How could I honestly deny that I’m delighted to see thirty-one marines go down in flames? I remember cheering at the first news of the Tet offensive, and haven’t much changed in the thirty-seven years intervening. True, there’s also a compassionate voice within me that harbors consoling thoughts for the families that lost those thirty-one kids, but so long as Bush stages this war as a fight of his team against mine (the “team of sadistic abandon” against the “team of mercy”), then the fighter within me will silence the voice of compassion. His war is utterly degrading: it turns us into bush-league spectators, it insults our dignity, it wounds our narcissism, and it stains our conscience. Bush will pay a price for that insult, that wound and that stain–a price that he can’t begin to imagine (neither can we).

Posted by: alabama | Jan 26 2005 17:29 utc | 3

Rush Limbaugh is scared. He was just quoting Moveon.org as saying their not falling for the inside the beltway BS (I have to listen because I have two rethugs in my office and I don’t mind hearing what the enemy says). It means the grassroots is set on breaking the K Street influence on the party. If the dems get back to being the working mans party, then el Rushbo as he likes to call himself, he knows the repubs are toast.
Unlike others who see doom and gloom on every horizon, I still believe the inside of the beltway influence on the Dem party can be broken. The party of FDR can rise again. But we must get people to recognize their economic interest instead of the culture wars. The culture war can be fought after we’ve got back to progressive econimics.
Thats my opinion and sticking to it.

Posted by: jdp | Jan 26 2005 17:59 utc | 5

jdp
I listen to the moron sometimes while driving home from work and heard him tonight. I have to thank him for passing out that info. I did not know moveon was doing this, I will get involved in this.
The wobblycrats as they are now are a bunch of spineless bastards. There is a core of about 12 (the ones who voted against Rice) that could carry the flag for the old Democratic party as we chase the new Democrats back under the rocks from which they came.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 26 2005 18:20 utc | 7

beq, he’s already boiling in a sea of bloody crude, and also seems to think he’s immortal, so boiling forever in that particular sea probably wouldn’t bother him at all. But if the name “Bush” were to take on an infinite stain–like the name “Nixon”–this, if it were to happen, would bother him very much indeed….

Posted by: alabama | Jan 26 2005 18:30 utc | 9

In some ways Nixon is vindicated by the spineless response of kerry/dnc to attacks on Kerry’s postwar activism. Instead of that war receiving its fullest condemnation, the various pragmatisms of the pro-Vietnam crowd were apologized for because ‘we didn’t take the gloves off, but this time…’ If anything, Nixon’s image visavis Vietnam has been rehabilitated as a man victimized by a collective lack of Will to get the job done.
Bush’ll get the job done, allright.

Posted by: slothrop | Jan 26 2005 18:42 utc | 11

alabama
since this is an open thread – i wonder if i could make a plea for old noam chomsky – as i was just reading an old new yorker piece on him & was reading two books of entretiens with him published in france – deux heures de lucidité – avec denis robert & de la propoganda avec david barsemien
in the three things – there is such a level of urgency – that there leaves a lot of space for error – even his bad manners with his public seems to me to be more related to that urgency than any form of cultish arrogance
i am very far from agreeing with all things he has said – but the work on linguistics – i use in my work here – there is still much of it that has the capacity to transform & be transformed
decades of demonisation & marginality in his case have created something vey powerful but i can also understand that the brush he paints with is sometimes too thick
in the face of so many lies – a lot of them having derived from the academy – i hold on to thinkers like him & i think he is awre of his own frailty – as was edward said & i guess to a lesser extent frederic jameson
i feel in him the cantakerous anarchism of jewish thinkers from the twenties especially in america – & that cantakerousness means sometimes there are intentional absences – which are somet

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 26 2005 18:54 utc | 13

ayn rands prettyboy architect ‘fascinated’ by fascism – phillip johnson died today

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 26 2005 19:24 utc | 15

@slothrop
All those mobile phone health warnings? I believe it.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 26 2005 20:06 utc | 17

the ruling by Clementina Forleo in italy gives me hope.guerrilla, i like that.
as for all those dead marines, bummer/not. let’s face it, it took more than a decade and 60,000 dead americans to get us out of vietnam. 31 is a drop in a bucket w/ a hole in it.

Posted by: annie | Jan 26 2005 20:26 utc | 19

Link

History will salute it in kind: the US administration of George W Bush, parts 1 and 2, has introduced to the world the concept of election at gunpoint. The guinea pig: Iraq, on January 30. The rules: candidates must be anonymous (otherwise they will be killed). Voters cannot go out and vote (otherwise they may be killed). Even if they wanted to vote, they wouldn’t know where, because the location of the polling stations will be known only the night before the election.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 26 2005 20:40 utc | 21

Where’s Norman Vincent Peale When You Need Him?

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 26 2005 20:48 utc | 23

bush is toast. it’s in the air. the fumes from all this freedom-spreading are just too noxious. the kool-aid may look tempting, but its pungency has turned the kids smiles upside down very quickly. those snowballs being tossed around last thursday are still rolling and taking on a life of their own. for instance, in that yahoo news link FlashHarry just posted, there is a rather humourous slideshow of el doofus making more silly faces for the cameras today. and during my user experience, one of the slides was preempted by an ad that read ‘i saw a monkey swimming on the internet today’. bush is no-doubt sweating freedom today…

Posted by: b real | Jan 26 2005 21:08 utc | 25

jeez, alabama, you’re happy that a chopper went down and killed us troops on it? i was just as sick to read your comments as i am sick of this unjust war.
gylangirl

Posted by: gylangirl | Jan 26 2005 21:36 utc | 27

SS privatization cartoon

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 26 2005 22:32 utc | 29

”  The Salvador Option would not be the first embrace of assassination as a tool of occupation undertaken by the United States in Iraq.
    In the months following Paul Bremer’s taking over of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in June 2003, the streets of Baghdad crawled with scores of assassination squads.
    Among the more effective and brutal of these units were those drawn from the Badr Brigade, the armed militia of the Shia political party known as the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.
    Although not publicly acknowledged, the role played by the various anti-Saddam militias in confronting the residual elements of Saddam’s former ruling Baath Party offered a glimpse into what was, and is, an unspoken element of the US policy regarding de-Baathification – let the Iraqis do the dirty work.
    SCIRI’s efforts to exterminate Baath Party remnants still loyal to Saddam Hussein, or who stand accused of committing crimes against SCIRI or its sympathisers, attracted the attention of the “black” side of the CPA-run de-Baathification efforts – covert operations run by the CIA and elite Special Operations units of the United States military.
    Of all the various players in this deadly game, the Badr militia stood out as the most willing and able to take the fight to the Baathist holdouts.
    Tipped off by the CPA’s covert operatives, the Badr assassination squads killed dozens of Baathists in and around Baghdad.
    But the assassination of former Baathists did nothing to pacify Iraq.”
scott ritter – truthout

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 26 2005 22:41 utc | 31

mistah charley, precisely, but can you imagine the instant deification? king george to saint george in a blinking second.

Posted by: beq | Jan 26 2005 23:11 utc | 33

Sy Hersh interviewed. breathless as ever, scary as hell.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 27 2005 1:09 utc | 35

aieee. a good Buddhist would grieve for all deaths equally, souls bound upon the Wheel, condemned to return to this burning house, and so forth. a good xtian would forgive all equally. I’m neither. as one who hasn’t got the guts to refuse to pay my taxes this year because I know enough about the US prison system to really, really, really want not to end up inside it, how much can I look down on the grunts who do as they are told rather than face court-martial, or maybe an “accidental” friendly fire incident?
and yet I remain grimly suspicious that only defeat will convince the Yanks to leave — and the more extreme and ugly the defeat the sooner they will leave, and the more thousands of civilian lives will be spared from the carpet bombing that Hersh terrifyingly asserts is really going on over there. backed by this disgusting war into an “omelette/eggs” position that I can’t feel proud of. feeling like it really is this choice: a few more tens of Amurkan boys and girls, or more hundreds of thousands of blown-up, orphaned, tortured, raped, ill, starving, homeless, freezing Iraqis? who did nothing, nothing to threaten me or Amurka?
OTOH Sy says that we are all wrong — that Bush will not back down no matter how high the body counts get, that he will run the armed forces into the meat grinder and the nation into the poorhouse without once swerving from his mad self-righteousness. and where the hell — or where in Hell — does that leave us? are those troops dead to absolutely no purpose whatsoever? serving not even as a grisly lesson to bring their country back to its senses?

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 27 2005 2:05 utc | 37

DeAnander, this thing has to get too costly, and over and over again in ways that make us feel awful about ourselves and our fellow men. The body politic will just have to vomit up this war machine in all its various states…. I think my murmurings here must have shown that I’m hardly a pacifist, and hardly an enemy of the armed forces. A family friend, a Marine Corps officer who served with distinction in the Tet offensive, once told me that he survived the aftermath of his tour in Viet Nam by being posted at Parris Island, where he didn’t have to deal with churlish, scape-goating civilians every day of his life. Since he’s a man that I’ve always admired, I was rather ashamed to think of myself as the sort of person he had to be saved from…. But these wars are very bad news; if it takes a whole lot of losses to convey that news to the people, then a pedagogical optimist living within me says to let this course of instruction run its terrible course.

Posted by: alabama | Jan 27 2005 2:53 utc | 39

I tend to agree that the number of American combat deaths seem not to matter to the chicken warmongers. I see the combat deaths as further evidence that the war is wasting human life, whether Iraqui or American.
I have less pity for the families of the dead who think their kids deaths are worth the war. OTOH, they don’t have all the information they need to make rational judgements about the justifications for the war, so in a way they are unknowing victims.

Posted by: gylangirl | Jan 27 2005 3:17 utc | 41

and Anonymous Coward at 9:08 yes, Cole is brilliant today.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 27 2005 3:18 utc | 43

Off-topic in the Open Thread?
State of Fear ?
Anyone read this Michael Crichton novel? For years now I’ve been driving my family nuts by muttering “bullshit” to the tv and radio news. For the first time in many years I managed to fit in a couple of novels during vacation.
If anyone has read State of Fear, and would like a quiet chuckle, check out this entertaining piece from the erstwhile Independent.

Posted by: DM | Jan 27 2005 4:53 utc | 45

and your point DM is…? that Crichton’s dead right, that the consensus of the world’s climate scientists is a whole lotta BS, so we should all just chuckle when we read their best-effort projections of climate change rates and consequences? I’d place more faith in 15+ years of research evaluated by the IPCC than in the rightwing fantasies of a third-rate novelist, myself… suspect he’s on the same payroll as Armstrong and the rest.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 27 2005 5:02 utc | 47

The Cheney’s visiting Auschwitz – must have been a very enjoyable experience. See the picture here. Maybe they see the possibilities for the US.

Posted by: Fran | Jan 27 2005 6:03 utc | 49

Slothrop: These dead must not be praised for the sacrifice to our freedoms, but must be remembered as those tossed to the floor like pawns in a giant’s game of chess. Only after we understand how our dead soldiers have been used, only then will these dead deserve to hear the trumpets blaring above their graves.”
Yes. Indeed. And also an indeed to things said by Alabama.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 27 2005 7:38 utc | 51

Some journalists turn to the real world and even get printed – seachange?
Across Baghdad, Security Is Only an Ideal

Baghdad is not under control, either by the Iraqi interim government or the American military.
…
“I would definitely say it’s enemy territory,” said Col. Stephen R. Lanza, the commander of the Fifth Brigade Combat Team, a unit of the First Cavalry Division that is responsible for patrolling a wide area of southern Baghdad with a population of 1.3 million people.
…
American military units travel in heavily armed convoys, gunners in helmets and goggles swiveling 50-caliber machine guns on expressways and along inner-city shopping streets to ward off attacks, and not infrequently opening fire, with civilian casualties.
Along with insurgent attacks, the city has seen a surge of crime, including murders and kidnappings for ransom, that has undermined support for the Americans and all they represent – the elections included – as much as the war.
…
American commanders, acknowledging they have little chance of stopping the suicide bombers once the bomb-laden vehicles set out, have authorized the machine-gunners in the last vehicle of each convoy to open fire on any driver who ignores hand signals and warning shots to back off as he approaches a convoy from the rear.
This tactic has led to a growing number of incidents in which American gunners, in Humvees traveling at 50 miles an hour or less, have fired at suspected car bombers, only to discover afterward that the drivers who died were innocent civilians who had missed the warning signals, or perhaps never knew that overtaking American convoys was likely to be fatal.
These incidents have compounded a widespread impression among the people of Baghdad that the Americans are careless of Iraqi lives. Dr. Naqib, the dentist, fearful as he is of insurgent attacks, said he feared the Americans more. “The Americans, they are part of the terrorism,” he said.
“They’re so frightened, anything that happens to them, they start shooting right away.”

Posted by: b | Jan 27 2005 8:06 utc | 53

Ahh, Frank Rich is moving to the top of my favorite commentators list. Forget Armor. All You Need Is Love

JAN. 30 is here at last, and the light is at the end of the tunnel, again. By my estimate, Iraq’s election day is the fifth time that American troops have been almost on their way home from an about-to-be pacified Iraq. The four other incipient V-I days were the liberation of Baghdad (April 9, 2003), President Bush’s declaration that “major combat operations have ended” (May 1, 2003), the arrest of Saddam Hussein (Dec. 14, 2003) and the handover of sovereignty to our puppet of choice, Ayad Allawi (June 28, 2004). And this isn’t even counting the two “decisive” battles for our nouveau Tet, Falluja. Iraq is Vietnam on speed – the false endings of that tragic decade re-enacted and compressed in jump cuts, a quagmire retooled for the MTV attention span.
…
In this same vein, television’s ceremonial coverage of the Inauguration, much of which resembled the martial pageantry broadcast by state-owned networks in banana republics, made a dutiful show out of the White House’s claim that the four-day bacchanal was a salute to the troops.
…
Alas, there were no Fox News cameras to capture what may have been the week’s most surreal “salute” to the troops, the “Heroes Red, White and Blue Inaugural Ball” attended by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. The event’s celebrity stars included the Fox correspondent Geraldo Rivera, who had been booted from Iraq at the start of the war for compromising “operational security” by telling his viewers the position of the American troops he loves so much. He joked to the crowd that his deployment as an “overpaid” reporter was tantamount to that of an “underpaid hero” in battle. The attendees from Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital, some of whose long-term care must be picked up by private foundations because of government stinginess, responded with “deafening silence,” reported Roxanne Roberts of The Washington Post. Ms. Roberts understandably left the party after the night’s big act: Nile Rodgers and Chic sang the lyrics “Clap your hands, hoo!” and “Dance to the beat” to “a group of soldiers missing hands and legs.”
…
A fast growing plurality of the country wants troops withdrawn from Iraq, but being so detached from the war they are unlikely to make a stink about it. The civilian leaders who conceived this adventure are clever at maintaining the false illusion that the end is just around the corner anyway.
…
in patriotism as it’s been redefined for this war, loving the troops means never having to say you’re sorry – or even having to say the word Iraq in an Inaugural address.

Posted by: b | Jan 27 2005 8:35 utc | 55

Feith to step down? Maybe that spy probe finally got the better of him. Or he’s been proposed the post of gauleiter of the West Bank by some Likudnik friends of his.
Crichton: As far as I’m concerned, this fucking asshole should be shot dead and his book burned, period.
It looks increasingly probable that the consensus in a couple of years will be that we’ll get a 5 Celsius increase in the world average temperature at the end of century, and that basically Kyoto is a joke – not because there’s no warming but because we need to cut by 1/2 or even 2/3 the greenhouse gas emissions.
Of course, it’s widely known that if all the icecaps melted and oceans warmed enough, the final rise wouldn’t be 20 but 100 m – though it would take longer than one century, obviously, and the warming may stop well before that. The often overlook trick is that half the rise, if not more, doesn’t come from added water in the ocean, but from the expansion of said water when it’s warmed.
Last but not least, given the thousands of studies and literally tens of thousands of scientists working on that stuff, global warming probably comes second to only evolution as the most studied and evidence-backed phenomenon on this ridiculous planet.
Bush not backing down in Iraq, no matter the costs. Could be, alas. Just read Silverberg’s Roma Aeterna, and I have the bad feeling Bush is the clone of the Emperor who sends an army to conquer the New World, see it utterly trashed and annihilated, then send a 2nd one, who meets the same fate, then sends a 3rd one, because there’s no way he and his mighty empire could be defeated since their fate is to rule the world.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Jan 27 2005 9:04 utc | 57

KS @ 2:35AM to Slothrop: “Nixon vindicated? Could you ‘splain…”
my read (and correct me if i’m wrong Slothrop) was that Kerry’s inability to translate his outrage over Vietnam into a nation-wide outrage against the current debacle and thus “win” the election was a tacit “vindication” if you wish of the current Fuller Brush war mongers and their hypnotic mantra of staying the course this time and getting the job done right, blah, blah, blah.
thusly, Kerry’s limp handshake martyrized Nixon as having been over run by the peace movement.

Posted by: esme | Jan 27 2005 9:25 utc | 59

@CluelessJoe
Before you start burning books, have you read it? You should. I think you might be the inspiration for one of Crichton’s characters.

Posted by: DM | Jan 27 2005 9:33 utc | 61

RealClimate link. Contrary view of course, but it’s no slam-dunk.

Posted by: DM | Jan 27 2005 10:15 utc | 63

DM, it is clearly true that science and politics are entagled messily in the climate debate, and to be honest I have a strong feeling that anybody who claims to have a high certainty about what is going to happen has an agenda to sell. That report yesterday had ranges of 2-11C rises in temperature.
However I also have a very strong feeling that pumping carbon dioxide and other gases into the athmosphere is going to push natural climate changes outside their normal envelope and lead to possibly quite sudden (10s of years) changes in local climate. Nothing that’s going to destroy humanity, that’s almost certainly not true: if the gulf stream stops the Sahara may very well bloom again, but it will lead to massive upheavals, war and crisis.
I haven’t read Crichton’s book, and I don’t intend to: if he thinks climate change is all made up by conspiracies he’s full of crap and not worth reading because this is physics, not politics. As CJ says, I don’t read Creationists for information on biology.

Posted by: Colman | Jan 27 2005 12:37 utc | 65

You know, that is precisely the attitude that pushes scientists into over-stating their positions, as I believe many of them have.
We won’t be sure until after it happens. Sorry, that’s the way it is: there is no prospect of improving our predictions “enough” before it’s too late to do anything about it. We either sit and wait for it in the vague hope that it won’t happen, or we take action against it and hope we were wrong.
How certain do we need to be? And how would we assess how certain we were?
And the changes required for the Kyoto treaty would mostly be cutting back on massively wasteful and polluting practices and adapting technology to new constraints. What we’re doing clearly isn’t sustainable: we need to change anyway.
As for self-righteous nonsense about ad hominiem attacks, I’ve already said that I’m very sceptical about the details of predictions. In fact, as I’ve said before in this forum, it will backfire if the predictions turn out to be wrong. The neo-cons types will take that as a license to pollute without control, despite the other consequences for us.
I believe, that, on balance, taking into account all the other costs associated and taking into account that as the rest of the world comes up to a western standard of living (grant me this uptopian moments) it is impossible for us to maintain the massively wasteful practices and the massive outputs of waste gases into the atmosphere. If parts of the economy have to change, so be it. Do it now, or do it when we’re all choking, baking or drowning.

Posted by: Colman | Jan 27 2005 13:36 utc | 67

Askod, that sums up my view pretty much too: I think we’re contributing, but we’re not all of it. We should probably take the foot off the accelerator though.

Posted by: Colman | Jan 27 2005 13:55 utc | 69

Riverbend.

Posted by: beq | Jan 27 2005 14:40 utc | 71

Gore Vidal on bush’s inaugural address.

Posted by: beq | Jan 27 2005 15:00 utc | 73

The reason they end up misstating results is that people are too goddamn lazy and stupid to listen to or report on anything that doesn’t sound dramatic and nobody wants to act on something that might not happen. How do you suggest they beat off the massive pressure to ignore their results?
Contrary to popular belief, scientists actually have to live in the world, so tend to be unable to avoid politics.
In any case, how do you know it’s scaremongering? These people really are worried it might be a massive change. They don’t know whether it will be, they think and hope it won’t. But it might, and they won’t be sure enough for you until it has happened. So they emphasise extremes outcomes in their press releases, because that’s the only way they can get any attention. I believe it will backfire. Crichton is beginning to use it against them, and it’s getting traction. So people that don’t want to believe it have another excuse not to. How nice.
There isn’t enough of anything to bring the third world up to western standards unless we all become less wasteful. Carbon credits are free-market bullshit and should be taken out and shot immediately.

Posted by: Colman | Jan 27 2005 15:07 utc | 75

Colman – carbon xredits are actually a smart judo move on the capitalists.
You set global targets (that’s the point you must focus on – they have to bite), and you tell the industrialists that they also have individual targets (pro rata reduction, or linked to absolute levels, or whatever). You fine them (harshly) if they don’t. Then, you tell them that if they pay someone else to reduce their pollution by a given amount, they can claim the credit for that reduction in pollution as if it were their own.
So the important thing policy wise is the target and its enforcement. The carbon credits is only a way for the polluters to find the easiest and cheapest way to match the target.
Why should we care if the reduction comes from one source or another, so long as it happens?

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 27 2005 15:17 utc | 77

Thanks for the Gore Vidal-link, beq. How refreshing to read.

Posted by: teuton | Jan 27 2005 15:40 utc | 79

Jeebus Houdini: one more.

Virginia may press anti-gay license plates: The Virginia bill calls for the creation of license plates bearing the legend, “traditional marriage” above a design featuring two interlocking gold wedding bands over a red heart, according to information from the House of Delegates website. Called HB 1660, the legislation is sponsored by L. Scott Lingamfelter and three other Republican delegates, Mark Cole, William Fralin Jr. and William Janis
Doesn’t anyone in this state have anything to do?

Posted by: beq | Jan 27 2005 16:12 utc | 81

Uncle $cam, I’m getting “page not found” on the first link and filtered out on the second. Can you pot more?

Posted by: beq | Jan 27 2005 16:39 utc | 83

beq, you can access that “witness” article through Rense.

Posted by: rapt | Jan 27 2005 16:46 utc | 85

Buzzflash interview with Thom Hartmann, on corporate dominance in government… Pretty good.
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Henry David Thoreau

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 27 2005 17:52 utc | 87

Outside the US people are pleased at US soldiers’ deaths for a simple reason: It is the only thing that much of the US public pays attention to. The plain numbers of the regularly enlisted with families cannot be hidden. (Green card orphans?)
Those low, or small, numbers have a horrific impact. Each unit represents ‘the boy next door’, a young American, an imaginable person, etc. They also represent the undisputable result of a causal chain. (War, or some agression –> eternal absence, disapearance, suffering, etc.) For larger numbers, such as the number of the wounded, depending on the context, psychological relevance is lost.
The salience of these numbers is due, in some part, to ignorance, to innumeracy, and a lack of imagination. It is generally considered that there is some sort of threshold, or benchmark, beyond which (depending on context always) the naive (children, poorly schooled adolescents, the seriously arithmetic aversive, etc.) suddenly apply criteria of ‘extraordinariness’, ‘inaceptability’, ‘trickery’ and so on. They do so for certain kinds of events, those that are themselves extraordinary, and exceedingly salient, that is negative. (Number of positive events, such as becoming a star, winning the lottery, are treated differently.)
That number is usually considered to be around 30 – either creeping up to it (30 is mentalised) – or somewhat beyond it. Numbers well over 30 are treated in a different way. The reaction to the treshold is typical, and practically universal, in children aged 7-10 (age depending on educational system.)
The US Gvmt. knows all this and (I believe) has spread official deaths out (flattened the curve) – which is easy to do, if sometimes impossible.
The time unit of ‘a day’ is used, because it is so ingrained in officialdom, as it is our yardstick. Concurrently, a ‘day’ is also the only time-unit the innumerate can take on board.
Were the US public to see and read “28 children murdered in Iraq today*, with supporting evidence (pictures, official stuff) they would have more sympathy for the victims, no matter who actually caused the deaths. They might even be outraged. Of course, they will never see such headlines.
Frightening to think that the march of modern war (microwave!, DU, superb on site surgical procedures, cluster bombs, armor, etc.) is geared to take into account human conceptualisation of number, of time, etc.
30!? Millions are affected.

Posted by: Blackie | Jan 27 2005 18:14 utc | 89

Pure dynamite
Civil Service System on Way Out at DHS – White House Wants All Agencies to Have Option of Setting Own Personnel Policies

Posted by: b | Jan 27 2005 20:46 utc | 91

Senator wants boxing gloves on chickens
I say
Senator wants boxing gloves on chickens

Posted by: Foghorn Leghorn | Jan 28 2005 5:02 utc | 93

The Will of God. I received the following e-mail this morning. I guess it is fraud. I have no idea how my e-mail adress got on a Christian website. Somehow it remindes me of other letters I used to reveive from Nigeria, only there I would have become very rich too. Besides I do not have a ministry, though there are people who think that I have a tendency towards preaching. So what to make out of this? I have no intention of responding, am just curios what someone else thinks about this. Just reading it, makes me feel that I want to take a shower, it feels so sticky.
By the way, the e-mail adress on the mail was registered in Italy.

Dear Beloved in Christ,
It is by the grace of God that I received Christ,
knowing the truth and the truth have set me free.
Having known the truth, I had no choice than to do
what is lawful and right in the sight of God for
eternal life and in the sight of man for witness of
God?s mercy and glory upon my life.
I have the pleasure to share my testimony with you,
having seen your contact from the Internet. I am
Barrister GEORGE FRANK,The legal adviser to late
Mr. and Mrs. Bright Williams, a British couple that
lived in my Country Nigeria for 25 years before they
both died in a plane crash late last year. These
couples were good Christians, they where so dedicated
to God but they had no child till they died.
Throughout their
stay in my country, they acquired a lot of properties
like lands, house properties, etc.
As their legal adviser, before their death, the
husband Mr. Bright Williams instructed me to write his
WILL. Because they had no child, they dedicated their
wealth to God. According to the WILL, the properties
have to be sold and the money be given out to a
ministry for the work of God. As their legal adviser,
all the documents for the properties were in my care.
He gave me the authority to sell the properties and
give out the fund to the Ministries for the work of
God.
In short, I sold all the properties after their death,
as instructed by Mr. Bright Williams before his death.
And as a matter of fact, after I sold all their
properties, I realized more than $3.5,000,000.00
(three
million five hundred thousand US dollars plus), and
what supposed to be the
percentage interest of my right legal fee was firstly
deducted by me out of the total amount realized from
the sold properties, this was base on the initial
agreement between me and the owner of the properties
before his death. Therefore the total amount left to
be invested into God’s work as instructed by the
owner, is US$3.5 MILLION only.
But Instead of giving the main fund out for the
work of God as instructed to me by the owner before
his death. I converted the fund to myself with the
intention of investing the fund abroad for my personal
use.
I had encounter with Christ when Pastor Benny Hinn was
preaching on television concerning Ananias and Saphira
in Acts 5:1-11. After hearing the word of God, I gave
my life to Christ and became a born again Christian.
As a born again Christian, I have asked God for
forgiveness and I know that God
have forgiven me. But I have to do what is lawful and
right in the sight of God by giving out the fund to
the chosen ministry/individual for the purpose of
God’s work as instructed by the owner before his
death.
I then came across your address on the Internet as I
was browsing through a Christian site, and as a matter
of fact, it is not only you or your ministry that I
picked on the Christian site initially, but after my
fervent prayer over it, you were nominated to me
through divine revelation from God, so these are how I
received such a divine revelation from the Lord, how I
got your contact information, and I then decided to
contact you for the fund to be used wisely for things
that will glorify the name of God.
I have notified the bank where I deposited
the fund that I am moving the fund abroad and the
finance company has since been waiting for my
authori also forward to me your telephone and fax
number for easy communication.
Your prompt response will be highly appreciated.
Note reply to my private e-mail addres barristergeorge_frank@yahoo.com
Yours in Christ.
BARRISTER GEORGE FRANK.
TEL:234 08033911570

Posted by: Fran | Jan 28 2005 6:06 utc | 95

speaking of this and that, i’ve just heard that the marines who died in the helicopter crash this week – the one that determined the scheduling of bush’s news conference – were all veterans of the destruction of fallujah, which i regard as a case of collective punishment worthy of the nazis (“never again”? that depends on what you mean by “again”) – but the burning of atlanta in the u.s. civil war could also fall under that rubric, of course
i’ve heard that “life is just a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” –
and i’ve also heard that the essential nature of the human mind is “being, consciousness, and bliss”
gary and pat emery advise “don’t think – look” – but look at what?

Posted by: mistah charley | Jan 28 2005 14:03 utc | 97

@ Fran: I got it too and didn’t have the “Will” to open it. virusphobia.

Posted by: beq | Jan 28 2005 14:40 utc | 99