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.

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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.)

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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.

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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?

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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.

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Airports give 11 cases of unopened deodorants to homeless

According to CNN, “Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport planned to give 11 boxes of surrendered items to the city’s human services department, which will give the unopened bottles of shampoo, toothpaste and other items to homeless shelters.”
Okay, this shit makes no damned sense whatsoever. If this stuff is potentially explosive, why give it to the homeless? If it’s not, why not let people take it on the damned plane?
Especially since it’s now clear that the UK terrorists weren’t anywhere near carrying out their plot, and had even worked themselves up to a “dry run.” Most of them didn’t even have passports, let alone airline tickets. So confiscating all the liquids was pointless, since there was no real expectation that any actually attack was imminent.
Come the fuck on. This is obviously nothing more than a political ploy to make it seem like they’re doing something, and it’s fucking ridiculous.
As I said from the very beginning — it’s all bullshit and fearmongering. And nothing but politics, politics politics.
I wonder when the airlines, who’ve taken the brunt of this latest political ploy both in security chaos and stock plummets, will start to backlash against the White House.

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Terrorists Plotting

And this funny is from today’s Wondermark comic:

Liquids on a Plane comic

See all the panels on his site.

Because keeping grandma from Illinois from carrying her water bottle on the plane is really gonna stop some terrorist activity. Also banning executives from carrying laptops and books on the plane, too, which are part of the air restrictions in Europe. How about just keeping the terrorists from carrying gatorade bottles on the plane, and leaving grandma alone? The level of this is absurd, and the level at which people are willing to accept this absurdity is really scary.

Yeah, if books continue to be banned on planes, (I guess all of us terrorists like to read?) I’m going to be taking a boat to Europe next year, for sure. If there’s one thing you don’t want when you’re trying to keep the peace, it’s me without something to read.

And speaking of boats and terrorist plots — am I the only one with any imagination at all, or is the plane thing totally played out? There are so many easier ways to cause mass destruction than dealing with all the restrictions at airports. Why are they bothering with that?

And here’s a big funny: Gary Welsh says “But our friends on the left are not in the least bit grateful” regarding the intelligence work the UK (sorry, no real US involvement there) did in “thwarting the plot.” What exactly am I supposed to be grateful for? No one’s trying to blow me up. I can see where people in London who might get on the target planes would be grateful, but what does that have to do with me? As far as I can see, the only person keeping me safe these days is me. On the other hand, the government is doing a fine job of inconveniencing me, which I’m not inclined to be grateful for, unlike Gary.

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“mass murder on an unimaginable scale”

WTF does that mean? Seriously. I’m reading this article on the latest “terror plot” from the BBC News, and UK Officials are providing absolutely no details whatsoever about what the plot actually was, how close it came to being implemented, what kinds of weapons were involved — nothing, but hyperbole and jacked up security regulations. Details, people, please.
After the last “terror plot” to blow up the Sears Tower, which turned out to be nothing more than some guys sitting around shooting the shit and the White House using a bull session as a excuse to wag the dog, there should be some more damned information released than this if they want to claim a plot would cause “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.”
The only unimaginable scale I can think of for mass murder is the holocaust. Somehow I doubt this terror plot was going to blow up six million people. They say the targets were “as many as 10” aircraft. While that’s very serious, I can still imagine it happening. I don’t think it actually would happen, (I don’t think that many terror organizations really have those kinds of resources) and if it did, I’d be more inclined to vote out the current government than keep it. They fact that they claim this plot came within days of being implemented — that means our government and the UK’s aren’t doing their job. Time to get them out of there and put in some people who will actually implement all the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations.
Seriously, I’m predicting this is all bullshit whipped up by the U.K. on behalf of their buddy Bush because Leiberman lost the primary. (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.)
Come on, news media. Prove me wrong. I hope you do.
UPDATE: Sure enough, there’s the Tail Wagging the Dog. And people are reporting that Bob Orr mentioned on The Early Show this morning that the Bush knew about this plot for days. If so, why wait until now to change the security regulations? Why not secure the airlines several days ago to protect passengers? Because Lieberman didn’t lose several days ago.
And in case you were thinking of commenting some stupid shit, before you do: What she said.

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Christian terrorist says Gays have sex with infants

A few days ago, Guy Adams, Deputy National Grassroots Director of RenewAmerica appeared on the right wing talk show of fundamentalist activist Stacey Harp, and during the interview, committed blood libel against gay Americans. Pam’s House Blend summarizes some of what was said:

* Gays have sex with infants (He says its “The New trend”)
* sex in the street in Chicago out in the open
* Gays have sex with animals
* Gay relationships only last about a year and 1/2
* Gays have 200 to 300 partners in their lifetime
* Gays have made no contibution to society (except AIDS)
* He says Dr. John Diggs in the foremost medical authority on AIDS. (not true its Ken Meyer from Boston, Diggs is a quack refuted in detail)
* Quote: “There are not alot of really good gays”
* Says we are working towards hate speech laws

I’m sorry — I was in Chicago for the gay games, and we were in Boystown and Andersonville — no one was having sex in the streets. Please. Lovely. Adams goes on to say this:

Dear bloggers, It is important to separate the person from the behavior and let God judge the person. Having said that, we must now devote our attention to the greatest danger facing America since possibly the Civil War – the homosexual agenda. Why is this dangerous? Because it threatens the established morality that has proved stable over thousands of years and esp because of the ensuing “hate-speech” laws that can effectively silence the Church. That is what the gays want. They want to silence any and all opposition to their perverted lifestyle and most of this opposition comes from the Church at large.

The greatest danger since the civil war? Wow, you guys should come over and visit the powder keg that is our new house — what with all the baby-eatin’, dog-sex havin’, church-burnin’, orgy-hosting we do, you should have a really fun time. Yep.
[note to religious nutjobs — that’s a joke. We spend most of our time reading books and drinking lemonade on the porch. Oooh, Scary.]

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