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we believe that "what you let your mind dwell on, you become" and "garbage in, garbage out" are very apt statements.I couldn't agree more. That's why I want to get on your list!
...The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.Well, you can just rock me to sleep. This administration is putting more effort in to monitoring American citizens than it is in to protecting us from terrorists. As recently as last year, they had more analysts checking up on Cuba than they had looking for Osama bin Laden, that guy we were gonna "smoke out", "dead or alive". The PATRIOT Act has been renewed, with only cosmetic restrictions on the FBI's ability to issue secret warrants to fish for information from libraries, internet providers, employers and others.
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Among the steps already taken by the Pentagon that enhanced its domestic capabilities was the establishment after 9/11 of Northern Command, or Northcom, in Colorado Springs, to provide military forces to help in reacting to terrorist threats in the continental United States. Today, Northcom's intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas fuse reports from CIFA, the FBI and other U.S. agencies, and are staffed by 290 intelligence analysts. That is more than the roughly 200 analysts working for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and far more than those at the Department of Homeland Security.
In addition, each of the military services has begun its own post-9/11 collection of domestic intelligence, primarily aimed at gathering data on potential terrorist threats to bases and other military facilities at home and abroad. For example, Eagle Eyes is a program set up by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which "enlists the eyes and ears of Air Force members and citizens in the war on terror," according to the program's Web site.
The Marine Corps has expanded its domestic intelligence operations and developed internal policies in 2004 to govern oversight of the "collection, retention and dissemination of information concerning U.S. persons," according to a Marine Corps order approved on April 30, 2004.
When Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced last week that Jose Padilla would be transferred to the federal justice system from military detention, he said almost nothing about the standards the administration used in deciding whether to charge terrorism suspects like Mr. Padilla with crimes or to hold them in military facilities as enemy combatants.In short, in das Neue Amerika, we all better watch what we say, read and think. Piss off the wrong people and you're gonna wind up somewhere they know how to treat people that think their "freedom" mean being free to dissent.
"We take each individual, each case, case by case," Mr. Gonzales said.
The chief sponsor of Georgia's voter identification law told the Justice Department that if black people in her district "are not paid to vote, they don't go to the polls," and that if fewer blacks vote as a result of the new law, it is only because it would end such voting fraud.Quelle surprise. Georgia, it's nice to see you've made so much progress since Jim Crow days. Thanks for furthering the image of southerners as bigoted, ignorant dumbass crackers. I appreciate it. No, really.
Between a third and a quarter of respondents also put part or all of the blame on the woman if she fails to say "no" clearly to the man, wears sexy clothes, drinks too much, has many sexual partners and walks alone in a deserted area.Yes, I can see how that would be a logical position. If, perhaps, you had your head shoved firmly up your own ass and compounded it by having been dropped on your head several times as an infant. A steady diet of paint chips would also help you get to that level of staggering idiocy.
Mages tend to exhibit mutually contradictory personality traits: excessive caution, to the point of obsessive-compulsive behavior, combined with almost suicidal self-confidence. Thaumaturgy requires many years of study - while some very simple magic can theoretically be performed by anyone, more advanced and powerful use is based upon knowledge of an elaborate system of symbols, as well as an understanding of !Fnaarlic, the language of the builders of the original City. It is theorized that, as the !Fnaar (pronounced with an initial glottal click, ending with a gurgling snarl) were present before the Gods gave the rest of the world its form, their language has the ability to modify the shape of reality.As previously, most names are merely "placeholders" until I can finish working up linguistic and cultural notes.
The symbols used in magic serve as speed bumps, since magic texts must be written in !Fnaarlic. Key words and concepts are replaced with ideograms to prevent a casual reading from triggering an unexpected spell. Years of study are required first to understand the complex alphabet of the !Fnaar, then more time is spent learning each symbol and what it stands for. Finally, the student is taught how to replace the symbols in spells and becomes a full-fledged mage. Students are apprenticed at an early age, when the mind is still flexible enough to adjust to the alien structure of magic use. The years of intense study and necessary self-control and restraint tend to make mages socially inept and solitary by nature. It is rare that a mage has a taste for alcohol or other intoxicants, as a slip in concentration at the wrong time would be disastrous for the mage and, possibly, the entire city. In general, a mage is treated on the streets with a wary respect, if not for the mage then for his or her power.
Approximately 1 in 1,000 have some magical talent in the population as a whole, with Elves skewing closer to 1/300 and Dwarfs trending the opposite direction. Most mages know only a few spells and do little or no research. These "Shop Mages", as they are called, will specialize in one school of magic and operate a storefront or on-call business, performing searches or healings and charging all the market will bear. They protect their turf jealously, but have managed to band together to form a small (but relatively powerful) trade association to serve as a means of resolving internal conflicts. More powerful mages - the older and/or more talented - are almost always very wealthy, as their skills allow them to set their own price. Most of these dedicate themselves to research, both theoretical and prehistoric.
In terms of gameplay, the semantics-based magic makes no difference - the "Magery" advantage represents training in the theory and practice of magic rather than an inborn talent, and the system is still spell-based. The GM could optionally allow mages with extensive knowledge in a school to attempt to cast spells in that school they do not know at a severe penalty with the attendant risk of a catastrophic backfire.
I'm outside, in a clearing. I've got someone - I don't recognize him - held by the front of their shirt with one hand - a classic "tough guy" hold. With my other hand, I keep hitting him in the face, punching him over and over and over.I didn't feel in the dream that I was walking away from family or my past per se - it felt very much like a dream about internal stuff, like I was leaving behind the warmth of certainty for something different and new. The images were kind of haunting. Might have to store them for use some time in the future.
When he goes unconscious, I drop him and look around guiltily, but no one is around. I wipe my hands and walk away, and realize that I'm walking through the woods at the farm my parents sold last year. I recognize the trees, the blackberry bramble that dried up years ago, I stop to wash my hands in the creek, but the cuts from hitting that guy are still there, and won't heal over. There's a constant trickle of my own blood covering my hands, and I realize that the guy I was hitting was myself, aged 18 or so.
I keep walking as a cold wind blows through the woods. I can track the progress of the wind, because as it blows past the trees, their leaves dry up and scatter, the green grass turns brown and the sky turns a gloomy grey.
Somewhere behind me is what I need, but I keep walking away from it.
Another gust of wind and the trees turn to dust, leaving me on a featureless brown plain. Behind me I see my footprints and the trail of small droplets of my blood and far, far off in the distance, the warm glow of whatever it is that I left.
I keep walking.
There's no sense of dread, just a certainty that where I want to be is behind me and where I'm going is where I have to go.
President Bush feels betrayed by several of his most senior aides and advisors and has severely restricted access to the Oval Office, administration sources say. The president's reclusiveness in the face of relentless public scrutiny of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and White House leaks regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame has become so extreme that Mr. Bush has also reduced contact with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, administration sources said on the condition of anonymity.Matt Drudge adds:
If these reports are true, then our president is getting all his information from his wife, his mother, Condi Rice (the same Condi Rice that assumed a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike Within US" couldn't possibly mean that Osama Bin Laden actually wanted to, you know, launch a terror attack in the US) and Karen Hughes, who appears to think Boy George's shit smells like roses.
The sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions
According to Freud, infants don't perceive the boundaries between themselves and those around them; they have no sense of themselves as individuals separate from their caregivers. I suspect that blurring of identity goes both ways, perhaps especially for mothers, who so recently held their infants in their bodies.
As the Senate prepared to vote Thursday to abolish the writ of habeas corpus, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl were railing about lawyers like me. Filing lawsuits on behalf of the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Terrorists! Kyl must have said the word 30 times.Innocents are being held at Guantanamo. Men and boys who have committed no crime, whose only fault is in being in the wrong place at the wrong time and speaking the wrong language and worshipping the wrong God. Not all of them - I'm certain that some, possibly most, of the detainees at Guantanamo are, as Bush calls them, "the worst of the worst", but no system of justice is perfect, and a system of justice that operates in secret is never going to be accurate or reliable.
As I listened, I wished the senators could meet my client Adel.
Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.
The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.
Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.
While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.Then, realizing he'd managed to be honest for once, he continued on with the lies and smears:
Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.Now, how could a bipartisan Senate panel do that, when it hasn't even been convened yet? The much-awaited "Phase 2" of the investigation into the mAdministration's war claims has been stalled for a couple of years now, thanks to Pat Roberts. No investigation, no conclusion. Unless we've slipped into Wonderland, where he get the sentence first and then the trial.
...more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate -- who had access to the same intelligence -- voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.Well, seems that's fundamentally untrue. On October 5, 2001, Bush issued an executive order limiting access to intelligence information to the Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. A total of 8 members of Congress. That means most Democrats did not have access to the same information.
On a day when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution paying tribute to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who died last week, campus security guards were telling students that if they wanted to eat they'd have to come back when the president and first lady were gone, then go to a service door at the rear of the dining hall and ask for a chicken plate to go.Today's GOP: Boldly leading us back to the 19th Century.
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Howard is not some hotbed of political activism. The biggest event of the year is homecoming, which features two fashion shows, a step show and lots of hip-hop celebrities. As the rapper Ludacris put it in his summer hit, "Pimpin' All Over the World":
Jump in the car and ride for hours,
Makin' sure I don't miss the homecoming at Howard.
To set off a student protest at this school, you'd have to be politically tone-deaf in the extreme, out of touch and flying blind. And yet, Bush did it.
"I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”Now, I'm not a Christian. Haven't been for quite a number of years, but I know a lot of 'em. A lot of 'em. My parents, my wife, her parents, dozens of family friends. The Christians I know - and several of 'em are more intensely trained in theology than Rev. Monkeyfuck - aren't really into that whole "God as Don Corleone" school of theology. Robertson is a sick, sick man - he's blamed gays and feminists for 9/11, faggots for hurricanes and Charles Darwin for the Soviet Union. He's a lowlife scam artist, doing half-assed cold readings on the air and dispensing "healing" as he tells his gullible viewers that JEEE-ZUS wants them to give him all their fucking money so he can smuggle more diamonds out of Africa while pretending to help orphans. That the GOP listens to one damn thing he has to say tells me more than I care to know about the corrupt nature of the national leadership of that party. That Pat Robertson has one goddamn dime to his name tells me everything I need to know about the sociopathic nature of the evangelical movement in this country.
RAI News 24's investigative story, Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre, will be broadcast tomorrow on RAI-3 and will contain not only eye-witness accounts by US military personnel but those from Fallujah residents. "A rain of fire descended on the city. People who were exposed to those multicolored substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact," relates Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a biologist and Fallujah resident.Here's a link to the video report.
"I gathered accounts of the use of phosphorus and napalm from a few Fallujah refugees whom I met before being kidnapped," says Manifesto reporter Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped in Fallujah last February, in a recorded interview. "I wanted to get the story out, but my kidnappers would not permit it."
President Bush vigorously defended U.S. interrogation practices in the war on terror Monday and lobbied against a congressional drive to outlaw torture.Fucking liar. I suppose I should be glad that Bush hasn't got any blowjobs in the Oval Office, instead of getting all worked up over the American Gulag, the American Inquisition or George Bush and Dick Cheney's public opposition to proposals to specifically and categorically outlaw torture by American soldiers and covert agents.
"There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again," Bush said. "So you bet we will aggressively pursue them but we will do so under the law."
He declared, "We do not torture."
Speaking from the Senate floor, McCain said, "If necessary - and I sincerely hope it is not - I and the co-sponsors of this amendment will seek to add it to every piece of important legislation voted on in the Senate until the will of a substantial bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress prevails. Let no one doubt our determination."About time. McCain's toed the Party Line a little too long for me to be entirely comfortable with him - his willingness to publicly embrace Bush during the Swift Boating of Kerry in '04 cost him a lot of my respect - but he's on a path to earn a little back.
President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.Yep - Harriet Miers, who thinks Boy George is the most brilliantest Preznit EVAH, is going to lecture the staff of the White House - the White House that brought us Swift Boating, war based on lies, smear politics as S.O.P., torture, willful and wholesale violations of international law, Stalinist control of public information and worked hand-in-hand with Bill "Blind Trust" Frist and Tom "Bugfucker" DeLay - she's going to lecture them on ethics.
According to a memo sent to aides yesterday, Bush expects all White House staff to adhere to the "spirit as well as the letter" of all ethics laws and rules. As a result, "the White House counsel's office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher lectures on general ethics rules, including the rules of governing the protection of classified information," according to the memo, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a senior White House aide.
What are your five favorite spices?Spices are good. Their high value per weight made them a critical item of trade in the Middle Ages, and many spices were worth more than their weight in gold. Today, of course, almost anyone in the West can go to the grocery store and for a relative pittance, buy a quantity of spices that would have bankrupted many a Medieval noble. Power to the people, baby - take that, ancient fatcats!
What the Klan wants is a photo op complete with angry, yelling citizens to scare conservative voters to the polls. What we are planning to do is get into the background of as many media shots as possible so their hate cannot be broadcast on the nightly news. As "turning the other cheek" is a recognized true Christian value, we believe this is a message those Klansters will understand.Local musician Steve Fromholz organized the First Mooning Of the Klan back in 1993, and inspired a wonderful column from Molly Ivins:
It would be easy to give them what they want.It would be easy to shake my fist and holler.It will be harder to shake my ass in their general direction,but it will be better than feeding into their media strategy.
So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.When things look the most bleak, there's always something that gives me just enough hope in my country to keep going. In the long run, the bastard people can't win. Between the prospect of mooning a bunch of racist Nazi-fellating cross-dressers and the delicious sight of Bill Frist getting his nuts caught in a vise by Harry Reid, life is lookin' pretty OK right now.
