingBoing had something along these lines recently: "Future of TV: Piracy will save production."
Warren Ellis was involved with making the comics. I wish DiePunyHumans.com was working. For more on the comic, globalfrequency.org.
Technorati Tags: globalfrequency
Wouldn't you know it, my over-laden browser finally crashed, taking with it a couple dozen interesting sites that I opened up, which have already slid off the browser's history page. However, I managed to get through most of them before it halted.
"The Deal," about a sleazy oil executive, Christian Slater, who gets tangled up in some kind of deal to traffic illegal oil, looks really sweet and I wish it was playing in town. Because we're going north of $60 a barrel, baby, and it ain't comin back down...
It looks like John Bolton may refuse to accept a recess appointment, perhaps because it would be Quite Silly to have a UN ambassador that never got approved by the Senate. But sillier things have happened. The Washington Note is still the place to look for news on it.
Iran's election happened. There's a real good user, alimostofi, posting every day about Iran on the Agonist, as well as the unwieldy nickname vsredthoughtsecondedition at DailyKos. The Lebanese Daily Star has a piece making fun of the Western media. Gordon Robison, the author of that piece, has a new site, mideastanalysis.com. But can it meet the Juan Cole standard?
(Cole's analysis of what makes a last "throe" is hilarious, as well as Ahmadinejad's usage of Bush-style political tactics. And Afghanistan's "neo-Taliban" forces are regrouping for another round.)
AmericaSedition or America's Edition? Karl Rove says there's not much difference these days. Also check out news of the apocalypse at The Boom Shelter. "What happens in Gitmo stays in Gitmo." Thanks, Rush.
The Supreme Court is less beloved than ever, by both left and right, polls show.
There were bombings in Iranian Khuzestan, which Iran blamed on the People's Mujahedin, which I believe is the same as the neo-cons' beloved MEK or Mujahedin-el-Khalq:
"It's unbelievable," one State Department official said. "It's a pretty cushy arrangement for a terrorist organization. But the Pentagon continues to see them as useful, and they seem to be playing a waiting game until the policy toward the MEK changes."
Guardian: WMD claims were 'totally implausible':
A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq's weapons programme were "totally implausible".
He tells the Guardian: "I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too".
Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the UN in New York during the run-up to the invasion, resigned from the FO last year, after giving evidence to the Butler inquiry...
Poor Senator Durbin. Fell yet again to the Republican strategy of bitching about how someone is bitching in order to avoid talking about what's so bitch-worthy in the first place. Now we all know about how you shouldn't compare your opponent to Nazis, it's worth considering how spooky absolute power is being implemented in our system of government. This guy complains that it's the startup chime of fascism. Actually he didn't phrase it that way. I did...
The Red States got their own mega community blog. Good for them. I hope they can reach a better level than littlegreenfootballs.
Agonist:Toxic waste containers wash up in Somalia. This story about Bird Flu drugs being rendered useless by wide use in China is depressing.
The Downing Street reporter reflects on the nine months since he got the first Downing Street Memo. This focuses more attention on the "secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress" as he terms it.
Also on the Agonist, Sean-Paul is cackling a bit about how he was already covering the airstrikes against Iraq before the War Proper started... he notes the monopoly media "in the run up to their wargasm they missed several very important stories that were sitting in their faces" Wargasm. I like it. This is in response to a big feature at RawStory about the massive pre-war Iraq bombing campaign that some people are now pondering as illegal. I am sorry I used the inherently false phrase "massive pre-war Iraq bombing campaign." As RawStory explains:
“It was no big secret at the time,” GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike told RAW STORY. “It was apparent to us at the time that they were doing it and why they were doing it, and that was part of the reason why we were convinced that a decision to go to war had already been made, because the war had already started.”
I just want to throw in this op-ed by Sibel Edmonds, the mysterious FBI whistleblower.
Over four years ago, more than four months prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, during April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990, provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama Bin Laden.
This asset/informant was previously a high-level intelligence officer in Iran in charge of intelligence from Afghanistan. Through his contacts in Afghanistan he received information that:
1. Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting 4-5 major cities;
2. The attack was going to involve airplanes;
3. Some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States;
4. The attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months.
The agents who received this information reported it to their superior, Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism, Thomas Frields, at the FBI Washington Field Office, by filing “302” forms, and the translator, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, translated and documented this information. No action was taken by the Special Agent in Charge, Thomas Frields, and after 9/11 the agents and the translators were told to ‘keep quiet’ regarding this issue. The translator who was present during the session with the FBI informant, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, reported this incident to Director Mueller in writing, and later to the Department of Justice Inspector General.
The press reported this incident, and in fact the report in the Chicago Tribune on July 21, 2004 stated that FBI officials had confirmed that this information was received in April 2001, and further, the Chicago Tribune quoted an aide to Director Mueller that he (Mueller) was surprised that the Commission never raised this particular issue with him during the hearing (Refer to Chicago Tribune article, dated July 21, 2004).
Mr. Sarshar reported this issue to the 9/11 Commission on February 12, 2004, and provided them with specific dates, location, witness names, and the contact information for that particular Iranian asset and the two special agents who received the information. I provided the 9/11 Commission with a detailed and specific account of this issue, the names of other witnesses, and documents I had seen. Mr. Sarshar also provided the Department of Justice Inspector General with specific information regarding this case.
For almost four years since September 11, officials refused to admit to having specific information regarding the terrorists’ plans to attack the United States. The Phoenix Memo, received months prior to the 9/11 attacks, specifically warned FBI HQ of pilot training and their possible link to terrorist activities against the United States. Four months prior to the terrorist attacks the Iranian asset provided the FBI with specific information regarding the ‘use of airplanes’, ‘major US cities as targets’, and ‘Osama Bin Laden issuing the order. ’ Coleen Rowley likewise reported that specific information had been provided to FBI HQ. All this information went to the same place: FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, and the FBI Washington Field Office, in Washington DC.
In October 2001, approximately one month after the September 11 attack, an agent from (city name omitted) field office, re-sent a certain document to the FBI Washington Field Office, so that it could be re-translated. This Special Agent, in light of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, rightfully believed that, considering his target of investigation (the suspect under surveillance), and the issues involved, the original translation might have missed certain information that could prove to be valuable in the investigation of terrorist activities. After this document was received by the FBI Washington Field Office and retranslated verbatim, the field agent’s hunch appeared to be correct. The new translation revealed certain information regarding blueprints, pictures, and building material for skyscrapers being sent overseas (country name omitted). It also revealed certain illegal activities in obtaining visas from certain embassies in the Middle East, through network contacts and bribery. However, after the re-translation was completed and the new significant information was revealed, the unit supervisor in charge of certain Middle Eastern languages, Mike Feghali, decided NOT to send the re-translated information to the Special Agent who had requested it.
I found another story about Edmonds at TomFlocco.com. However, Tom Flocco seems like he might be crazy. Consider this: "Campaign coffers profit from 911, coke and courts: FBI linguist won’t deny intelligence intercepts tied 911 drug money to U.S. election campaigns":
"It’s so simple," Edmonds told TomFlocco.com. "Nobody is looking at the Department of Defense aspect of the whole 911 cover-up. The FBI is citing two reasons for my gag order: to protect ‘sensitive’ diplomatic relations and to protect foreign U.S. business relationships."
In attempting to let the American people how close the 911 cover-up comes to home, Edmonds told us, "I will say this: the FBI is only a mouthpiece for the State Department. The State Department is the main reason for the cover-up. It has to do with foreign business relationships and who they are...Pakistan, Turkey...espionage in the State Department...preventing an investigation." The former FBI translator has implicated everything "from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism," adding "they don’t deal with 1 or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions."
[.....]
While only a subpoena, testimony and questioning by non-political, career prosecutors will properly answer the insider trading question, we asked Sibel Edmonds the big question anyway--given the above FBI track record implicating espionage:
Do you deny that the FBI intercepts you translated indicated that financial arrangements were in place well before the 911 attacks to both fund and profit from the World Trade Center and Pentagon "terrorism" while also facilitating the laundering of drug money into recent congressional and presidential campaigns? "I cannot comment on that, Tom. You know I’m under a gag order," she said.
Hilarious! But kind of cheesy journalism. She could deny any crazy question. On the other hand, this Tom Flocco story about a brainwashing sex ring operating at the highest levels of government is hands-down the funniest "news" I've read in a long time.
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. I hope that works. Lots of solid people are members.
Even more important: Mean gossip about Jared Fogle.
Was GHW Bush linked to JFK's shooting? Sure, why not?
A major topic of discussion this weekend at Fort Selby was the apparent psychotic eruption and messianic anti-psychiatry crusade that Tom Cruise has embarked upon.
This prompted me to explain to everyone about Xenu, the great galactic overlord of Scientology. For now the Time Has Come to Reveal Difficult Truths about the origins of all these damn thetans on HongPong.com. The Wikipedia Xenu entry is fabulous. According to WikiPedia, psychiatry was said to some sort of role in Xenu's genocide. And the Dianetics volcano is supposed to represent the whole episode. You can see L. Ron Hubbard's real handwriting (or here). Behold:
The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet, 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (Incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".
His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. was placed in the implants.
When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert. The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development.
One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.
In December 1967 I knew someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.
One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.
One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing. You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some large, some small.
Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary error. Good luck.
An ex-scientologist pointed out in an interesting claim about judging it as a religion, "Why would the Xenu story be more ridiculous than Moïse splitting the red sea in two, Jesus being born from a virgin, Mohammed raising to the sky on a ball of fire, or Christians eating wafers and drinking red wine while the minister mumbles about the body of Christ?" Well, that's why I'm an atheist.
The scientific analysis of OT III at Operation Calmbake, an anti-Scientology operation. Meanwhile, this story is quite horrible. "Space Opera as Theology." They've been picking on people using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Church sent its agents into the WTC site.
And so now Cruise says that psychiatrists are ruining our children with Ritalin and such. Sometimes I fear the same, but how can exorcising invisible aliens from your body provide a viable alternative? He went totally crazy on the Today show with Matt Lauer, and Lauer was a real good sport about it. Massive internet threads are the result. Interesting stuff about Scientology and its tentacles in Hollywood. I didn't realize Beck was one. Kirstie Alley, yes.
I have so many damn links piled up for days on end, gotta get rid of them!!
The Downing Street Memo continues to exert a certain effect on things... It's interesting how the New York Times has bent over backwards to soften the way they talk about the memo and its contents. NewsClip Autopsy has a bit about their mastery of deception. Sanjoy Maharajan's "Anatomy of a Coverup" at Zmag has all the gory details about how the news copy obfuscates key points about the memos and their contents, although the text layout gives me a headache and I can't help but skim it. An old grumble about the Winds of War by Jim Kirwan has a link to an interesting "Iraqi Resistance Report"... And this page of war headlines has all kinds of leftie stuff.
Tracking Election Irregularities (HongWiki page): Bev Harris and the crew at Black Box Voting soldier on, and determine that Diebold optical scanner machines can be manipulated with programs on the memory cards. Wow.
The Diebold optical scan system uses a dangerous programming methodology, with an executable program living inside the electronic ballot box. This method is the equivalent of having a little man living in the ballot box, holding an eraser and a pencil. With an executable program in the memory card, no Diebold opti-scan ballot box can be considered "empty" at the start of the election.
The Black Box Voting team proved that the Diebold optical scan program, housed on a chip inside the voting machine, places a call to a program living in the removable memory card during the election. The demonstration also showed that the executable program on the memory card (ballot box) can easily be changed, and that checks and balances, required by FEC standards to catch unauthorized changes, were not implemented by Diebold -- yet the system was certified anyway.
The Diebold system in Leon County, Florida succumbed to multiple attacks.
Meanwhile the people at the Free Press in Columbus, Ohio have published "Did George W Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? Essential Documents." From the introduction:
This volume of documents is meant to provide you, the reader, with evidence necessary to make up your own mind.
Few debates have aroused more polarized ire. But too often the argument has proceeded without documentation. This volume of crucial source materials, from Ohio and elsewhere, is meant to correct that problem.
Amidst a bitterly contested vote count that resulted in unprecedented action by the Congress of the United States, here are some news accounts that followed this election, which was among the most bitterly contested in all US history:
• Despite repeated pre-election calls from officials across the nation and the world, Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, who also served as Ohio's co-chair for the Bush-Cheney campaign, refused to allow non-partisan international and United Nations observers the access they requested to monitor the Ohio vote. While such access is routinely demanded by the U.S. government in third world nations, it was banned in the American heartland.
• A post-election headline from the Akron Beacon Journal cites a critical report by twelve prominent social scientists and statisticians, reporting: "Analysis Points to Election ‘Corruption': Group Says Chance of Exit Polls Being So Wrong in '04 Vote is One-in-959,000."
• Citing "Ohio's Odd Numbers," investigative reporter Christopher Hitchens, a Bush supporter, says in Vanity Fair: "Given what happened in that key state on Election Day 2004, both democracy and common sense cry out for a court-ordered inspection of its new voting machines."
• Paul Krugman of the New York Times writes: "It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.
When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.
This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, California..."
• Hundreds of Ohio African-American voters give sworn testimony that they were harassed, intimidated, deprived of voting machines, given faulty ballots, confronted with malfunctioning machines and hit with a staggering range of other problems that deprived them of votes that were destined for John Kerry, votes that might have tipped the Ohio outcome.
• A team of high-powered researchers discover results in three southern Ohio counties where an obscure African-American candidate for the state Supreme Court somehow outpolls John Kerry, a virtually impossible outcome indicating massive vote fraud costing Kerry thousands of votes.
• Up until 11pm Eastern time on election night, exit polls show John Kerry comfortably leading George Bush in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, giving him a clear victory in the Electoral College, and a projected national margin of some 1.5 million votes. These same exit polls had just served as the basis for overturning an election in Ukraine, and are viewed worldwide as a bedrock of reliability. But after midnight the vote count mysteriously turns, and by morning George W. Bush is declared the victor.
There is far far more…enough, indeed, to result in massive court filings, unprecedented Congressional action and a library full of documents leading to bitter controversy over the 2004 election, especially in Ohio.
In this volume, we have attempted to present many of the most crucial of those documents.
Do they prove that George W. Bush stole the U.S. presidential election of 2004?
Should John Kerry rather than Bush have been certified by the Electoral College on January 6, 2005?
Historians will be debating that for centuries. What follows are some of the core documents they will use in that debate:
The most hotly contested evidence comes most importantly from Ohio, whose 20 electoral votes decided the election. But it also comes from other key swing states—-especially Florida and New Mexico—-where exit polls and other evidence raise questions about the officially certified vote tallies in favor of Bush.
Let's not forget that the certification of Ohio's electors was halted by Democratic senators back in January...
Campaign 2008: The Hillary business continues in an effort to discredit before a likely 2008 run. BBC noted this funny sentence:
While Klein says his references to lesbianism in the book illustrate how "Hillary's politics were shaped by the culture of radical feminism and lesbianism at Wellesley College in the 1960s", the woman herself has altered her stance on one of America's key feminist issues: abortion.
I didn't realize that lesbianism was an ideological orthodoxy. Do they have a little red book?? Klein got on Air America and he admits to quite a lot of errors, including the messing up the name of Hillary's chief of staff and various other hack mistakes. Bill Richardson is an interesting possible candidate and he is being annoyingly coy about it. From back on June 8, a Richardson trip to New Hampshire:
MANCHESTER - Wondering if Bill Richardson is running for president? It depends on which language you speak.
"I want to be very clear about this presidential stuff," Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, said at yesterday's New Hampshire Latino Summit. "No, I will not run for president."
Then, switching to Spanish, he told the heavily Hispanic crowd, "Segura que si, voy a ser candidato!"
Rough translation: You bet I am!
It was a light-hearted response to a question that is bound to follow Richardson for the next few years. But the bilingual answer also underscored a point Richardson made several times yesterday, as he met with members of New Hampshire's Hispanic community and other state business and political leaders.
Leaked government documents: From the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) meetings going on, some dude scanned in internal goodies. (via Boingboing)
The Military, Karl Hate and Recruiting:
Hey, the MinuteMen started a branch in Texas (and they've got a funny movie coming up). And China widely has a more popular global image than the United States. Such are two effects of the present political crisis, and now Karl Rove is attempting to mint some anti-liberal hate currency because they can't figure out real solutions. The military is under pressure and Rove insults all serving liberals. Recruitment is down, which might be a pressure point. Some thoughts about anti-recruitment action on the Left by Michael Neumann on Counterpunch:
Worst of all, the very concept of political action has been attenuated to the vanishing point. By now, many leftists have only the faintest idea of what it is to do something. They see two options, non-violent protest and violent protest, never suspecting that both of these are closer to speech than to action. 'Support' has come to mean equally little: like protest, it has to do with uttering words. ....
...Of course, leftists are quite aware of the recruitment crisis in today's armed forces. But awareness isn't enough - excitement would be more appropriate. This is not just a weakness in the system which sustains the war effort. It is a fatal weakness.
Recruitment is essential: no troops, no war. Recruitment happens, and has to happen, all over the country. All over the country, right where they live, people can do much to make recruitment less effective. Parents of high school kids (and veterans' groups) are already working on this. Every high school, every university, every place where recruiters go, is an ideal battleground, because the anti-war forces, far more than the recruiters, are on home ground.
Recruiters are vulnerable to student protest, to one-on-one confrontations, to anti-war parents and to all those adults who can support them. Anti-recruiters, who make the case against joining up to potential recruits, can circulate on the ground; others can use online services to reach fighting age computer users. Posters can go up all over cities and towns across the country, perhaps with pictures of some of the wounded Bush likes to hide.
On the other hand I sympathize for the guys who have to work as recruiters because it is really quite a horrible job. However, by that very statement we run into a classic fallacy deployed against the left, "Supporting the Troops == Supporting the War", in this case, they will try to imply that "Opposing the War == Opposing recruiting == Opposing the troops". But we can't let them get away with blaming noisy liberals for a lack of recruits. There's a lack of recruits because the war has gone to hell, everyone knows it, and no one wants to go. Bob Herbert is saying this may very well lead to the draft... The normally hilarious 'Jesus General' makes a depressingly serious comment, and cites this little set of pictures. Apparently Rove's nasty recent comments were fully coordinated with the White House, and nasty talking points got released before he even started the rant.
They'd like to blame the failure of the war on the antiwar voices, much as Vietnam got reframed in people's heads over the last year with the silly argument that leftist protesters caused national will to implode. In truth, the worthless political strategy caused the expression of national will via violence to fall apart. And that's
happening again. But the recruiters don't deserve a pass, and they don't deserve to know my brother's grade point average.
Well what do you know, now there's a blog for "Taking the Fight to Karl: American Service Men and Women Mad at Karl Rove". Including the memorable post, "Active Iraq Soldier: Karl, Come over _here_ and say that, Chickenhawk":
I'm writing you from [Location Withheld] Iraq, about 35 miles NW of Baghdad.. And I'm too tired to give Karl the verbal beating he deserves for his insults. I'm too tired because we're jsut a bit shorthanded over here, fighting his war for him. A war taht has made nearly every country in the world fear and distrust America, a war fought for a knowing lie dreamed up by Karl and his buddies, none of whom have ever heard a shot fired in anger, or helped pick up the parts of another human being after an IED blast.
I enlisted after the war beganm and after I'd gotten my degree. I could easily have stayed home and watched the war on TV, and Karl does. I do not support this war in the slightest, but I will not sit at home and lecture others on their insufficient patriotism when the nation is in need. I joined because I believe in giving back some measure of service and devotion to my country.
To hear a man like Karl insinuate that only conservatives are really patriotic is a knife in the back to every man and woman in Iraq who serves here. At least a third of us voted against Bush and pals. The number increases every day that we stay here, forced to make bricks without straw for months on end.
We've been here for 6 months. We're going to be here for at least 6 more. And next week we're moving to a more 'active' sector because the unit there is rotating home and the are is still too hot to entrust to the IA or IP, most of whom are still not fit to guard a traffic light, despite two years of efforts on our part. For some of us, this is our second tour through Iraq. My unit, [Withheld] was the tip of the spear in OIF I. At least half of us are combat veterans of a major battle and liberals. Can any of your gang say that, Karl?
Never insult me and my fellow liberals again, Karl. Watching a fat, hateful thing like you that has never faced any greater danger in your life than a long golf shot denigrate every liberal who has put on a uniform is more demoralizing than ten thousand speeches that uphold America's highest ideals from Sen. Biden or Byrd.
[Name Withheld]
And lots more... On Thursday the Supreme Court is supposedly meeting to look at the Valerie Plame case. Something exciting may happen. There is terrible nastiness happening at PBS now (look at that GOPBS logo!). I saw Moyers on the Daily Show recently. Depressing. Moyers is fighting hard in this.
Tech: Google to launch online video playback on Monday, using my favorite open-source media player VLC. Or so they say. Also check out combining RSS and BitTorrent. Well it's an old story. But worth thinking about. The Onion 2056. Good stuff at amphetameme.org. What is Outfoxed (not the anti-Fox flick)? The Avian Flu blog.
More politics: DemBloggers still has great streaming media including some great Rumsfeld moments (WMV required but it works on the Mac) Hijacking Catastrophe is frickin sweet.
Random culture: via BoingBoing Rare Bollywood LP covers. An amazing act of sarcasm for the Kansas School Board:
We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. ..... But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.