Politics

Journalist under criminal charges for filming Katrina evacuees

A journalist and a TV producer working on a piece about Katrina refugees have been charged with the crime of videotaping a “critical national security structure” in Louisiana… Palast Charged with Journalism in the First Degree:

On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It’s been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW’s (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere. One resident, Pamela Lewis said, “It is a prison set-up” — except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes.
To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation’s second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth.
So we filmed it. Without Big Brother’s authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a “critical infrastructure” asset.
So now Matt and I have a “criminal complaint” lodged against us with the feds.
…
Dectective Pananepinto, in justifying our impending bust, said, “If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11.”
Yes, Detective, I remember that very well: my office was in the World Trade Center. Lucky for me, I was out of town that day. It was not a lucky day for 3,000 others.
Yes, I remember “a lot” of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective — and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go and find the people who killed them.

Continue ReadingJournalist under criminal charges for filming Katrina evacuees

War’s Critics Abetting Terrorists, Cheney Says

article on the Washington Post:

“They can’t beat us in a stand-up fight — they never have — but they’re absolutely convinced they can break our will, [that] the American people don’t have the stomach for the fight,” Cheney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The vice president said U.S. allies in Afghanistan and Iraq “have doubts” the United States will finish the job there. “And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we’ve had in the United States,” he said. “Suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists.”

The person validating the strategy of the terrorists is you, Mr. Cheney, by inducing panic and fearmongering while eroding the foundations of freedom and the civil rights of U.S. citizens, none of which makes us safer from terrorists, but all of which plays into your personal political agenda (and coincidentally lines your pockets at the same time.)

Continue ReadingWar’s Critics Abetting Terrorists, Cheney Says

Brad Pitt: I’ll marry when everyone can

via Shakesville, this article on Yahoo:

“Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able,” the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine’s October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19.

That is pretty awesome. I have to admit that at each of the three weddings we’ve been to in the past year, although I was deeply supportive of the happy couple, there was a part of me that resented their ability to get married.

It’s also pretty awesome that Zack, contributor to Shakesville, is proposing a “band together in solidarity” pledge for straight couples to not get married until we can. That is not only helpful, but necessary if we ever hope to make change.

But the most awesome thing of all is what some of the people said in the comments to Zack’s post — how their 80-year old parents got divorced with the help of lawyers for family charges in protest that their gay kids can’t get married. Man alive! That’s cool as hell.  You can contact attorneys help for your family law claims to help you out in this situation. As divorce has negative impacts on child growth,they have suggested that you can consult child custody lawyers serving Richland to help you legally. Hire a Schaumburg divorce lawyer to handle the legal aspects of your divorce while you sort out personal issues.

Continue ReadingBrad Pitt: I’ll marry when everyone can

Secret Cameras in Downtown Indianapolis

With a WISH-TV headline like “Secret Cameras Could Help Keep Indianapolis Safe” — gee, I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about that. I guess, maybe I should feel safer? Whereas the alternate headline “Secret Cameras Could Help Keep Indianapolis Under the Thumb of Big Brother” would be equally accurate, but I guess it wouldn’t telegraph the same “soothing the sheeple” message.
I agree that more needs to be done to make the circle safer at night. But the answer to that isn’t cameras, it’s policemen. Police are a deterrent. Cameras are a tool of the prosecution, for use after the crime has already been committed. And SECRET cameras? Won’t deter a thing. You’re not going to be safer unless the cameras climb down off the wall and attack the mugger for you.
And that all this footage is collected under the guise of “crime prevention” but then is stored for use by the goverment for any number of other activities — no. Sorry.
Are all the people who live in this city who give quotes to news crews so stupid they don’t think things through? Who the hell are Matt Brookshire and Jessica Bell, and did they give the question any more than a passing thought? And how do I avoid having anything to do with them? Because I’d hate to be an innocent bystander when they suddenly received their Darwin Award.
Sigh. Now I have to do more reseach to figure out what’s actually happening with these cameras, and how to get it stopped.
Weird graffiti
This gives me a better idea what this stencil graffiti I snapped a picture of is about.

Continue ReadingSecret Cameras in Downtown Indianapolis

ABC’s false “Docudrama”

The ABC television network unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11”. ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, “based on the 9/11 Commission Report”.
That’s false. “The Path to 9/11” is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.
The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. “The Path to 9/11” mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.
Join me in telling Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger to keep this propaganda off the air.
Read a great deal more about the controversy here.

Continue ReadingABC’s false “Docudrama”

Fighting Terror with Anti-Terror

Bruce Schneier says what I’ve been saying since day one of the London Terror Plot, only more eloquently. Perhaps he wasn’t burdened with someone poking him with a sharp stick constantly.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn’t engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn’t write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn’t use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we’d reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.
It’s time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation — and not focusing on specific plots.
But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.

Continue ReadingFighting Terror with Anti-Terror

Picking apart Gary Welsh’s coverage

Gary Welsh has a blog post about a recent Washington Post article on the London Terror Plot, in which he takes the opportunity to make some swipes at my blog posts about the event.

“While many bloggers opposed to President Bush’s policies for fighting the war on terror scoffed at initial reports that Islamic terrorists were planning to bring down U.S. airplanes headed from London to the U.S. this month…”

Wrong. I never scoffed at the plot itself, I scoffed at the government’s spin job on the terror plot, and the media’s hysterical reporting of the overly-hyped, politically-timed reports from the government. You quoted me yourself, Gary: “(Let me clarify that — I don’t think they’re constructing a terrorist plot out of whole cloth to scare us. I think they’re making a mountain out of a molehill, and that we’re not really in any danger.)”

The reality is that we were never in any danger. As you can see yourself in the Post article, the attack wasn’t anywhere near imminent, and the British government was monitoring the proceedings almost from the start. I was about as likely to be killed as I would be to suffer a farming accident. The government reports of “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” were completely out of line, if not criminally negligent.

The bloggers who were quick to doubt the original terrorist plot claim are saying little about today’s news.

Possibly because I didn’t read the Post article, Gary. I’m not a right-wing nut, so I don’t read that paper with the religious fervor that you apparently do, considering you equate that one article with all of “today’s news.”

Continue ReadingPicking apart Gary Welsh’s coverage

Democracy in Iraq is a fading idea

(Via Shakespeare’ Sister). In a NY Times article on the increased violence in Iraq, and the looming shadow of a civil war there, this revelation shows up at the very end — Bush officials are preparing to abandon the idea of a democracy for the country.

Bush administration officials now admit that Iraqi government’s original plan to rein in the violence in Baghdad, announced in June, has failed. The Pentagon has decided to rush more American troops into the capital, and the new military operation to restore security there is expected to begin in earnest next month.
Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.
“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.
“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

So… our troops are getting kill for what now? Since the old reasons are being abandoned?

Continue ReadingDemocracy in Iraq is a fading idea

Chemist on the implausibility of the chemical bomb

I knew an analysis like this one would come along sooner or later — a chemist examines the implausibility of taking a chemical bomb on board an airplane and actually having a “successful” event with it. He believes it’s pretty implausible — for a liquid substance especially, because of the instabilities of the liquids. But he does throw out some examples of other types of “bombs” that could be constructed, including clothing bombs, to illustrated why restricting these things are examples of security, but rather “security theater” — acting like there’s a security procedure to either calm fears, or more likely, to keep people in a state of panic.
My point from the very first message I posted about the current terrorist “plot” was that the first things they should be providing us is real detail about what the incident is, so that we can decide on our own how to react to it. Tell us who the target was, what they plot was, and what weapons they were using, rather than having government officials say things like “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” (Yes, that came from the government, not the media. Although the media was irresponsible enough to repeat as a headline in 30 or 40 outlets.)
Some local folks cited the recent examples of “chemical bombs” found in Fishers as examples of why this is a legitimate threat — but I discounted that early on. The teenagers who built them had a lab of some sort to do it in; they weren’t mixing the bomb on location where it would be unstable. And the power of the bombs wasn’t large enough. They could hurt someone, but they couldn’t even blow apart a mailbox, so they’d hardly take down a plane.
While I don’t think the teenagers should be encouraged to do that sort of thing, I don’t think calling the Department of Homeland Security on them is appropriate either. I can imagine some of our antics as teenagers in the current day — we had some backyard ballistics back then that would have caused a SWAT Team to show up nowadays, and we had nothing but benign intentions for them.

Continue ReadingChemist on the implausibility of the chemical bomb

Fear Itself

From Kung Fu Monkey, via Masson’s Blog:

FDR: Oh, I’m sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we’re coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How’s that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We’ll be in the pub, flipping you off. I’m slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I’m sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
U.S. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike … NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!

Read the whole thing from Kung Fu Monkey, because it’s funny, and smart. I love monkeys. They are so cool.

Continue ReadingFear Itself