“I don’t know what you’re all worried about. Vogons are the worst marksmen in the galaxy.”
“US forced to import bullets from Israel as troops use 250,000 for every rebel killed.”

Posted by: DM | Sep 26 2005 12:23 utc | 3

Strap on your tinfoil hat for a second for a fun little ride on the Fitzgerald Indictment Express:
http://www.newcriminologist.co.uk/news.asp?id=1529297048
On the one hand, there are few among us that have any doubt about this administration’s ability to lie, steal, and break laws with impugnity. I mean…of course they’ve broken the law! On the other hand, it’s difficult to believe that anyone of consequence – even a ballsy prosecutor like Fitzgerald – could stand up to the Rovians without being summarily removed from office and lashed in the public square.

Posted by: owenz | Sep 26 2005 14:13 utc | 5

A bit more, from the same source:
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=8361

Posted by: owenz | Sep 26 2005 14:31 utc | 7

I always had doubts about Iraq because, if we were really concerened about nasty dictators in the world, shouldn’t we have been discouraging some of our pet nasties first, pour encourager des autres ?
Anyway, assuming that a pull-out is on, Iraq will still need some form of international help. The obvious thing would be that the Shia and kurdish areas would be protected by the Iranians, the Sunni by the Saudis/Jordanians or egyptians. Unfortunately that has the disadvantage of cementing an unwanted partition into place.
So why not reverse it ? Put the iranians into the Sunni area and the others everywhere ? It would create a situation all parties would have a vested interest in ending, but without provoking any violence aimed at ending a suspected colonisation.
Just a thought.
Helen

Posted by: helen_of_romford | Sep 26 2005 15:29 utc | 9

Pure greed Louisiana Goes After Federal Billions

Louisiana’s congressional delegation has requested $40 billion for Army Corps of Engineers projects in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, about 10 times the annual Corps budget for the entire nation, or 16 times the amount the Corps has said it would need to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane.
Louisiana Sens. David Vitter (R) and Mary Landrieu (D) tucked the request into their $250 billion Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act, the state’s opening salvo in the scramble for federal dollars.
The bill, unveiled last week, would create a powerful “Pelican Commission” controlled by Louisiana residents that would decide which Corps projects to fund, and ordered the commission to consider several controversial navigation projects that have nothing to do with flood protection. The Corps section of the Louisiana bill, which was supported by the entire state delegation, was based on recommendations from a “working group” dominated by lobbyists for ports, shipping firms, energy companies and other corporate interests.
The bill would exempt any Corps projects approved by the commission from provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act. It would also waive the usual Corps cost-sharing requirements, ensuring that federal taxpayers would pay every dime.
…
Vitter and Landrieu tapped John M. Barry — author of “Rising Tide,” the definitive history of the 1927 flood — to lead the working group on the Corps response to Katrina. Almost all the other members of the group were lobbyists from firms such as Patton Boggs, Adams & Reese, the Alpine Group, Dutko Worldwide, Van Scoyoc Associates, and a firm owned by former senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.). There was a lobbyist for the Port of New Orleans, a lobbyist for Verizon, and three lobbyists who were former aides to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska).

The congressional delegation is hurting its electorate by this. The bill will be cut down to maybe $100 billion and the only projects that will be left inside will be the pork projects. Not a penny will go to those in need.

Posted by: b | Sep 26 2005 16:31 utc | 11

Thanks, b. That PBS lesson plan is kind of funny, I’m not sure if it’s asking leading questions or just that the obvious questions are so damning.
Most of google’s hits seem to be focusing on analyzing the impact on telephone services. Finding specifically radio-related info is more difficult. Wikipedia, for example, makes no mention of radio in its entry.

Posted by: Rowan | Sep 26 2005 18:32 utc | 13

b,
Maybe Pickles be blamin herself for (W)s loss of swagger?
“Most of all, White House aides want to reestablish Bush’s swagger — the projection of competence and confidence in the White House that has carried the administration through tough times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. . . .
The (W)hat now president done lost his swagger now, lets see……not here,,,,,,maybe under here……no, smirks at audience, how bout over there….no, comeon now where could it be…..(audience laughter)….

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 26 2005 18:51 utc | 15

I followed b’s link above and found another link to an AFP photo of W on Saturday morning after a “late night briefing” on Rita.
Lookit those piggy eyes with the Louis Vuitton portmanteaus underneath them. I haven’t seen anything like that since I realised looking in the mirror after a Jamieson flavored ethanol binge wasn’t condusive to psychic well being.
There also appears to be a nick or somesuch on his chin. Did he take the mountain bike to Colorado? Perhaps W is re-discovering the difficulty of shaving the morning after the night before.
The next thing to study will be W’s hands. From the visage it appears that not only is he hitting the slops but his body is unimpressed with the regime. Study of W’s hands which he frequently keeps hidden behind the podium should show twitches and tremors which no amount of Berrocca, saline drips or oxygen can overcome.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 26 2005 22:32 utc | 17

@uncle
Your link to a proposal to take DNA samples from anyone arrested is the unfortunate result of a criminal justice system that relies entirely on an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
Leaving aside all of the ‘peripheral’ issues like the similarity of close relative DNA, the temptation of enforcement officials to ‘over-egg’ the pudding by using DNA samples from an extant data base to tie a suspect to a crime scene, we also need to ask ourselves if society is indeed better served if every crime is ‘solved’.
Since we know that DNA is unlikely to assist in resolving ‘insider trading’ theft of shareholder funds we can assume this process is going to be targeted at the most common of reported crimes that is ‘poor upon poor’ crimes.
The inevitable result of that would be an even higher ratio of the poor in prison. We can see how that wouldn’t be much chop if you’re poor but how many people have bothered to think about the effect on the unimpoverished?
At the moment the US has to supplement its pool of poor people with illegal migrants to ensure that wages are low and there are sufficient drones to carry out the trash. If even more are incarcerated this will have an effect on the supply of peons at the same time as increasing the cost to society of housing more criminals.
It will not be long at all before law enforcers are told to exercise ‘discretion’ in solving crime. This will end up where it always end up. That is with and even more corrupt police force.
There is a solution however and it incorporates some of the ‘outside the box’ thinking of soon to be SCOTUS associate Gonzales.
Imagine for a moment that the US has 1 million empty prison cells each year that require filling. Then Diebold who claim proficiency in identifying felons, should be tasked to randomly select 1 million names from their lists of voters.
Over the course of 12 months those 1 million citizens should be arrested and tortured to confess to the laws they have broken over the past 12 months.
The positive effect would be immediate as people realised that it wouldn’t matter how well you covered your tracks, there is a strong possibility that ‘anti-social’ behaviour would be punished.
Most people would start to consciously reduce their law breaking as the consequences of it became unavoidable. So people would go to jail for shorter sentences, thereby releasing more peons into the labour force and also diminshing incarceration costs.
That’s a win win situation.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 26 2005 23:24 utc | 19

Need a chuckle time:
Agence France Presse published a photo of Katrina hurricane victim Latesha Vinette holding her new Red Cross debit card, a picture that was instantly redistributed on Yahoo! News and other wire service web sites. Shockingly, the balance on the card dropped to ZERO within minutes, as hundreds of fraudsters went on shopping sprees with the card number. A few hours later, Vinette was paged over the Reliant stadium speaker system to receive a call from Mastercard, which wanted to know about cash-advance requests totaling $65,237, and attempts to use the card to buy a Ferrari and hundreds of other goods on eBay.
link

Posted by: jj | Sep 27 2005 0:55 utc | 21

@Uncle $cam
I’m trying to decide whether I’m heartened or disheartened by your link to the American Conservative.
It’s great to see what many of us are feeling confirmed; and by one of the ilk no less.
During the nineties the concepts of economic rationalism and small government were accepted by most people with little questioning, whereas now even reputedly conservative politicians try very hard to put the same selfish ideals in a new wrapper.
One of the dry types ran as leader of the Tories in the recent NZ election. He had been the Reserve Bank Governor back in the 80’s when the reserve’s chief objective was changed from that of full employment to preventing inflation. He had overseen the transition of the Kiwi economy from East Germany without the tanks to Chile without the football stadium.
Fortunately although a close thing he lost. One of the reasons for that was once he got past his policy of large scale tax cuts (which because they were a windfall few questioned the rationale) to anything from Industrial relations Policy to Defense or Health spending he basically had to say “We’re not going to make any changes to that in our first term of government.”
This was because he would have had to drag out the same lame arguments that people now run a mile from. Of course his backers got concerned about this so that stance changed to “I haven’t studied that policy in detail yet.” Otherwise he would have been left in a place where if elected he would have come across as just another lying pollie. The boys who put up the millions for his smear campaigns and resurgence of selfish ideas in the media would end up not getting any return at all on their investment.
So that side of the death of articulate conservatism is good. Articulate conservatism is how I prefer to describe this stuff as “intellectual Right” presupposes that these people have anything viable or ethically correct to say. Which they don’t.
On the other hand it reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother back in the mid 80’s when he was running around the globe setting up studies on ‘infrastructure reform’ to provide governments with the wherewithal to deregulate and make a virtue of doing nothing.
I pointed out to him that this situation had occured because the left had become flabby, introspective and self indulgent. That once these conservative ideas had been implemented, new thinkers who would be looking for ‘originality’ would pick up the old left values. I was going to sit out the community of greed until that happened.
He got quite upset and announced that he didn’t believe in pendulums.
For him to be able to posit these theories as virtues he had to believe in them completely as they had a high social cost.
That the concepts may just be fashions rocked him, although typically he like many others, was using the term ‘old fashioned’ when referring to interventionist governments.
I know how he feels now. Although we can feel the sun of a new day of caring societies hitting our faces it is disheartening to realise that there will be another night of darkness eventually.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 27 2005 3:51 utc | 23

It’s all about “contracts”, billions of dollars worth for Halliburton and the rest of the Bush sycophants (I love the word sycophant and must use it at every turn). Like in Iraq, there won’t be any real “reconstruction” in New Orleans, just contracts. Bush has already been reelected, their time is limited, and they are in take-the-money-and-run mode. All their friends get contracts and what happens if they don’t actually reconstruct anything? Nada. These guys are laughing at the American people, who are nothing more than marks and suckers for them.

Posted by: steve expat | Sep 27 2005 5:39 utc | 25

Between this: Gov. Jeb Bush & his mystical buddy and this:
The Fundamentalist Shadow of George W. Bush
I SERIOUSLY, question this familys mental stability.
If Bush’s behavior is really as Thompson and Dr. Justin Frank putative White House sources describe it, we had better hope he is being attended to by a good psychopharmacologist. Not that we would ever know, since evidence bearing on the President’s mental health is a state secret, unlike the public status of the results of his annual physical. I would argue that the public has even more of an abiding interest in knowing about the President’s mental health than his physical, and that, if there is not, there ought to be some sort of periodic checkup in this sphere as well, the results being made public. (Bush’s own white paper on reforming the mental health delivery system in the United States, which I read in detail comes close to suggesting a mandatory annual mental health checkup for every citizen, in the interpretation of some, by the way…) Of course, someone as beady-eyed, petty and defensive as Dubya would take exception to such a requirement and fire any White House mental health professional who took their job responsibilities too seriously.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 27 2005 9:45 utc | 27

For those of you who haven’t yet bookmarked Mark Crispin Miller’s blog, the movement to Filibuster johnny roberts is gaining steam. Congress got so many calls they shut down the toll-free switchboard. The new numbers are:888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you prefer to send email go to link. PLEASE ACT NOW.
Mark’s blog usually has the important stories of the day in a non-emotional format. It repays the few mins. you spend there.

Posted by: jj | Sep 27 2005 16:44 utc | 29

A serious view on the German election and economy:
The German solution

The American model that dominated postwar industrial reconstruction has given way to an eco, hi-tech one (the wind farms, the solar panels, the combined-cycle generators), which if anything demands more skilled manpower than the old assembly lines. Through the Greens, the left has responded to this. So too has the right; the most devastating attack on marketism came from Heiner Geissler, the former CDU secretary general, more radical and deeply thought out than anything from Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.
In fact, if the present crisis has any longer-term lesson, it is that the German CDU may follow its Italian counterpart into the shadows, should its social role become eclipsed by the need to secure gains for its big-business backers. In solidly “black” Bavaria, its Christian Social Union (CSU) ally lost 9% of its vote; perhaps because Angela Merkel was female, Ossi, Protestant and divorced – but perhaps because Bavarians took the “German Thatcher” label seriously and feared that the CSU’s future would be as dire as the Tories’.
The balance of the Schröder years is reasonably positive. Even in unemployment, Germany has done marginally better than the UK, if one counts in the British figures those claiming incapacity benefit (running at perhaps 7% against 2%) and part-time workers (25% against 15%). The Greens, in particular, have produced some tough performers in Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister, and Renate Künast, the food minister, who has not been frightened of taking on the powerful farmers’ lobby.
Germany remains strong in manufacturing, invention and research. If it’s possible to rescue an imperilled world by technical means, the process will start here long before it does in Blair and Brown’s “nation of shoppers”.

Posted by: b | Sep 27 2005 18:59 utc | 31

chuckle time – from comment on b’s link above to Lang analysis:
Daniel Ellsberg says: “Yes, there are differences. Like, in Iraq it’s a dry heat, and the language our military and diplomatic personnel don’t speak is Arabic rather than Vietnamese.”

Posted by: jj | Sep 27 2005 19:56 utc | 33

@jj
Welcome to the slow motion collapse/police state.
It has been said that when the visigoths invaded Rome, the average Roman hadn’t a clue that their society was taken over. It was a slow motion collapse of silver currency that finally did it in. It’s infastructure was eaten out like a hallowed bridge by terrmites, it stood looking pristine from the outside until it’s surface collapse.
Hierarchies, organizations, like Organisms,
cycle through birth, growth, decline, death.
Birth:
1) Organizations are born from a perceived need:-
curiosity > science, orphans > orphanage, poverty > charity, religion > church, government > democracy, communication > media, oppression > libertarianism
This always happens against the will of the establishment.
Why ? The ‘establishment’ has all power and privilege, therefore it cannot want change. Constructive change is always feared and opposed by establishments.
Henry Thomas Buckle: – “No great reform, either legislative or executive, has been originated in any country by its rulers”.
2) Working against the odds, themselves oppressed and deprived, members of the organization struggle to serve their perceived purpose –
i.e. the orphans, poverty, moral belief, liberty etc.
Growth:
1) Organization becomes visible to the community and attracts other dedicated, altruistic citizens.
2) It begins to be seen as a `good thing’ and its members seen as worthwhile people. This gives them prestige.
3) The establishment eventually – in one way or another – incorporates the organization into the machinery of the State, granting powers and privileges (financial and physical) to the members.
Decline:
1) Prestige, privilege and, above all, power, attracts people who are not dedicated to the need.
2) So bullies, thieves and power perverts (tyrants etc.) will aim to get power within the organization. Those with strongest (most corrupt) motives tend to achieve most power.
3) Therefore any hierarchy’s real boss – if not a reformer – is an abuser of some sort.
(near)Death:
People – first at grass roots, then generally, see abuses practiced by members of the organization.
The organization often reacts by adopting measures directly opposing the original need.
Travelling upwards – as all real social phenomena travel* – the new perceptions are:-
police become known as ‘pigs’ and murderers (despite there being many honest police);
school or orphanage church staff become known as class-biased &/or pedophile (despite there being many honest teachers). Priests and Churches likewise;
charities become tax scams for the rich, offering a double route to stealing from the poor: first through corrupt tax system 705 then by ruthlessly deceiving and exploiting the real altruism of the poor; bureaucrats become known as bullies and legalized thieves (despite there being some honest bureaucrats); politicians, lawyers and media-men become known as liars, tyrants and legalized thieves (despite there being one or two honest ones – maybe); researchers in science and academia become class-biased and politicised, eventually serving only the interests of selfish monopolies.
*Abusive types are generally cowardly and initially restrict their oppression to those seen as helpless:- the people at the bottom of the social structure who have no voice.
*Which is why abusers make use of our primitive class-bias, sexism & racism, and why their abuse, if unchecked, goes from bullying and legalized theft to – pedophile abuse – to rape – to murder – to genocide.
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
– Tacitus

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 28 2005 0:46 utc | 35

Tyranny of Words and Law.
America has reach the backside of the event horizon of organised, institutionalised corruption and fraud on every level. Where protection rackets, embezzlement, larceny, confiscation, entrapment, misappropriation, and rico crimes, as well as murder have become the norm; by bullies, fraudsters, pervert class elites, politicians with their sykophants*, lobbys, lawyers of the Kelptomania class who run everything. A litigation nation where truth is treason, justice is a mockery, and liberty is for sale to the highest bidder, where action of the State, arising from suspicion and not from proof, has degenerated into the satisfaction of vendettas by a “coin-operated congress”, a “blue-blooded-aristocratic Senate” and finally, a power hungry blood thirsty executive branch- a general system of tyranny, all in the name of “public safety.”
The general public means nothing to them, we have been and are being, carved out like a pumpkin, the seeds spit in our faces, while they laugh at our poverty. “The essential political choice is the same as it always was: “freedom or security” nor, is the blame entirely with the warmongers, plutocrats, and demagogues.
If a people permit exploitation and regimentation in any name they deserve their slavery. The law has always been perverted to serve the “haves” and not the “haves-not”, only not always as heavy handed as it is now. We have made progress in the recent past with “the New Deal”, labor unions, civil rights, and the constitution. Only within the last few decades have the ruling elites pushed back, with their hatred of liberal democracy. What once existied in ancient Athens – now hold sway in America and Britain , (it’s transatlantic and trans-national now ) where powerful and corrupt individuals, organizations and corporations are routinely using threats of vexatious and malicious litigation to bully and oppress ordinary innocent and working class people.
Coercion seems to be covering-up greater crimes committed by these individuals / organizations. Their corrupt misuse of Law takes the form of restraint of trade and prevention of free speech, eminent domain, tax cuts for the top 1%, hidden fiat/poll-taxes, money laundering in off shore bankings and usury interests and loans.All nothing more than hypocrisy, hiding behind law.
Take for instance, What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11 . I’m sure you could come up with hundreds of other examples but make no mistake, “the Class War” has shifted and started a dramatic new phase of Supernova proportions with The Rise of Rove’s Republic. And the one thing that todays “New America” has in common is the elite stranglehold on Politics, medicine, law, policing, media, bureaucracy etc. where, they are all “self-regulating”. Further, and not so coincidentally, all these ‘trades’ tend, more or less, to control their own incomes at the top levels. [i.e. the fat cats decide their own].
RANT OVER.
*SYKOPHANCY – “Generally, sykophancy has been viewed as an “inevitable disease” that plagued a society “where the chances of perverting justice were so numerous because of the character of the courts” (Lofberg 1917, 10).

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 28 2005 1:14 utc | 37

China toughens restrictions on Internet news
“The new rules take effect immediately and are seen targeting bloggers and other unofficial journalists and news sites. ”

Posted by: annie | Sep 28 2005 1:33 utc | 39

@annie
China toughens restrictions on Internet news
Of course with the help of…?
American corps such as Cisco, Microsoft, Yahoo .
Also see: American corporate culture sends another Chinaman to jail

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 28 2005 1:48 utc | 41

Exciting new recycling project

Posted by: Bring out your dead | Sep 28 2005 22:00 utc | 43