Germans to the Iranian Front?

The NATO force is composed of troops and naval vessels from several countries and is lead by Germany.

WTF?
Cheney’s Revenge

One more interesting blog...

Craig Murray

Craig Murray (born October, 1958) was the United Kingdom's Ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was removed from his post on October 14, 2004. While in office, he criticized the Karimov administration of human rights abuses, which he argues was against the wishes of the British government and the reason for his removal. Murray claims he complained to the FCO in November 2002, January or early February 2003, and in June 2004 that intelligence linking the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to al-Qaeda, suspected of being gained through torture, was unreliable, immoral, and illegal. He accused Her Majesty's Government of "selling our souls for dross".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray

Public Service Announcement

I just found this interesting blog, so if you live in the UK, this might matter to you:
The Magistrate's Blog

The Symbols, Signs and Proof of Civilization

I have to quote (and link) to this article a second time, because I really find this important:

The point of human rights, as Churchill noted, is that they treat the innocent, the suspect, and the convict equally: "These are the symbols, in the treatment of crime and criminals, which mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are a sign and proof of the living virtue in it."

Blair laid bare: the article that may get you arrested - Independent Online Edition > UK Politics

End the "war" on "terrorism"

End it now. It is not possible to win this "war". Democratic governments all over the world use the fear of terrorism to erode domcracy. And we fall in line with authoritarian governments in this fight.

We will pay a bitter price for this fight that many claim is essential for our society. It is this fight that will kill our freedoms and it is essential to fight against this terror outrages created by our so called democratic governments.

To quote the movie Canadian Bacon:

Secretary of State: We were thinking, what could be a bigger threat than aliens invading from space?

General Panzer: Ooh boy! Scare the shit out of everyone. Even me, sir!

U.S. President: Jesus, is this the best you could come up with? What about, ya know, international terrorism?

General Panzer: Well, sir, we're not going to re-open missile factories just to fight some creeps running around in exploding rental cars, are we, sir?

Seems like yes, we have not only re-opened missile factories to fight some creeps, no, we have sacrificed our own freedoms, the very freedoms we are supposed to insure by fighting this fabricated terror threats.

History repeats itself only as a farce. Julius Caesar killed thousands of Gauls in the Gallic wars while claiming to protect them from the barbaric tribes of the north.

Although Caesar portrayed this invasion as being a defensive pre-emptive action, most historians agree that the wars were fought primarily to boost Caesar's political career and to pay off his massive debts.

But not only that, Julius Caesar effectivly ended the Roman Republic, a phase "characterized by a republican form of government" and ushering the Roman Empire:

The precise date in which the Roman Republic changed into the Roman Empire is a matter of interpretation, with the dates of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual dictator, the Battle of Actium, and the date which the Roman Senate granted Octavian the title "Augustus", being some of the common choices.

This is a distinction chiefly made by modern historians and not by the Romans of the time, however. The early Julio-Claudian emperors maintained that the res publica still existed under the protection of their extraordinary powers and would eventually return to its republican form.

Nothing to see here, we are just protecting the rights of the people here, so move along.

We are on a slippery slope now and our democracy and freedom is slowly being eroded. We may not take notice of the changes. Not if we don't look closely. Yes, everyone wants to fight terrorists and pedophiles, no one want terrorists using the internet, no one wants propaganda from Al-Q, no one wants terrorists that use our liberties as they please, but some day YOU will find yourself on the wrong side of the law, just because the meaning of terrorist has changed from "someone terrorizing the public" (which would be a fitting label for our governments) to "someone who is against the government". And before you know it, YOU will end up in an internation camp build by Bechtel or Halliburton, because YOU thought that distributing leaflets, or writing in your blog that you don't like the government, was covered by the freedoms YOU thought you have.

These are dark times and they will get much darker.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

And why I will not travel to the UK...

Charged for quoting George Orwell in public

In another example of the Government's draconian stance on political protest, Steven Jago, 36, a management accountant, yesterday became the latest person to be charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.

On 18 June, Mr Jago carried a placard in Whitehall bearing the George Orwell quote: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." In his possession, he had several copies of an article in the American magazine Vanity Fair headlined "Blair's Big Brother Legacy", which were confiscated by the police. "The implication that I read from this statement at the time was that I was being accused of handing out subversive material," said Mr Jago. Yesterday, the author, Henry Porter, the magazine's London editor, wrote to Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, expressing concern that the freedom of the press would be severely curtailed if such articles were used in evidence under the Act.

Mr Porter said: "The police told Mr Jago this was 'politically motivated' material, and suggested it was evidence of his desire to break the law. I therefore seek your assurance that possession of Vanity Fair within a designated area is not regarded as 'politically motivated' and evidence of conscious law-breaking."

Scotland Yard has declined to comment.

Some paragraphs I find interesting:

For Blair, that youthful baby-boomer who came to power nine years ago as the embodiment of democratic liberalism as well as the new spirit of optimism in Britain, turns out to have an authoritarian streak that respects neither those rights nor, it seems, the independence of the elected representatives in Parliament. And what is remarkable - in fact almost a historic phenomenon - is the harm his government has done to the unwritten British constitution in those nine years, without anyone really noticing, without the press objecting or the public mounting mass protests. At the inception of Cool Britannia, British democracy became subject to a silent takeover.

Last year - rather late in the day, I must admit - I started to notice trends in Blair's legislation which seemed to attack individual rights and freedoms, to favour ministers (politicians appointed by the Prime Minister to run departments of government) over the scrutiny of Parliament, and to put in place all the necessary laws for total surveillance of society.

There was nothing else to do but to go back and read the Acts - at least 15 of them - and to write about them in my weekly column in The Observer. After about eight weeks, the Prime Minister privately let it be known that he was displeased at being called authoritarian by me. Very soon I found myself in the odd position of conducting a formal e-mail exchange with him on the rule of law, I sitting in my London home with nothing but Google and a stack of legislation, the Prime Minister in No 10 with all the resources of government at his disposal. Incidentally, I was assured that he had taken time out of his schedule so that he himself could compose the thunderous responses calling for action against terrorism, crime, and antisocial behaviour

Independent Online Edition > UK Politics

Finally a quality wiki!

Main Page - Encyclopedia Dramatica

(May not be safe for work - depending on your work)

HOW THEY STOLE THE MID-TERM ELECTION Greg Palast

Let us see.
HOW THEY STOLE THE MID-TERM ELECTION Greg Palast

What I still don't get

What's in it for Bliar?

I mean it's simply not fair. Here he is - Prime Minister of Great Britain (just) - and he's doing everything he possibly can including leaning over backwards and licking his own bottom. He's spending vast amounts of money he hasn't got on sending men to the Gulf. He's put his entire nation in the front line for terrorist reprisals. He's upset his other admirers in Europe, and - to cap it all - he's put his name to a plan that is not just plain stupid but is actually wicked, and in return? Zilch.

The Observer | Special reports | Terry Jones: Poor Tony Blair wakes up

Terry Jones, witty as allways

I appreciate Mr. Bush's argument that because Saddam Hussein has refused to take any notice of the UN, Mr. Bush should teach him a lesson by dropping a lot of bombs on him. But now he's telling us that if the UN won't give him permission to do it, he's jolly well going to drop a lot of bombs on Saddam anyway. In which case won't Mr. Bush be guilty of the same thing he's accusing Saddam Hussein of? Apparently not because, according to the President's advisers, if the United Nations won't give him permission to drop a lot of bombs on Saddam Hussein, it will have ceased to be a Responsible World Organization and therefore he doesn't need to take any notice of it.

The Observer | Special reports | Mr Bush goes for the kill

A threat to the the USA or a threat to PNAC?

So when George Bush and his colleagues talk about Saddam Hussein posing a "threat" to America - they don't mean he's going to drop bombs on Washington (how on earth could he without committing national suicide?) - what they mean is that he poses a threat to American military dominance in the Middle East.

The Observer | Special reports | Terry Jones: Could Tony Blair look at the internet now, please?

Bombing for democracy

Now I don't want to be a wet blanket, Tony, but was it a leprechaun who suggested this idea to you?

Since the Second World War, the US has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Guatemala (again), Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala (third time lucky), Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia - in that order - and in not a single case did the bombing produce a democratic government as a direct result.

Why do you think it will be any different in Iraq? Or did your fairy godmother promise you this along with a golden coach?

The Observer | Special reports | Tony and the pixies

Civilians, mercenaries and insurgents

The key thing, I suppose, is to try to call US mercenaries "civilians" or "civilian contractors", while calling Iraqi civilians "fighters" or "insurgents".

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The war of the words

Old, but good

I am bewildered by the world reaction to the tsunami tragedy. Why are newspapers, television and politicians making such a fuss? Why has the British public forked out more than £100m to help the survivors, and why is Tony Blair now promising "hundreds of millions of pounds"? Why has Australia pledged £435m and Germany £360m? And why has Mr Bush pledged £187m?

Of course it's wonderful to see the human race rallying to the aid of disaster victims, but it's the inconsistency that has me foxed. Nobody is making this sort of fuss about all the people killed in Iraq, and yet it's a human catastrophe of comparable dimensions.

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | A man-made tsunami

Updating thumbnails...

HOW I HATE IT, when Picasa does this... Updating thumbnails. Forcing its little window in the foreground, forcing me to give my attention to it. And why? For no reason I can see. No reason at all.

Fuck Picasa, it is spaming my screen, fuck it.

And what kind of thumbnails is it updating? Thumbnails it has already "updated" in the past. WHY, WHY, WHY?

You know it makes sense

In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Let them eat bombs

A despot's gotta do, what a despot's gotta do

Of course, your unstinting efforts to make torture an internationally accepted aspect of human life have surpassed everything we could have ever hoped for.

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Terry Jones: George, you're now a despot

Fuck justice, this is America!

Two very different men commit two very different crimes. When both violate probation, there are very different results: The robber gets life; the killer remains free.

Scales of justice can swing wildly - Dallas Morning News
(via fefe)

False Authority Syndrome � davidgagne.net

Now this is where I got mad. “There is no law that says I can’t drink water in the security area of the airport!” I looked at the cop, “Is there?” The cop said, “I have no jurisdiction where you are. You’re not on LA property.”

False Authority Syndrome � davidgagne.net

"Generate Warrant for National Security"

"Generate Warrant for National Security"

Connections between Alex Jones and Adnan Khashoggi?

Interesting, Alex Jones seems to make his Alex Jones Show for GENESIS Communications Network, a company which seems to be owned by Khashoggi, THE Khashoggi linked to everything from Iran-Contra over the the Death of Princess Di to 9/11...

Google mit der CIA im Bett? Oder bloss ein schüren der Paranoia? - journalismus - nachrichten von heute (in German)

(By the way, remember Cocaine ONE? There seems to have been a connection with Genesis Reality...)

Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi

the Journal's tidbit does provide an occasion to play one of Chatterbox's favorite games, "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi," in which the shadowy international arms merchant is connected to every scandal of the past 40 years and some that occurred even earlier.

Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya? - Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

More here

Tales from a fascist policestate

A school safety drill that included police officers in riot gear with weapons has caused concern among some parents who say it was too realistic and frightened some students.
...
"My child was with his face to the wall in the hallway of the high school" [Diana] Silva said.

TBO.com - News From The Associated Press