The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 11/14/2005

(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.

I can't get too excited about the results of last week's elections. Yes, it was good to win the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia. Yes, it was good Herr Gropenator got stung big time. Yes, it was good that the republican stronghold of Long Island, New York voted in a ton of democrats (A huge bellwether indeed.) Yes, it's good that Dover, PA got those creationist idiots off of the school board. (Hey, anything that pisses Robertson off this much can't be a bad thing.)

But I understand that the democrats are no different than the republicans. They're all bought and paid for by special interests. They're all working in a system that is foul, fetid, corrupt and for all intents and purposes, useless. Part of me would like to toss the whole thing out and start from scratch. Have people do "Congress Duty" like we do jury duty now. No more elections. No more lobbyists (lock those cretins up if you have to).

Some might argue that we should keep the republicans in there, let them really screw things up as bad as they are capable (and boy are they ever capable) and just let it get so bad that the whole thing falls apart as quickly as possible. The theory being that allowing the republicans to remain in power will hasten the end of republic. And sometimes I feel like when I support the democrats, I'm supporting and illogical and evil system. But that's all we've got. And until we can rip it to shreds, we have to make life livable and the democrats, AT THE VERY LEAST (and trust me, it IS the very least) have SOME concept of human rights and social rights.

We have to not rest on our laurels here. We have to take back the House and Senate in 2006. If for NO OTHER REASON than to gain control of the committees in charge of investigating the Bush family evil empire. This "First family of American politics" and all the cronies that came with them must be stopped. 2005 was only the first step. Next year at this time, I had better be cracking open that bottle of champagne I have in the fridge, celebrating the huge democratic gains in the Congress and Senate and looking forward to impeachment hearings of everyone, starting with Bush, and going all the way down to Chertoff.

Cool Site of the Week: Email Time Capsule

Cool Tech of the Week: HomePlug dLAN Audio adapter

Advert of the Week: French Train Company

Flash of the Week: Soldiers

Gift Idea of the Week: Spider Catcher

Another Gift Idea of the Week: Recycled Library Books

List of the Week: Top 10 Funniest Bushisms of All Time

Story updates: French Riots, More on French Riots, and more on the predictable reaction of the State to the riots (and the predictable desire of the State to maintain their police state beyond the immediate conflict). Also, ANWR is safe for now.

I thought it did. (Google: Iraq regime change)

Excerpt: U.S. severs most contacts with Syria, officials say
Washington debate reported over idea of 'regime change'

And this. (Google: Niger Forgeries)

Excerpt: In mid-July, senior American intelligence officials called the leaders of the international atomic inspection agency to the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna and unveiled the contents of what they said was a stolen Iranian laptop computer.

This too. (Google: PNAC)

Excerpt: A confidential memo circulating among senior Republican leaders suggests that a new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as the GOP and "restore his image as a leader of the American people."

Asterisks = Lies

Excerpt: President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence. Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

The king of death squads won't back on you torture.

Excerpt: U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte is declining to support Vice President Dick Cheney's effort to exempt the CIA from law banning mistreatment of detainees.

(Here's why I call Negroponte the King of Death Squads. Other's call him the Torturer's Friend.)

If you voted for Bush thinking he was a fiscal conservative, only to find out he's the biggest borrower ever, you should be really disappointed.

Excertp: President Bush and the current administration have borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 presidents combined, a group of conservative to moderate Democrats said Friday.

Why does he borrow so much? Well, for one thing, our trade deficit is enormous.

Excerpt: The trade deficit soared to a record in September as the Gulf Coast hurricanes helped push America's foreign oil bill to an all-time high. The politically sensitive deficit with China also set a record.

And as of next year, M3 monetary aggregate will no longer be reported.

Excerpt; On March 23, 2006, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System will cease publication of the M3 monetary aggregate.

(The M3 tells us how much money we're printing. If we print more than a certain percentage of GDP, than it means we're in bad shape. When they stop reporting the M3, we'll not be able to see how bad of shape we're really in. Now they'll be able to print as much as they want to mask inflation and make the economy seem better than it is. I suspect there will be a huge influx of printed cash, oh, I dunno, right after they stop reporting in March and continuing up until the 2006 mid-term elections. Call it the Vidiot's crazy theory.)

Meanwhile, foreign investors are drying up.

Excerpt: Overseas investors, who own half of all U.S. government debt, bought 14 percent of the $79 billion in benchmark 10-year notes auctioned this year, down from 21 percent in 2004, Treasury Department data show. Bidders including foreign central banks purchased a smaller percentage of the $44 billion in three-, five- and 10-year notes the Treasury sold last week than they did a year ago.

This is a bad idea.

Excertp:Federal scientists say they will consider requests to ship the recently recreated 1918 killer flu virus to select U.S. research labs.

And this is why.

Excerpt: A Federal Express courier truck carrying a package of anthrax collided with a car in central Winnipeg on Wednesday, but officials say the package was not damaged in the crash.

Remember how they went OFF on the Clinton's use of the Lincoln bedroom? Well, that's nothing compared to these guys.

Excerpt;The lobbyist Jack Abramoff asked for $9 million in 2003 from the president of a small West African nation to arrange a meeting with President Bush and directed his fees to a Maryland company now under federal scrutiny, according to newly disclosed documents. The African leader, President Omar Bongo of Gabon, met with ush in the Oval Office on May 26, 2004, 10 months after Abramoff made the offer. There has been no evidence in the public record that the lobbyist had any role in organizing the meeting or that he received any money or had a signed contract with Gabon.

Initial reports that the new pope was sane

Excerpt:THE Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.

were greatly exaggerated.

Excerpt; Benedict XVI quoted St. Basil the Great, a 4th-century saint, as saying that some people, "fooled by the atheism that they carry inside of them, imagine a universe free of direction and order, as if at the mercy of chance." His comments were immediately hailed by advocates of intelligent design.

This week's bombing in Jordan had several interesting early reports.

One was that the bombs were in the ceiling.

Excerpt; A blast at the Radisson hotel in the Jordanian capital Amman on Wednesday was caused by a bomb placed in a false ceiling, police sources at the scene told Reuters.

Which later became suicide attacks.

Excerpt: Suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three Western chain hotels here Wednesday night, killing at least 57 people, wounding more than 100 and emphatically ending Jordan's status as an oasis of relative calm in the Middle East.

(Look at the photo. Decide for yourself.)

Also, reports of Israelis getting a heads up

Excerpt: A number of Israelis staying yesterday at the Radisson SAS were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. They were escorted back to Israel by security personnel.

have since been revised.

Excerpt: There is no truth to reports that Israelis staying at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman on Wednesday were evacuated by Jordanian security forces before the bombing that took place there.

BTW, these early reports of Israelis getting warnings with followups that deny the warnings, have happened before. It happened in London and on 9/11. I have no idea what that's about and I'm not pointing to any Mossad conspiracies. I'm just saying it happens enough to be odd.

Do you lose your sense of irony or hypocrisy when you become a republican or do you just not have one to begin with?

Excerpt: The United States has called on Syria to stop what it calls the arbitrary detention of pro-democracy and human rights activists.

Kuwait's oil fields are drying up.

Excerpt:It was an incredible revelation last week that the second largest oil field in the world is exhausted and past its peak output. Yet that is what the Kuwait Oil Company revealed about its Burgan field.

I guess that explains why they were slant drilling into Iraq back in the early 90s.

Let the testifiers testify without being sworn in.

Excerpt: Yet while the GOP did the right thing in dragging these oil execs to testify, it's bizarre that they would refuse to swear the execs in.

Oh, and don't forget to lower their taxes.

Excerpt: Buried in the C-section of the Wall Street Journal, Steven D. Jones reveals Monday: "Oil companies operating in the U.S. typically pay taxes at or above the 35% rate on corporate profits. But for about one in four big oil companies, tax rates have fallen recently, even as profits have soared."

Growing GM foods anywhere is bad. Growing them somewhere pristine is just evil.

Excerpt: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has decided to expand a controversial give-away in which local farmers grow genetically modified soybeans and corn on Delaware’s at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) today released a letter protesting the move as wreaking ecological havoc and violating the Service’s own policies.

(Why GM foods are bad.)

Database? Meet hackers. Hackers? Meet database.

Excerpt; "There are organisations that work together on this issue and issues like that across borders all the time, and it can be as grandiose as to say the UN has a process in place to share information like that and create working groups to try and to create standards or expectations and across multiple jurisdictions," said Slemp. "I just don't know what the name would be."

Wonderful.

Excerpt: A leading worldwide climate research institute in Hamburg, Germany predicted last month that the Earth is heading for a climate catastrophe in the next 100 years, with sea ice in the North Pole region predicted to completely melt in summer and extreme weather events increasing in both frequency and strength.

It is unbelievable to me that a story as huge as the United States using chemical weapons in Fallujah (history of Fallujah here.) isn't on the nightly news EVERY night. How can they ignore such a story? I'm flummoxed.

The BBC sort of mentioned it.

Excerpt: Italian state TV, Rai, has broadcast a documentary accusing the US military of using phosphorus bombs against civilians in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

But note: The headline in that article, "US 'uses incendiary arms' in Iraq" is not what was originally used. It originally called "incendiary arms" by what they were, "chemical arms".

Excerpt: The BBC News website has just changed the title of its short and opinionated article on Fallujah.

Read that article all the way down. You'll see that the media is truly skirting the subject. Also, when one reader sent the video to someone at the New York TImes, the person at the times only watched 3 minutes of it and then gave up because the first 3 minutes talks about Viet Nam! Lazy, lazy journalist!

The internet has been buzzing with the story since it happened in 2004. That's over a year of digging and prodding by bloggers and the foreign press with almost no information to go on. Here are some early reports:

US Troops Reportedly Gassing Fallujah 11/10/04

Falluja women, children in mass grave 11/21/04

And no mention in the mainstream media.

And then, the reports of the use of the weapons started to surface:

Chemical Weapons in Fallujah 12/29/04

Odd Happenings in Fallujah 1/18/05

This is the price they paid (US tyrants use chemical weapons) 1/21/05

U.S. Used Mustard gas, Nerve gas, and Burning Chemicals on Iraqis in Fallujah 3/5/05

Weapons of Mass Destruction Employed by US to Imolate Falluja: White Phosphorus is a Chemical Weapon 3/8/05

And the first early video surfaced in June of this year.

And still, silence from our media.

And then, we should've suspected something was being hidden when this was published:

US denies need for Falluja aid convoy 11/15/04

Or when journalist Giuliana Sgrena was kidnapped. They tried to kill her for what she knew about Fallujah.

Excerpt: At the time of the February 4 abduction Giuliana was working on a report on the people that sought refuge ata mosque in Faluja past the Pentagon air raid against the Sunny bastion and Sgrena had questioned the invasion of the Middle East country by the US-British coalition.

And still, deafening silence from MSM. (And I know this because I did a Lexus Nexus search of world news of "Fallujah" "Chemical Weapons" and only found 5 articles. One was a letter to the editor of an Irish paper written by someone who was upset that the weapons WEREN'T mentioned in an recent article about Fallujah. Another was a BBC article discussing how a Turkish minister was accusing the US of using chemical weapons in Fallujah, but the gist of article had little to do with the accusation. Two others, Canadian papers, said that a chemical weapons cache had been found in a mosque compound in Fallujah (Sure, blame it on the victims.) and the last was a recent Independent Newspapers report that discussed the recent RAI video (link below). So I'm not making up the fact that the media ignored Fallujah.)

But what do you expect from a media that willingly withholds information about a network of secret prisons at the government's request.

Excerpt: What should not be overlooked is the historic significance of the Washington Post's decision. "This is probably the most important newspaper capitulation since the New York Times yielded to John F. Kennedy's call for them to not run the full story of planning for the Bay of Pigs," Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive senior analyst, told Columbia Journalism Daily. "By withholding the country names, the Post is directly enabling the rendition, secret detention, and torture of prisoners at these locations to continue. That is a ghastly responsibility."

And a government that is more interested in who leaked than the existence of the prisons, rather than the actual existence of the prisons in the first place.

Excerpt: Sources tell Drudge that early this afternoon House Speaker Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Frist will announce a bicameral investigation into the leak of classified information to the WASHINGTON POST regarding the “black sites” where high value al Qaeda terrorists are being held and interrogated.

Or a newspaper that supports a journalist, even though she's a neocon mouthpeice.

Excerpt: "Do you believe the New York Times failure to fire Judy Miller has affected your credibility as a journalistic organisation?" asked one journalist.
"No," answered Mr Sulzberger before qualifying his response.

Or a White House that will "alter" the public record to suit its needs.

Excerpt: Quite simply, the White House has tampered with the transcript of the Oct. 31 press briefing conducted by l'il Scott McClellan.  David Gregory of MSNBC argued to McClellan that notwithstanding McClellan's assurances two years ago that Rove and Libby had not been involved in the leak, both Rove and Libby have admitted to taking part in conversations with journalists regarding Valerie Plame.  In response, Scottie said "That's accurate."  But the official White House transcript of the briefing available at whitehouse.gov has Scottie saying "I don't think that's accurate."

Listen, despite the State Department's expected denials and protestations,

Excerpt:The fighting in Fallujah, Iraq has led to a number of widespread myths including false charges that the United States is using chemical weapons such napalm and poison gas. None of these allegations are true.

If you see the RAI video (and brace yourself, it's horrific) there is no way you can deny that something very bad happened there. The biggest clue are the dead animals -- animals with no visible injuries, just dead.

The fact that there is a deafening silence from the MSM is the most glaring example of the failure of our fourth estate. The failure to examine the moral degradation of this country's policies is... man, you know? I don't even have the words. I cannot describe the sorrow I feel for the people who suffered those horrible deaths, murder committed by the hand of the government that represents me, my friends, my family, my nephews, my godson...

What can we do? How can we get the media to seriously look at this story? I've written to them and not gotten anything but an automatic response. They're ignoring it. What? Do I have to march down to their broadcast headquarters and scream at the top of my lungs? Will THAT get their attention? Probably not. They don't care. They're useless.

They're worse than useless.

By not reporting this story, they're complicit.

Comments?

Not so sure it's weird, but it certainly is interesting.

Excerpt: It may look like a fixer-upper at first glance, but what is buried beneath scrubby little Oak Island might just make its estimated $7 million price tag worth the investment.
Oak Island, in Nova Scotia, is famous for its Money Pit, a mystery that has endured two centuries, claimed six lives and swallowed up millions in life savings.

DO NOT mess with this guy.

Excerpt: It looked like a crime scene, but no charges will be filed after Wayne Goldsberry killed a buck with his bare hands in his daughter's bedroom.

Ohmmmmmmm.

Excerpt:Meditation alters brain patterns in ways that are likely permanent, scientists have known. But a new study shows key parts of the brain actually get thicker through the practice.

I hate to say it, but at the ripe old age of 41, this would set back my potty training as well.

Excerpt: Potty training is difficult enough for any toddler but one youngster has suffered a particularly dramatic experience after a carnivorous lizard emerged from the family toilet while he was using it.

I never really believed anyone could tip a cow.

Excerpt: But now, much to the relief of dairy herds, the sport of cow-tipping has been debunked as an urban, or perhaps rural, myth by scientists at a Canadian university.

An alternative to intelligent design.

Excerpt: In that spirit, Giblets is proud to present, in conjunction with the Kansas Board of Education, a bold new educational theory which will one day enlighten classrooms across the nation, from the utterly foolish to the simply gullible: Intelligent History.

I'm even appalled by this.

Excerpt: A Times Square movie theater laid an egg at a showing of "Chicken Little" last night.
Adults and kids expecting to watch Disney's G-rated animated flick at the AMC Empire 25 theater on 42nd St. were instead presented with a foreign film that opened with a young man committing suicide.

Insert man-bashing joke here.

Excerpt:Men in Serbia are lining up to have electric shocks delivered to their testicles as part of a new contraceptive treatment.

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.