The Vidiot's weekly blog:

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

(updated every Monday at some point during the day)

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

Mirror (in case geocities is wacky or, in case of trouble in New York, check it for messages): http://129.79.148.33/vidiotcontact/

Welcome to my Rutgers classmates.

Now the media is starting to notice that they were lied to about Iraq's WMDS?? (And the media that go it right? Threatened with dissolution.) And now the Senate is beginning to notice too?? Now? After more than 2000 dead and lord knows how many wounded, not even counting the dead Iraqis and losing the war?

Listen, I'm all for what Reid did last week, (video) shutting down the Senate and all to make a point and get the Repugs to do some work (with the added bonus of pissing the repugs off.) It's about time the gonads were used. But years AFTER a war started is not the best time to be skeptical about the reason for going to war. The time was years ago!

Some would say "better late than never" and to that, I would say, "Yeah? Tell that to a mom who lost her son, or to the wife (or husband) who lost their spouse. Or the child who lost their parent. Tell that to the soldier who came home missing his legs or his eyes, or who's poisoned with depleted uranium or psychologically scarred for life."

The media and our elected officials have done a monumental disservice to this country. A little grandstanding from Reid ain't going to fix all of that.

I'll tell you what's going to happen. All they got out of those theatrics is an agreement that, one week from now, the committee will release a TIMETABLE to release the report. How much do you want to bet that the report doesn't get done before the midterm elections next year? And anyway, whatever the report says, it will be a whitewash with the help of the media of course. (And they wonder why their profits are down and people have stopped reading them) Especially since the head of the committee charged with producing the report did what he could to cover the White House's butt.

Site of the Week: War News Radio

Gadget of the Week: Bluetooth Earphones for iPod

Another useful iPod Gadget: Car Clip

Plamegate Must-Read of the Week: John Dean on Libby's Indictment

Cool Bookshelf of the Week: The Cave

Photos of the Week: Nikon Small World

Video of the Week: Yoda dance

Another Video of the Week: Cat Fight

Art Project of the Week: Moving Canvas

Crochet of the Week: Guts

Anti-Hummer Site of the Week: FUH2

Blog Tool of the Week: LinkLog

Calendar of the Week: Dog Poop

Did you hear? We're drilling in ANWR? They finally got their way.

Excerpt:The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, barely rejecting a Democratic-led attempt to strike the controversial plan from a budget bill.

And this is unbelievable. They're STILL taking people to secret prisons.

Excerpt: The accounts, taken in independent interviews by Amnesty International researchers over the past few months, appear to be consistent with reports of a network of secret CIA detention facilities, according to the report. The detainees could not determine where they were because they were hooded during the flights, but because of the travel time they assumed they were in Europe or the Middle East, according to Amnesty International.

I read somewhere, one of the secret locations was in Poland. That's a big deal because Poland is trying to gain entry to the EU and the EU has a wee little problem with secret detention centers. No wonder the WaPo didn't specifically name the countries.

Excerpt: For WaPo to cave to administration pressure to withhold the name of the countries involved in this program is a disservice to readers in my opinion.

(Tell WaPo what you think of that.)

Gee, I wonder how well they'll cover the story about Cheney's linkages to torture.

Excerpt: Vice President Dick Cheney's office was responsible for issuing the directives which led to U.S. soldiers to abuse prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a NPR interview with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

As an aside...

I'm always harping on the bad things our elected official do. Here's a decent one.

Excerpt: Conservative defenders of private property and liberal protectors of the poor joined in an overwhelming House vote to prevent local and state governments from seizing homes and businesses for use in economic development projects.

Wow, they're really pushing the bird flu thing, aren't they?

Excerpt: The official U.S. government Web site for information on pandemic flu and avian influenza.

Honestly, these guys are such a bunch of liars, I don't think for a minute that there's a chance that there will be a bird flu. Now, I don't doubt there will be a pandemic but it will most likely be some sort of engineered bug (And engineered bird flu variant perhaps). All of this hullabaloo is less about the pandemic, and more about the clamp down on civil liberties and population control as well as huge profits for their buddies in big pharmaceutical.

Excerpt: The National Vaccine Information Center, the country’s largest and oldest consumer-led vaccine safety organization, has issued a “Code Red Alert” against S 1873, the “Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005” -- a newly introduced congressional bill that would allow rapid development of certain drugs and vaccines, at the same time shielding the manufacturers from liability, even if their products turn out to be lethal.

Yeah, protections in the event of bad reactions to a forced vaccination. Remember how many people got sick from the vaccine during the swine flu epidemic?

Excerpt:In essence, however, it would force Americans to receive inoculations against a disease that has yet to kill one of them, while removing their constitutional right to seek redress in our courts in case of injury or death from the shots because of company negligence. The proposal, now moving its way through the Senate, would also ban citizens from using the Freedom of Information Act and other popular informational laws to discover whether the new vaccine (when it is finally produced) was effective and safe, and even whether anyone had suffered adverse reactions to it.

The Bushies know they're losing control.

Excerpt:Bush, whose obscenity-laced temper tantrums increase with each new setback and scandal, abruptly ended one Camp David meeting by telling everyone in the room to “go fuck yourselves” before he stalked out of the room.

The only thing they can do is something drastic. Ratchet up the police state. Though, they might get some resistance from some governors.

Excerpt: Several governors are fuming over a Bush administration suggestion that the active military take a greater role in disaster response, calling it an attempt to usurp state authority over National Guard units.

You have to ask yourself, why is a creationist like Bush suddenly believing in the evolution of a microbe?

Why is gas cheaper all of a sudden? Could it be that there's a probe on to examine the oil companies' recent surge in profits?

Excerpt: Here's the media modus operandi: play down the price hikes and/or emphasize the "hurricanes as excuse" theme when announcing new gas/oil price highs. Then, as soon as these prices drop a few cents, make a near-celebratory event out of it - as if announcing lottery winners! The idea is to try to "normalize" gas prices rising to over $3.00 in a so short a time span by making tiny drops from outrageously inflated prices seem like such a big gift that we're too grateful to complain about the overall hike!

And what about those profits? Can't we put some of them to good use? Of course not.

Excerpt: The Bush administration opposes a Republican proposal that oil companies voluntarily contribute some of their record profits to a federal fund that helps poor Americans pay winter heating bills, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Wednesday.

Not one to learn from his mistakes, the cronyism continues in the Bush administration.

Excerpt; President Bush last week appointed nine campaign contributors, including three longtime fund-raisers, to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a 16-member panel of individuals from the private sector who advise the president on the quality and effectiveness of U.S. intelligence efforts.

Do ya' think?

Did he?

Excerpt:New York University professor and author Mark Crispin Miller says in an interview on Democracy Now!: “[Kerry] told me he now thinks the election was stolen. He says he doesn't believe he is the person that can be out in front because of the sour grapes question. But he said he believes it was stolen. He says he argues with his democratic colleagues on the hill. He said he had a fight with Christopher Dodd because he said there's questions about the voting machines and Dodd was angry.”

Or didn't he?

Excerpt: A spokesman for Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) vehemently denied that the senator had told a popular liberal author and journalist that he believed the 2004 election was "stolen" in response to queries from RAW STORY.

Well, whatever, he should.

Excerpt: It's been a full two weeks now since the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO came out with their 107-page report [PDF] confirming what so many of us have been trying to ring the bell about for so long: The Electronic Voting Machines which are proliferating counties and states across America even as I type, are not secure, not accountable, not recountable, not transparent, not accurate and not adequately monitored or certified by anybody.

Here's my issue with this story.

Excerpt: An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary.

Why does the US (and by extension the US taxpayer) have to pay for the money that Halliburton overcharged? Why isn't Halliburton refunding the money?

Oh, wait, I forgot, the US is the SAME THING as Halliburton.

My bad.

Wow. They really can tax anything they can think of.

Excerpt: The one-room cabin David Bischoff built in a cow pasture three years ago has no electricity, no running water, no phone service and no driveway. What it does have is a wide-open view of nearby hills and distant mountains -- which makes it seven times more valuable than if it had no view, according to the latest townwide property assessment. He expects his property taxes to shoot up accordingly.

They better watch out. New Hampshire might secede too.

Excerpt: "Be it resolved that the state of Vermont peacefully and democratically free itself from the United States of America and return to its natural status as an independent republic as it was between January 15, 1777 and March 4, 1791."

Well, they're trying to change the tax code, but I'd bet a lot of dollars on the fact that whatever this administration comes up with, it'll be regressive before it's progressive.

Excerpt: WASHINGTON - Chosen to find a simpler way to tax the nation, a presidential panel is set to recommend two designs that would rewrite virtually every tax law for individuals and businesses.

Too bad we don't get from our taxes what the Finnish get from theirs.

Excerpt: "Finland is an exceptional case Europe," cautions Riisto Erasaari, professor of social policy at Helsinki University. "We are a small homogenous country, heavily state-based, and our social model as a whole is so typically Finnish that it won't travel. But parts of it," - such as the government-funded focus on innovation and education, "are exportable."

The 'riots' in France are interesting, aren't they? They've lasted longer than any of our riots -- Watts, Rodney King, Crown Heights.

Excerpt: On the 10th consecutive night of riots, four cars were torched on Place de la Republique in central Paris along with others in the central 17th District.

But what are they all about? They started, like most, with a police-related death of 2 teenagers. And from there, they took on a life of their own. Mostly, what you have is a marginalized class of people who are treated like crap by the system, who were promised help and assistance and equal treatment and they never got it. Meanwhile, they see those around them who the system seems to favor and guess what? The people the system seems to favor don't look like them. The people the system favors are white and/or non-immigrant. So, toss in some racial issues, anti-police sentiment, verbal slurs by elected officials, abject poverty and segregation, and mix it with a sense of frustration and an understandable anger with the state, and Viola! you have a reaction of epic proportions. Of course, the media is calling them "riots" and "violent" and taking stories and adding inflammatory headlines. Like this one.

Excerpt: Disabled Woman Set Ablaze

But I doubt very much the people who torched the bus wanted to hurt the disabled woman, they just wanted to destroy the bus. It's bad it happened, but I doubt it was their intent. They want to cause property damage and most of the damage they are causing is just that.

From what I've been reading, the 'riots' are only a little worse than what usually goes on. Also, keep in mind that no matter how much the media touts that it's "muslim" violence, it has little to do with muslims, and everything to do with class structure, poverty and discrimination.

Excerpt: For 11 nights running, French police and firefighters have battled rioters on the streets of Paris suburbs -- and the violence seems to be spreading. But the unrest in France is only the latest chapter in the difficulties Europe has been having integrating its immigrants.

Here are some links to people who would know better than me. (Read the comments)

Jerome a Paris

Crisis of French society - and the left

Paris Riots

Bottom line though, I think the bigger questions is: Why the hell aren't they're any riots here! We were lied to by our government to start a war! People have died! Our economy is in a shambles! Our social network is decimated! Get the tar! Get the feathers! It's time to call our government out for the egregious wrongs it has committed! WAKE UP PEOPLE!

I got this from an astute reader. It's a decent examination of the various anomalies in the Plamegate story.

Excerpt: with the conventional explanation of Plamegate you end up with five pieces left over. Five big anomalies that cannot be resolved by the conventional understanding of what took place: supposedly that Wilson exposed a Bushevik lie, that the Busheviks retaliated, that the retaliation had the unwanted side-effect of outing Plame (collateral damage), and that outing Plame had the unwanted side-effect of destroying her network (yet more collateral damage).

Basically, he comes to the conclusion that it was all a set-up from the beginning. They wanted to take down Plame and her group. Now, why might they want to do that?

Excerpt; CIA Leak Tied To Protecting Global Nuke Weapons Smuggling Network

A network that leads to Turkey.

Excerpt: An informed government insider revealed that this smuggling network and the outing of Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings directly involved the fact that the CIA's counter-proliferation network had accumulated a great deal of intelligence on Douglas Feith's and Richard Perle's International Advisors, Inc. (IAI), registered foreign agents for the government of Turkey

Remember Sibel Edmonds?

Excerpt: With Sibel Edmonds once again in the news, and with media interest in her case increasing, it's worth speculating, again*, about her knowledge by attempting to connect some of the many dots found in a public record that stretches back into the Ford Administration and that culminates, in part, with Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998. The story has so many dots and cross currents that it's easy to miss the more salient items.

The translator with the FBI that got fired for daring to question the veracity of their methods? Well, she got into trouble over, you guessed it, Turkish translations. Read the Vanity Fair article. It's an eye opener.

More about South America, since our illustrious monkey was down there trying to bolster the free-trade agreement and neoliberal policies at summit.

Excerpt: A showdown over free trade loomed as leaders from across the Americas headed to Argentina on Thursday in another attempt to end Latin America's chronic poverty, with Washington promoting liberalized trade and opponents fearful that it will allow corporations to dominate the poor.

Yes. Trade. Trade is good. If you believe that a society based on profit is good. If you believe that corporations and the market will always serve the public good. If you believe in the tooth fairy. Let's look at this article, shall we? (From AOL service news, so this should be good!)

Excerpt: President Bush, greeted Friday by thousands of anti-American protesters, is making his call for liberalized trade and increased entrepreneurship in Argentina, a country that adopted such reforms in the 1990s and saw its economy collapse. Supporters of free trade say those policies aren't to blame for the financial crisis and resulting bloody riots four years ago. Instead, they point to other mistakes, chief among them government corruption and Argentina's heavy borrowing.

Now, to begin. Back in the 70s, representatives of US interests waltzed into Argentina and sold them a bill of goods on a whole load of public works/development projects that the South Americans couldn't really afford and the money came from the World Bank and went right into the hands of the American companies that were "hired" to do the work. It was then repayment of those loans that triggered the crashes of the 80s. OK. So then what happened is the IMF came waltzing in and said well, in order to repair your economy, you'll have to do a whole bunch of stuff that conforms to our neo-liberal agenda. Stuff like opening up your financial markets, privatizing your public companies, and cutting back on social programs. (Nice, huh?) So then, they get loans from the IMF and their issues really start. They end up paying so much of their GDP in debt service that they can't run their government. Finally, a few years ago, Argentina said to hell with it. You Americans? Get to the back of the line and if you want anything, it's going to be cents on the dollar. They froze what they could to stem the flight of foreign capital and at the end of the day, they survived.

Somehow, they survived, their economy survived and they're not going to allow themselves to get suckered like that again.

So you can see why they might be a little miffed at the US.

Meanwhile, Chavez is a veritable rock star.

Excerpt: Chavez has said he would use the meeting as a stage to denounce the U.S. as a "capitalist, imperialist model" of democracy that exploits the economies of developing nations.

To the point where the swaggering cowboy skitters away in fright.

Excerpt: U.S. President George W. Bush carefully avoided taking on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez directly at the 34-nation Summit of the Americas, in what aides said was an effort not to elevate the fiery leader.

Yeah right. He didn't want to 'elevate' him. Pussy.

And why does Chavez cause Bush to quake in his boots? Well, besides, as discussed in a previous post, Chavez's social views directly conflicting with Bush' perceptions of the world, there's also a leetle bit of an issue with the pricing of oil.

Excerpt: "Russia, Venezuela and some members of OPEC have expressed interest in moving towards a petroeuro system," he said. And it isn't entirely implausible that China, which is "the world's second largest holder of US currency reserves," might eventually follow suit.

I can't even begin to accentuate the importance of such a move. At present, oil is priced in dollars, meaning that most everybody has to buy oil using dollars, thereby propping up the dollar. If that pricing goes euro, the dollar will sink like the titanic. And Bush knows it.

So, combine that with the the fact the Latin American fully understands now, after 30 years, how free-trade has screwed them, the fact that Chavez and his social policies are immensely popular, and that Bush's war has pissed off a lot of people and the lies that Bush told to start the war has become even more apparent, is it any wonder the summit failed? No.

Excerpt; Leaders from across the Americas ended their tumultuous two-day summit Saturday without agreeing to restart talks on a U.S.-favored free trade zone stretching from Alaska to Chile.

Crash.

And burn.

Comments?

Romantic or weird or both?

Excerpt: This was no one-night stand. Scientists in India say they have discovered two fossils fused together in sexual union for 65 million years.

Hope it's true. Doubt it is.

Excerpt; It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.

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

a little more to the left:

wsws.org
indymedia.org

different:

whatreallyhappened.com
almartinraw.com

more different :

surfingtheapocalypse.com

really different:

goroadachi.com/etemenanki/

and for godsakes, stay away
from FOX,  MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
It's ALL CRAP!!!
watch 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.