The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 7/11/2005

(updated every Monday at some point during the day)

...'cause I'm angry and my friends are sick of listening to me...

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Well, they've done it again. (And by "they", I don't necessarily mean "al Qaeda".)

Yes, the bombings in London were terrifying and awful. Just like 9/11 or Bali or the trains in Madrid, people who have nothing to do with their nation's disruptive policies get hurt, while the real instigators of crime -- Bush and Blair -- get off without a scratch. (Well, Bush got scratched, but that's because he's a moron. Why does he keep falling off his bike? Is that a side effect of the drugs he's on?)

But since 9/11, the blinders have been ripped off of many of us. When we first heard about 9/11, many cried, many panicked and many rallied around their leaders. But 9/11 was hinky. And after a while, doing research on our own (mostly because our media and our government didn't do it for us) we came to question the official story. Then, those new questions were put to the test during the Madrid bombings and many of our theories were born out. Now, we have the London bombs and I don't know about any of you, but my reaction (after the usual shock and worry) was "well, that takes the heat of Bush and Rove and Blair as far as the media goes." That was my reaction! How sad, cynical and pathetic is THAT?!

At least the web has done its job thus far. Multiple theories have been tossed out there and followed up on and researched.(It also helps that the right-wing media has become so cock-sure of themselves that they're doing and saying the most ridiculous things, just out of habit and gross arrogance!)(I actually forced myself to watch a little of FOX news after the bombing. I was appalled. They did a whole segment on how to make money in the market after the bombing! And they were totally all cheery about it! Holy shit!)

A few theories that are circulating:

• G8: Poverty reduction and global warming would disrupt islamic extremism. Can't let that happen. (And it worked.)
• Terrorists: Standard. Run-of-the-mill theory. Though, Blair must be pissed off at Bush for screwing up a previous investigation that might've caught the perpetrators ahead of time.
• NWO: Message to Blair, for pulling troops out of Iraq (Italy? Be warned.)
• Israel: Because, a) someone warned Netanyahu ahead of the attack and b) Sharon was outmaneuvered in Egypt by Blair. (Please don't spam me for even mentioning this one.)
• Money Men: Someone pumped up the market ahead of time and others made serious cash.
• Retaliation: A cleric was put on trial in London on Tuesday.
• False-Flag Operation: By whom, I have no idea. Karl Rove perhaps?
• Inside Job: Anyone who is paying attention knows governments are capable of doing whatever is necessary to further an agenda. With that in mind, the fact that terror drills were being held on the same day as the bombings, like they were on 9/11, should give one pause. (The theory being that using the cover of a drill enables real things to slip in under the radar.) Also, the explosives were military grade.
• The Illuminati: They're big on numbers and I guess 7/7 does have a certain symmetry to it.

These are just some of the theories, not all of which I accept as even plausible.

As for hinky points that should be mentioned:

• Why did bombs go off in Muslim neighborhoods if Muslim terrorists were the perpetrators?
• Why did a bomb explode near Tavistock Square? A secret message perhaps? Coincidence or Ironic?
• A secret al Qaeda group never mentioned anywhere before? A website that disappeared within a day? Gimme a break!
• If Islamic radicals are so pissed off at the policies of Bush and Blair, why are they always attacking innocent civilians, most of whom don't even support Bush and Blair? (Though, on second thought, the US and UK are killing innocent civilians who probably didn't support Saddam, so, maybe it's not such a mystery.)

It also depends on how this incident is used and by whom. Will they start really beating the drums of war for Iran? ('Cause you know, they really want to.) Will they enact even more draconian police-state laws? Will they resist a proper inquiry? Will there be other attacks, one after the other, until whomever gets the message?

Listen, I'm not saying it wasn't done by terrorists, and I'm not saying it was done by any government. What I am saying is there's a whole lot going on that we don't know about and to take the story being fed to us by those in control of the information (media, government officials) and swallow it whole is beyond stupid. Just because it's a theory doesn't necessarily make it a conspiracy theory.

Bottom line though, we cannot lose focus.

Bush and Blair have failed to make us safer with this war of theirs. Whether or not the terrorists are NWO, illuminati, al Qaeda, BFEE or others is not the issue. The issue is our country's leaders are, by proxy, out there murdering innocent Iraqis and Afghanis (and soon Iranians, Syrians, Venezuelans, and so on) ostensibly to secure democracy and make the world safer and it is accomplishing neither of those goals.

Their policies have failed. They've made the world LESS safe. They've killed innocent people. They've created more terrorism. They've destroyed entire countries. They've bankrupted their own countries and devastated the lives of our soldiers. And they've lied and mislead the people they're supposed to be serving.

Bush and Blair (and everyone who supported them within their administrations) should be "relieved of their duties" and tried in an international court of law and if they end up in front of a firing squad, so be it. (But I'd prefer to see them serving a life sentence with sexually abusive roommates. Ooo! Ooo! And they should have a live web-cam that's pay-per-view, to financially support their lengthy incarceration, of course!)

And frankly, I don't much care how we go about "relieving" them of their duties either! (Tar and feathers immediately comes to mind.)

Cartoon of the Week: Girls are evil

TomKat Background of the Week: 13 things you never knew about Scientology

Site of the Week: Gas Buddy

I always wondered where to get these: Darwin Fish symbols

Handy Guide of the Week: Food Expiration Dates

Old Adverts of the Week: Telephones

Flash of the Week: Clock and Portrait

Fact Site of the Week: Farts

Gadget of the Week: Quiet Eye Swim Goggles

Fixture of the Week: Light Shower

Decanter of the Week: Squirrel

Too Much Free Time of the Week: Snail Costume Fun

Art of the Week: Post-it Elvis

Awwww of the Week: Kitten Wars

Video of the Week: Orgasms (so not suitable for work)

Rove is still in the hot seat

Excerpt: Having been outed this weekend as the leaker of Valerie Plame's identity, Karl Rove has begun to slither: "He always starts his evasions by parsing language and law. Rove's attorney has quickly conceded that his client spoke to Matt Cooper of Time, and other reporters. This is the presidential advisor sending forth his minions to frame the ensuing discussion," writes James Moore.

Though, I'm loath to embrace the inflammatory rhetoric some are using.

Excerpt:If Newsweek's report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson.

Maybe the rumors are true, Rove is going down

Excerpt:Occasionally I get emails from Washington folks who work on the Hill claiming to possess juicy insider digs on our public servants and their corporate paymasters. I usually delete said emails, as I don't want to be responsible for propagating dirty rumors or false information that can't be corroborated. I'd rather let Judith Miller and the New York Times do that. Nonetheless, in the past 24 hours I have been contacted by three separate congressional Democrats in Washington, by email and later phone, who all say the same thing: Karl Rove is about to be indicted.

And maybe there's nothing the Bushies can do to stop it.

Excerpt: The Bush Administration is scrambling behind the scenes to stop a criminal indictment against Presidential advisor Karl Rove for disclosing classified information to reporters in an attempt to discredit a White House critic.

Except... don't get your hopes up. There might be an out for Rove yet.

Excerpt: While Novak's column did not run until Monday, July 14, it could have been seen by people in the White House or the media as early as Friday, July 11, when the Creators Syndicate distributed it over the Associated Press wire.
Cooper talked to Rove at 11:07am, according to Newsweek. You can bet Fitzgerald has already determined precisely when Novak's column hit the wires.

(Read the Newsweek article on the emails. There definitely seems to be an out for Rove in it.)

And I'm not exactly jumping up and down about Judith Miller going to jail for it.

Excerpt:Will the jailing of New York Times reporter Judy Miller scare people off from risking careers to tell reporters about government misdeeds? Or will Miller's willingness to sit behind bars rather than name a confidential source embolden such whistleblowers?

The woman should be in jail, but not for this. She should be in jail for being a knowing conduit for the neocons. But not for withholding a source.

Excerpt: Miller’s war resume is impressive. She played a major role in marketing the tall tales of Ahmed Chalabi and other suspect Iraqi exiles. Her paws are all over the campaign to sell the war to a very vulnerable American public -- still shaken by the assaults of 9/11. She was constantly leaking suspect intelligence cooked up by the Office of Special Plans, the rogue Pentagon intelligence outfit that manufactured one hoax after another to make the case for war. Like her fellow travelers at the American Enterprise Institute, Miller shared the philosophy that “you go to war with the intelligence you fix -- not the intelligence you have.”

(Here's some interesting info on Miller and Fitzgerald.)

However, jailing her is having its desired effect on other journalists.

Excerpt: Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton says the Cleveland daily is not reporting two major investigative stories of "profound importance" because they are based on illegally leaked documents -- and the paper fears the consequences faced now by jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Conclusion: Cleveland Plain Dealer = Pussies

Maybe Italy suspects they are next. Unfortunately, such police state measures rarely work and usually grab the wrong people.

Excerpt:Of those arrested, 84 were immigrants and authorities issued 52 expulsion orders, he said. Most of those arrested were accused on drug, petty theft or immigration-related charges, he said.

Even before London, they were talking about pushing us closer to Fascism.

Excerpt: The Pentagon's most senior planners are challenging the longstanding strategy that requires the armed forces to be prepared to fight two major wars at a time. Instead, they are weighing whether to shape the military to mount one conventional campaign while devoting more resources to defending American territory and antiterrorism efforts.

Severely weakening Habeas Corpus.

Excerpt:CONGRESS HAS a novel response to the rash of prisoners over the past few years who have been exonerated of capital crimes after being tried and convicted: Keep similar cases out of court. Both chambers of the national legislature are quietly moving a particularly ugly piece of legislation designed to gut the legal means by which prisoners prove their innocence.

Beefing up civilian surveillance.

Excerpt: A new Pentagon strategy for securing the U.S. homeland calls for expanded U.S. military activity not only in the air and sea -- where the armed forces have historically guarded approaches to the country -- but also on the ground and in other less traditional, potentially more problematic areas such as intelligence sharing with civilian law enforcement.

And that's just what we're being told. Imagine what we're not being told.

Excerpt: Known as the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program, the project has raised concerns that the National Guard is laying the groundwork for a new domestic spying operation.

Think peak oil won't effect you other than how you drive?

Excerpt:Oil prices hit new record highs above $61 a barrel on Thursday, driven by short-term supply fears as the first hurricane of the season threatened crude production and refinery operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Think again.

Excerpt: Food is energy. And it takes energy to get food. These two facts, taken together, have always established the biological limits to the human population and always will.

And if that's not bad enough, if China is unable to spend it's money here,

Excerpt: Exploiting the political qualms created by the Chinese bid is part of the game plan. Asked why Chevron's lower bid should be more appealing, the company's vice chairman, Peter J. Robertson, emphasized the risk in the Chinese offer. "There's no certainty that they can get through the regulatory and political process," he said.

they could decide to really muck with our economy as payback.

Excerpt: If China decides to unpeg the yuan from the U.S. dollar and let it float on an open market, the effects could be considerable. As consumers, Americans could feel the pinch of higher retail prices and interest rates. As wage-earners, we might see a partial rebound in the decimated manufacturing sector.

As well as start a war. I mean, they have been busy unifying the Pacific Rim and even if their army is total crap, there's still so many of them, they could kick our ass.

Excerpt: She also said: "There is no doubt that we have concerns about the size and pace of the Chinese military build-up, and it's not just the Pentagon. I've made clear to people this is a view held by the US government."

Add to that the real estate bubble

Excerpt: However, prices alone don't define a bubble. Rather it is the deviation of prices from their fundamental value that truly create a bubble. The chart below shows the 'PE' ratio for US housing. It is constructed as the ratio of house prices to rental income. Once again the exponential explosion that is so typical of a bubble can clearly be seen. Either historically, housing has been remarkably undervalued (unlikely, we suspect), or prices have been driven way out of line with underlying values.

and we have a real trifecta forming.

Disney.

Excerpt: Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday it will launch a mobile phone service next year aimed at families based upon its own line of phones, games and other family-oriented entertainment.

I always suspected that chickens were miserable creatures.

Excerpt: A chicken killed itself on the fence of one of the village residents in the Tula region of Russia. An eyewitness of the unimaginable bird suicide says that he was resting on a couch, when his wife rushed into the house and said that a chicken had just committed suicide by hanging itself on the neighbor's fence.

And sheep apparently aren't too happy either.

Excerpt:First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff, Turkish media reported yesterday.

But sponges are cool!

Excerpt: Sponges may conjure visions of the soft and squishy, but some of those living deep beneath the sea build complex glass structures that are marvels of engineering.

And so are jellyfish.

Excerpt: A sea creature that never sees the light of day has been discovered luring prey with twitching red fluorescent lights — a color that had once been considered of little use and invisible to deep sea animals.

Previous rants

At the very least, point your CNN-loving friends to my links page. Just getting started in reading alternate news sites gets people thinking. I have one friend who was very happy-go-lucky, thinking ol' Greta was telling the whole truth until I opened up his eyes a bit. Now, he's all depressed. He'll get over it. You gotta' get depressed before you get angry and you gotta' get angry before you can accomplish anything. We're all in mourning. We have to move through the steps. But we gotta' hurry it up.

Read. Inform. Spread the word. Even if it means your friends avoid you for awhile. If they really love you, they'll start to listen.

"POSSE COMITATUS ACT" (18 USC 1385): A Reconstruction Era criminal law proscribing use of Army (later, Air Force) to "execute the laws" except where expressly authorized by Constitution or Congress. Limit on use of military for civilian law enforcement also applies to Navy by regulation. Dec '81 additional laws were enacted (codified 10 USC 371-78) clarifying permissible military assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies--including the Coast Guard--especially in combating drug smuggling into the United States. Posse Comitatus clarifications emphasize supportive and technical assistance (e.g., use of facilities, vessels, aircraft, intelligence, tech aid, surveillance, etc.) while generally prohibiting direct participation of DoD personnel in law enforcement (e.g., search, seizure, and arrests). For example, Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETS) serve aboard Navy vessels and perform the actual boardings of interdicted suspect drug smuggling vessels and, if needed, arrest their crews). Positive results have been realized especially from Navy ship/aircraft involvement.

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Who am I?:

I am a biker chick who lives in NYC. This blog is about current events and my left-leaning, acerbic spin on those events. Nobody pays me anything to do this. Nobody tells me what to write. I will NEVER tout anything for anybody's money! EVER!

Use this instead of Google:

Clusty.com

These sites are good at culling stories from a multitude of media sites:

buzzflash.com
unknownnews.net
rawstory.com

Here are some excellent blogs:

Bartcop
Daily Kos
Atrios
Tacitus
Josh Marshall
Two Glasses
Brad DeLong
The Wonkette
Urban Survival
Greg Palast
Mark Crispin Miller

Link exchange:

Ilia Dreams Blog
Iraq War Blog
BushVote.com
Dommecile.com
Funny Farm

media-bias exposed:

dailyhowler.com

these are good left-wing journalism sites:

onlinejournal.com
thenation.com
inthesetimes.com
tompaine.com
commondreams.org
truthout.com
guerrillanews.com

a little more to the left:

wsws.org
indymedia.org

conspiratorial:

whatreallyhappened.com
almartinraw.com

HIGHLY entertaining:

surfingtheapocalypse.com

really good "Alternate Thinking" site:

goroadachi.com/etemenanki/

and for godsakes, stay away
from FOX NEWS,  MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
It's ALL CRAP!!!
w atch the BBC news
or ITN news instead.

if you must succumb to reading a newspaper: 

www.guardian.co.uk 

or any other paper in another fucking country. All of our newspapers are owned by the same idiots that own the TV stations (and whose companies are diversified in industries that support the war machine) so all of the news is all the same CRAP.