According to the European Union's Terrorism Situation and Trend Report for 2007, out of 498 documented terrorist incidents in the European Union in 2006, exactly one was attributable to Islamist extremists.
Many people can now correctly spell the name of the capital of Iran, "Bagdad."
Some people worry that after 60 years of attacking neighboring countries, political assassinations, stealing land, burning crops, blowing up villages, shooting Palestinian men, women, and children, herding survivors into refugee camps and then blowing up the camps, Israel might be in danger of beginning to wear out its welcome in the Middle East.
"Looks like our ass is grass, Lieutenant."
"General, couldn't we just framoozle the meningroid with the happentrap?"
"By God, that just might work. Good thinking, Lieutenant. Sergeant Major, make it so."
"Sir! Alright you pathetic sacks of !@#$%, framoozle that &^%$# meningroid with the @#$%^& happentrap and be quick about it or you can kiss your *&^%$ goodbye because your ##@@!! will belong to me! Look out!"
Klang!
"General, sir the happentrap just broke loose!"
"Alright, Sergeant Major, as you were. Well, Lieutenant, any more bright ideas?"
"Let's give this another six months, sir. You never know, it may work without the happentrap."
And the winner is: AOL news surfers.
Taken from latest poll results that asked about Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, the following percentage of respondents had never heard of her:
Test your attention span. Try to remember who made these statements about the Iraq War:
Whatever happened to the good guys? You know, the Americans in white hats who were going to eliminate war, starvation, poverty and disease from the world and make America a beacon of freedom?
The Bush administration's stubborn determination to prevail, whatever the costs, is evident not only in its reckless military venture in Iraq, but in its single-minded pursuit of new nuclear weapons.The History News Network has the complete story.
The U.S. government, of course, is supposed to be divesting itself of its nuclear weapons under the provisions of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which it signed in 1968. As recently as the NPT review conference of 2000, the U.S. government joined other signers of the NPT in promising an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals."Furthermore, when the Bush administration ignored these commitments and pressed Congress hard for funding to build new nuclear weapons—nuclear "bunker busters" and "mini-nukes"—Congress dug in and rejected them as totally unnecessary. With some 10,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, members of Congress, both Democrats and some Republicans, seemed to feel that enough was enough.
Here we go again. Russian strong man Vladimir Putin is put in the crosshairs by the Billionaire Boys Club:
Exiled Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky told British newspaper The Guardian on Friday that he is "plotting" a violent overthrow of Russian President Vladimir Putin from his home in Britain.The Finland Station in St. Petersburg, Russia "...is best remembered for the arrival of Vladimir Lenin by train on 3 April 1917 to start the October Revolution," according to WikiPedia. Lenin's revolution knocked Russia out of World War I and ultimately led to the deaths of millions of Russians.
One year after his arrest, an Associated Press photographer is still being held at a prison camp in Iraq by U.S. military officials who have neither formally charged him with a crime nor made public any evidence of wrongdoing.Editor & Publisher has the sordid story.
Bush appointed World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, formerly DOD number two, not only ordered promotions and an increase in pay for his girlfriend to nearly $200,000 a year for a no-show job, but apparently lied to the World Bank Board of Directors about it.
...newly released documents included an August 2005 memorandum in which Wolfowitz ordered the bank's human resources division to award [Wolfowitz flame] Riza the extraordinary pay increases.AFP has the story here and here.
Contrary to accounts given by Wolfowitz's office, the board also said that neither it nor the World Bank's ethics committee had approved the arrangement.
An Army officer speaks out:
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.Read entire letter.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.
Investigative journalist Robert Parry gives some of the backstory on the refusal of three US generals to consider appointment as President Bush's new "War Czar":
Retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan was another four-star who rebuffed the White House. “The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going,” Sheehan told the Post. “So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, ‘No, thanks.’”See the full story here.
In case you haven't been following the latest indicators about what the Ministry of Fear (aka DHS) is up to these days, here's a sample:
"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. " -- Professor Walter F. MurphyLooks like I'll be riding the dog. Mark Graber has the complete story.
The once proud Washington Post continues its slide into the abyss of propaganda, lies, and deceit. Mark Thoma has the sordid story:
Once again, Robert Samuelson lumps all the social insurance programs together and foresees a dire future, in this case generational warfare. But as Dean Baker continually and correctly reminds us, Social Security is not the problem, and the programs themselves are not to blame - Medicare is not the cause of the growth in costs for health care:The Washington Post ... complained about ... "the coming crisis in Social Security and Medicare." The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's most recent projections show that Social Security can pay all scheduled benefits, with no changes whatsoever, until 2046, and roughly 75 percent of scheduled benefits for many decades after that date, even if no changes are ever made. ...I think the last point is too often missed - it's not the Medicare program, it's the growth in health costs that is the source of the dire projections for rising budget deficits.
The Medicare story of course boils down to projections of exploding health care costs. If the health care system is not fixed, then "fixing" Medicare is irrelevant. We can zero out the program, but exploding health care costs would still devastate the economy. If the health care system is fixed, so that costs in the U.S. are in line with health care costs in other wealthy countries, then Medicare would be easily affordable. ...
Mike Whitney says he knows why:
The American people are in La-la land. If they had any idea of what the Federal Reserve was up to they'd be out on the streets waving fists and pitchforks. Instead, we go our business like nothing is wrong.Jury still out on the "stupid" part. For the full article: CounterPunch.
Are we really that stupid?
Apparently, there is no limit*.
"So many flim-flams, so little time."
"So many flim-flams, so little time."
In this topsy-turvy world of color-coded terror alerts and increasingly muddled guidance from the powers on high charged with protecting this great nation of ours from those pesky terroristas, it becomes increasingly important to set forth some simple guidance on terrorist detection.
Although we are not an expert, we have determined the most effective rule in feretting out an actual terrorist in a crowd of mostly innocent civilians.
First, carefully scan the crowd using your eyes. Note the color of clothing of each individual and the general movement of the crowd. When one of the individuals in the crowd disappears in a blinding flash, accompanied by an ear-splitting, "kaboom!", that, ladies and gentlemen, would be your terrorist.
Happy shopping.
Plus, their stuff is easier to fence while it's still in one piece.
It's the Navy culture, stupid.
Bush's hand-picked leader of the massive fuckup war on terror in the Middle East, Navy Admiral William J. Fallon, told CNN's Kyra Phillips today that:
...Iraq isn't in a civil war...but is driven by "small factions fighting each other." -- Admiral William J. Fallon, Commander, CENTCOMOops, isn't that the definition of a civil war?
"The intelligence community judges that the term "civil war" does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shiite-on-Shiite violence, al-Qaida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence," an unclassified summary of the new NIE released Friday said.By all reports, Admiral Fallon is "...doon a heckuva job."
"Nonetheless, the term 'civil war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements," the NIE summary said.
