drat fink

war reader, come out and play

"Our idea for this site is to continue the intellectual journey started with our first book, The Gulf War Reader (Times Books, 1991) and especially to continue the narratives that make up the second book. That is, we want to keep exploring the history of the collision of the West and the Arab and Muslim worlds; keep digging into the real facts of U.S.-Iraqi relations and history; keep pondering the wisdom of the Iraq War and the policies behind it (from all sides) and keep a sharp eye on what this means for Iraq's future and the future of America's role in the world."

via cursor

spree for all

some good shows archived on kcrws Morning Becomes Eclectic including the cultish up with people sound of The Polyphonic Spree and alt folkies like
The Be Good Tanyas and
Lisa Germano. and if youve got one more in you then you can listen to reigning sensitive indieboy Bright Eyes.

classic pickle

professional liars needed. must be able to read government press releases with straight face. previous experience in government a plus. equal opportunity employer.

tar baby

calpundit on newt gingrichs guidebook to tarring your political opponents.

physical fitness

"If you think of physical genius as a pyramid, with, at the bottom, the raw components of coördination, and, above that, the practice that perfects those particular movements, then this faculty of imagination is the top layer. This is what separates the physical genius from those who are merely very good."

protest band-its

who would have guessed that the dixie chicks would become the most politicized band in recent memory.

boys choir

"The US military has admitted that children aged 16 years and younger are among the detainees being interrogated at its prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesman, yesterday said all the teenagers being held were "captured as active combatants against US forces", and described them as "enemy combatants".

sigh gone

"Last week the United States concluded the military phase of the war in Iraq and began discussing the creation of a new political regime and a new system. During the war—just as in every other U.S. military intervention of the past decade—Washington had to face the so-called Vietnam syndrome: the fear that conflict in a foreign country will lead to quagmire, especially in a country where the native population can use guerrilla tactics to stymie superior military technology. But there's another type of Vietnam syndrome, less well-known but just as pervasive. It derives from our relationship with South Vietnam and the political quagmire that resulted from our experience as democratic imperialists there. And if we don't address it, we may very well repeat it in Iraq.

What wrong turns did the United States take in South Vietnam?"

via hauser report

neo york

"Instead, said Mr. Gerson, it comes from New York moneymen like Bruce Kovner, chairman of the Caxton Corporation, and Roger Hertog, the vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management. Last year, both financiers helped fund a new newspaper, The New York Sun, now fighting its anti-liberal battle with its New York Times–counterprogrammed slogan, "A Different Point of View." Both Mr. Kovner and Mr. Hertog also chipped in to join neoliberal Martin Peretz as co-owners of The New Republic. Mr. Kovner and Mr. Hertog, as enlightened neoconservative businessmen-intellectuals, are also on the board of the Manhattan Institute, where Mr. Gerson and William Kristol are also trustees, as well as the Washington, D.C.–based American Enterprise Institute. The A.E.I., a favored neoconservative think tank, has recently served as a kind of human-resource office for the Bush administration. It’s the venue that President Bush chose to step up to explain his intentions toward Iraq on Feb. 26. As he stood before the A.E.I., he called the organization the home of "some of the finest minds in our nation" and said they’d done "such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds." Lynn Cheney, the Vice President’s wife, is a board member, and Richard Perle, the former Defense Department adviser known as the "father of the Iraq war," is a resident fellow."

iraqi prison blues

"And I was right. Out of the five of us picked up hours earlier from our Baghdad hotel by Saddam Hussein's security police, I was the second to be called into a cell that was the reception area of this wing of the vast prison. I was the second to have all my possessions registered and stored, and I was the second to be told to strip to my underwear and put on the same type of pajamas the broken man in the corner was wearing.

By that stage, within my first hour in Abu Ghraib, I already had lost the possibility of resistance and the power of self-determination.

"We're in the worst prison in the Middle East," I had whispered to Molly Bingham, a freelance photographer from New York who was rounded up in my group. We sat on the floor in the corridor outside the processing cell."

via talk left

brotherhoods

"Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as "the Family." The Family is, in its own words, an "invisible" association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as "members," as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities."

via cursor

party hearty

"Will Greens and progressive Democrats, sharing a mutual alarm about the state of the nation under George W. Bush, begin exploring a marriage of convenience in 2004 -- or as Dugger puts it, "a national emergency coalition"? Medea Benjamin does not expect to hear any such overtures from the Democrats, who continue to treat Greens "as if we didn't have the right to exercise our own minds" -- or in Robinson's words, simply as a "wayward constituency.""

watch and learn

more blogwatching --

farrelblogger
invisible adjunct
reachM high cowboy network noose
marstonalia

large type

"PRESIDENT OFFERS ADVANCE CONGRATULATIONS TO SOON-TO-BE-FORMER SISTER-IN-LAW SHARON BUSH ON DECIDING TO KEEP HER FESTERING CRAP-TRAP SHUT IF SHE WANTS TO LIVE TO SEE CHRISTMAS"

via tbogg

watch listings

blogwatching --

6th International
ephilosopher
unlearned hand

blogroll caller --

empty bottle

liberal notions

blogwatching -- political aims

via tapped

cheney reaction

cnn practices wish fulfillment for nations democrats

via tomorrow

fat sells

bloody lentils

is your head on straight pins
why such a rush to severance

divide and concurrence
the star of dated (and nuts)

the thinnest mint/youre squinting
i wish i could pull that off

pnac sack

somehow missed this link in my referrer logjam. ok, maybe not a logjam so much as a paperjam but either way thanks for the nod to pnac.info. long may you rein in.

frankly mr shankly
since you ask

(for the nonsense crude)

chilled to the boner
loves more than
alone again or

traced
on the ceiling
sieging is believing

scrawled
on the floorboards
which way is towards

motorboats sputter
rearranged clutter

a gathering swarm

war,m

j-scholar

"Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, said yesterday that Nicholas Lemann, the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, had agreed to become dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, an appointment that comes at a pivotal time for the school.

Mr. Lemann, 48, is a highly respected journalist who has worked as a reporter and editor at The Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Post."

via tapped

art officials

"Why did the US fail to protect the museum? To the extent that the ACCP would rather see anquities on the market rather than locked up in "retentionist" state museums, the group's recommendations may have struck a respondant chord among the Pentagon's neoconservative ideologues. Neoconservatives see state-owned libraries, archives, and museums as residues of socialism and are working to transfer public library and museum assets to private concerns.. Were the troops instructed to stand by while the museum looting took place? This seems unlikely; after all, the troops failed to protect hospitals as well as museums, and may have violated the Hague Convention in their failure to do so.* It seems that no plans were developed for protecting the Iraqi people's assets in the conflict's aftermath."

via cursor

conséquences graves

"The fall of France was astonishingly swift. After regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, it was only a matter of time before Tony Blair and George W. Bush said that they had “no plans” to attack France. The detested Jacques Chirac had long been a thorn in their sides. He was a past friend of Saddam Hussein, welcomed Arab exiles and had a suspiciously large Muslim population. Above all, he refused point-blank to disband his force de frappe weapons of mass destruction. As Donald Rumsfeld had said back in 2003: “Things mean consequences.” France posed a clear and immediate threat. The coalition acted in pre-emptive self-defence. It was a pity about the Louvre."

via booknotes

fire sail

"What happened to the Royal Library of Alexandria? We can be certain it was there once, founded by Ptolomy II Soter, and we can be equally certain it is not there now. It formed part of the Museum which was located in the Bruchion or palace quarter of the city of Alexandria. This great ancient city, occupying a spit of land on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, had been founded by Alexander the Great in his flying visit to Egypt and became the capital of the last dynasty of Pharaohs descended from Alexander's general Ptolemy. The Great or more properly Royal Library formed a part of the Museum but whether or not it was a separate building is unclear."

via hesiod

self demotion

just noticed that im at 403 on the ecosystem chart due to some clerical error, im sure. and while i was there i noticed a new addition to the "what were they thinking when they linked to me" club, cooped up. i guess he must have intuited that i was a poor shleb of a mets fan. fortunately, ive had the war to distract me from their woeful play. (i knew eventually rummy would do me a solid.) but in reality, the worse they play, the less of an interest i have. and in the end, i regard my disregard as a good thing. so its on to syria, i say, i cant bear to watch the nba playoffs.

le watchdog

global corporate ethics monitor via agence france-presse

well, it looked good. unfortunately, its a subscriber only service.

pants on fire

"Other presidents have had problems with truth-telling. Lyndon Johnson was said, politely, to have suffered a "credibility gap" when it came to Vietnam. Richard Nixon, during Watergate, was reduced to protesting, "I am not a crook." Bill Clinton was relentlessly accused by both adversaries and allies of reversing solemn commitments, not to mention his sexual dissembling. But George W. Bush is in a class by himself when it comes to prevarication. It is no exaggeration to say that lying has become Bush's signature as president."

earning trusc

"Of more enduring importance, the Etruscans were a conduit for the introduction of Greek culture and its pantheon of gods to the Romans. The Etruscans developed a version of the Greek alphabet, a step that influenced Roman letters and thereby northern Europe's. They built the first cities in Italy, when the hills of Rome stood barren of promise, and their influence shows up in later Roman works of architecture and engineering."

damascussing

"However, there is a small problem with diplomacy backed by the threat of force: You must be prepared to follow through with the threats. Of course, nobody at the most senior level inside the Bush administration has actually offered to order the Third Infantry Division into Syria. But the half-threats that have emerged so far have unsettled even the president’s closest ally: the British government of Tony Blair."

listing

"Hmmmm . . . let's go down the pre-invasion checklist:

Vague, unsubstantiated claims about weapons of mass destruction? Check.

Helpful testimony from a highly convenient defector? Check.

Ominous "all options on the table" rhetoric from the White House? Check.

Evasive "Don't look at me; I just work here" excuses from Colin Powell? Check.

Naive reassurances from our British flunk. . . er, allies? Check.

Bellicose threats from our Israeli master. . . er, allies? Check.

US forces quietly assembling on the Syrian border? Check.

Likudnik media whores spouting the administration line? Or is it the other way around? Well, anyway: Check."

via billmon

where is raul?

"From the war to come, we turn our attention back to the war that just was. Last Friday, much to my delight, I began receiving emails again from Raul, the last Iraqi teenager with access to the Internet. When we left our hero, he had turned against the United States and become a Fedayeen Saddam. It looks like he's changed his mind again, and I welcome him back. His transmissions began anew last Wednesday, the Day The Earth Stood Still."

lynch mob

"NASIRIYAH, Iraq, April 14 -- Accounts of the U.S. military's dramatic rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from Saddam Hospital here two weeks ago read like the stuff of a Hollywood script. For Iraqi doctors working in the hospital that night, it was exactly that -- Hollywood dazzle, with little need for real action.

"They made a big show," said Haitham Gizzy, a physician at the public hospital here who treated Lynch for her injuries. "It was just a drama," he said. "A big, dramatic show."

via slate

heads or tails

"The White House has privately ruled out suggestions that the US should go to war against Syria following its military success in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in the Pentagon, the Guardian learned yesterday."

value proposition

"Now, this is a complicated point because although everybody in the room represented the media (and would, in short order, be recirculating the noninformation and obvious disinformation that was given out), almost everybody in the room saw the media as occurring somewhere else - a confection being created by some unseen hand. Everybody here would step out of the briefing room and look up at the monitors above the makeshift newsroom tuned to the networks and news channels and watch the briefing be reported to the world and share the same reaction: what bullshit. "

via digby

the right board

information on and a list of current members of the defense policy board.

road bloke

"Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave his strongest indication yesterday that he expected to see a Palestinian state and was willing to evacuate controversial settlements to achieve peace.

In an apparent softening of his stance, Mr Sharon declared that he was prepared for a "parting from places" that have been bound up with the state of Israel."

third wave

"Who are the third-culture intellectuals? The list includes the individuals featured in this book, whose work and ideas give meaning to the term: the physicists Paul Davies, J. Doyne Farmer, Murray Gell-Mann, Alan Guth, Roger Penrose, Martin Rees, and Lee Smolin; the evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins, Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, Steve Jones, and George C. Williams; the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett; the biologists Brian Goodwin, Stuart Kauffman, Lynn Margulis, and Francisco J. Varela; the computer scientists W. Daniel Hillis, Christopher G. Langton, Marvin Minsky, and Roger Schank; the psychologists Nicholas Humphrey and Steven Pinker.
During the past three years, I have had ongoing one-on-one discussions with the above mentioned scientists about their own work and the work of other scientists included in the book. The result is not an anthology, nor is it an overview. I see it as an oral history of a dynamical emergent system, a celebration of the ideas of third-culture thinkers who are defining the interesting and important questions of our times."

link cache

evolutionary psychology primer

freedom fries

via booknotes

hall of shame

"Long live democracy, free speech and the '69 Mets -- all improbable, glorious miracles that I have always believed in."

afghonistan

"April 10, 2003 | President George W. Bush signed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act into law last Dec. 4, authorizing $3.3 billion in economic, political, humanitarian and security assistance for Afghanistan over the next four years. The next month, Bush submitted the 2003 budget authorization to Congress but requested slightly less than that.

As in: $0.00.

"The administration anticipated that Congress would put it in," explains a sympathetic congressional source. "So they low-balled it."

via tapped

insignificant undoings

"I opened the case and — to my horror — found nothing inside. There was a little booklet, I suppose, but there was no DVD. Has this ever happened to anyone else? I wonder whether they’ll even believe me when I bring it back this afternoon. A brand new, fully shrink-wrapped and sealed DVD case turns out to have no actual DVD inside. Can you imagine the fun that French cultural theorists could have with an event like this? E.g., Baudrillard:"

via megnut

danang, tennessee

just watched Daughter From Denang on pbs. kind of a gut wrenching story of a girl who was one of the many mixed race children born in vietnam during the war. her mother like many other poor women sent her off at age seven to america to be adopted mostly out of fear resulting from the childs mixed parentage. she was raised in the heart of dixie by a single mother who cared for her but was stern and emotionally distant. in her late twenties she successfully tracks down her real mother and ventures to vietnam for a reunion. unfortunately she is not emotionally or intellectually prepared for the visit and in the end rejects the family she had been seeking. she wanted the picture postcard memories of family without the burden. what struck me was despite their (the vietnamese familys) impoverished circumstances and their lack of schooling, they were so much more mature in their emotions and their relationships with others. meanwhile she had some sort of college degree and a family of her own but remained childish in her rapport and demeanor. im the last person that should judge anyone for shirking familial responsibilities and im sure the experience was overwhelming in many many ways, but it still seemed tragic that she wasnt able to see much beyond the blinkered ways of her adopted culture to embrace her unrealized self. instead she shuts the whole experience out of her mind (at least for the two years after the event covered in the movie) as it becomes a fuzzy memory itself, just a stack of pictures for her children to look at with wonder. but the filmmakers held out a hope that she still has the chance to grow and understand how to cope with her feelings and embrace what it means to be a part of her disrupted past.

a huge headache

"Stewart: Look, even some American generals have said that the Iraqis have put up more resistance than they were expected to.

Colbert: First rule of journalism, Jon, is to know your sources. Sounds like these "generals" of yours may be a little light in the combat boots, if you know what I'm saying.

Stewart: I don't think I know what you're saying.

Colbert: I'm saying they're queers, Jon. They're Hitler-loving queers.

Stewart: I'm perplexed. Is your position that there's no place for negative words or even thoughts in the media?

Colbert: Not at all, Jon. Doubts can happen to everyone, including me, but as a responsible journalist, I've taken my doubts, fears, moral compass, conscience and all-pervading skepticism about the very nature of this war and simply placed them in this empty Altoids box. [Produces box.] That's where they'll stay, safe and sound, until Iraq is liberated.

Stewart: Isn't it the media's responsibility in wartime ...

Colbert: That's my point, Jon! The media has no responsibility in wartime. The government's on top of it. The media can sit this one out.

Stewart: And do what?

Colbert: Everything it's always wanted to do but had no time for: travel, see the world, write that novel. I know the media has always wanted to try yoga. This is a great time to take it up. It's very stressful out there -- huge war going on. Jon, hear me out, it was Thomas Jefferson who said, "Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach."

Stewart: Stephen, Stalin said that. That was Stalin. Jefferson said he'd rather have a free press and no government than a government and no free press.

Colbert: Well, what do you expect from a slave-banging, Hitler-loving queer?"

divine wrongs

"This is not the Old Testament, I emphasize, but St. Paul. One can understand his words as referring only to lawfully constituted authority, or even only to lawfully constituted authority that rules justly. But the core of his message is that government—however you want to limit that concept—derives its moral authority from God. It is the “minister of God” with powers to “revenge,” to “execute wrath,” including even wrath by the sword (which is unmistakably a reference to the death penalty). Paul of course did not believe that the individual possessed any such powers. Only a few lines before this passage, he wrote, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” And in this world the Lord repaid—did justice—through His minister, the state."

via orcinus

trinity square

"Third, and most important, the attempt to impose democracy in Iraq and the Middle East has all the unreality of Don Quixote. The truth is that an invasion and occupation of Iraq with the pronounced intent of imposing democracy will more likely be a “poison dart” with a “boomerang effect” than a “magic bullet” with a “democratic domino effect” in the region. For decades, the Iraqi middle classes have been forced to act like supplicants towards those who rule them with arbitrary power. Their servility has undoubtedly produced a psychology and culture that emphasize avoidance and distrust of political life. In no way do the Iraqi middle classes resemble the proto-liberal capitalist classes of seventeenth-century Western Europe with their preferences for, and understanding of, a legally framed market economy and individual autonomy. As for Iraqi society in general, it is fragmented into hostile tribes and clans based on kinship, religion, and ethnicity. In such an environment, creating civility will require Promethean effort. Creating a civil society and democratic government will take a miracle."

via talking points

mcgoverning

"Thanks to the most crudely partisan decision in the history of the Supreme Court, the nation has been given a President of painfully limited wisdom and compassion and lacking any sense of the nation's true greatness. Appearing to enjoy his role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces above all other functions of his office, and unchecked by a seemingly timid Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, a largely subservient press and a corrupt corporate plutocracy, George W. Bush has set the nation on a course for one-man rule."

baaaaaaaaa

"Nearly eight in 10 Americans now accept the Bush administration's contention — disputed by some experts — that Hussein has "close ties" to Al Qaeda (even 70% of Democrats agree). And 60% of Americans say they believe Hussein bears at least some responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — a charge even the administration hasn't levied against him."

via eschaton

golden showers

"CAMP BUSHMASTER, Iraq - In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.

It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage - which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks - as an opportunity.

"It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized," he said."

via eschaton

paneled auditorium

archive of new school panel events

victory dunce

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it would consider military action in Iraq a success even if U.S. forces failed to find President Saddam Hussein, whose appearance on Iraqi television could prove he survived a U.S. bombing raid on the first night of the war."

al-aboard

english language al-jazeera up and running.

via agonist bbs

youve got bank

"Pound for pound, who's the biggest, richest media mogul on the Web? Terry Semel? Nope. Sumner Redstone? Not exactly. Try Matt Drudge. Years after his big "scoop" -- leaking that Newsweek was sitting on a story about the tryst between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky -- Drudge's website is bigger than ever. Run on a shoestring, the Drudge Report, a plain-Jane page of news links and occasional scoops, clears, by our back-of-the-envelope estimate, a cool $800,000 a year."

via gawker

red-tailed hawk

"Michael Kelly, 46, the Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist who abandoned the safety of editorial offices to cover the war in Iraq, has been killed in a Humvee accident while traveling with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division."

via gawker

mais oui

what better way to study up on your parlez vous than a bilingual franglais blog. been around for a while. surprised i didnt bump into it before.

via buzz machine

baghdoodads

"As three U.S. combat divisions and assorted forces bear down on Baghdad, the big question of the war now is, how will U.S. troops take the Iraqi capital? This is a matter U.S. war planners pondered long before President Bush launched the war. Last summer, a secret team of high-level military officers and senior civilian Pentagon officials designed a tactical playbook for presentation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff "war-fighting group," a Pentagon outfit that oversees war plans. Titled "Joint Urban Operations," the report was developed by the team to study and enhance U.S. combat abilities in an urban environment. But a classified summary PowerPoint presentation of the study—made available to us by a source with access to the document—focused exclusively on one particular urban area: Baghdad. And this summary shows the various ways U.S. military planners considered conquering the city."

diplomania

"Welcome to H-Diplo, the H-NET discussion list dedicated to the study of diplomatic and international history."

via altercation

laurel canyon

anybody catch the joni mitchell episode of American Masters on pbs? heres a robot wisdom timeline of her life. i was at the 1986 amnesty international show where she was nearly booed off the stage. i never knew she was a last minute replacement for pete townsend.

got me thinking about who were the most influential women in music history. looks like vh-1 has had a series this past month with their list of The 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. pretty good point of departure although any poll that has lucinda williams at 96 and alannis morissette at 52 is troubling. ill see if i can find other resources. anybody care to proffer a top 10?

open road

"Welcome to OSS.NET. Since 1992, we have championed open source intelligence (OSINT), intelligence reform, and the creation of Smart Nations. Beginning in 2002 we are also championing a global intelligence grid that brings the seven tribes of intelligence (national, military, law enforcement, business, academic, NGO-media, and religious-clan-citizen) into effective relations with one another, in part through the creation of ISO standards for those elements of intelligence that are open, ethical, legal, and generic."

via kos

century marketers

"100 People Who Changed New York"

via gawker

prim objective

"You will be happy to learn that the former head of the KGB (the secret police of the former Soviet Union), General Yevgeni Primakov, has been hired as a consultant by the US Department of Homeland Security. Do you think he will share his expertise in "security" to prepare US citizens for domestic internal passports under the pretense of fighting the never-ending "War on Terrorism"?"

via american samizdat

defense poet laureate

"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know. "

interesting prospects

congrats to matt for climbing out of the primordial blogosphere into the bright sunshine of paychecks and future bylines. and what a novel concept too, having a job lined up before you graduate. next time i go to college ill have to consider that route.

back to iraq to the future

"He makes a phone call to the Sirnak jandarma post, the regional HQ, apparently. They’re checking our press credentials. He smiles at me. “In five, ten minutes, Christopher, you go to Cizre.”

“Great!” I said, and stood up.

“You will sit down, please,” he said. I did.

The major wanted to ask me a few more questions.

“Your name is Christopher, no?”

I nodded. “Evet,” I said. Yes.
He paused to think for a moment. Then he looked at me again.

“Who is that actor, in ‘Back to the Future’? With Michael J. Fox?”

“Christopher Lloyd?”

“Yes!” he said."

sheep judging

"It's hard to imagine a bright spot in all this, but judging from Keith Olbermann's first outing, "Countdown" is surely one. He's even-handed, quick, a great writer, fast paced, funny as hell at the right moments, and most importantly of all, assumes that his audience aren't mindless sheep, that they can actually be trusted with ALL the information from which to make up their minds, and that they deserve better than blatant jingoistic propaganda spewed ad nauseam by every other cable news show.

Let's see how long MSNBC suits hold up when some freedom-hating right-wing groups start organizing a flood of semi-literate hate mail against the truth being shown or when some corporate exec's wife finds it offensive -- or, worse yet, when Karl Rove finds someone to put the arm on them and let them know it's being "noted" in the White House and that calls have been made to the CEOs of sponsors.."

Ask Dick Cheney!

"This simulated government official is taking questions in conformance with the Official Simulation Act of 2002. All quotes are authentic. No government official was harmed in the making of this simulation."

fool me one hundred

"Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes"

chick magnet

"Today's column is devoted to a reply to my column from last week, "Shut Up and Sing?" I received many, many replies to that column about the Dixie Chicks' lead singer Natalie Maines' remarks regarding President Bush. I feel strongly that you should read this response to that column from my old friend and mentor and fellow Texan Bill C. Malone. Bill is the dean of country music historians. His groundbreaking book Country Music USA in 1968 set the standards for country music scholarship, and Bill has kept those standards high with a series of books ever since. Bill sent a response to my column, and it is well worth your attention."

book report report

mcsweeney mag The Believer makes its debut.

web presence

the agonist gets some face time at nprs The Connection. overall, a respectable showing.

fool on the hill

"Support has been pouring in all over the globe on this glorious Make Fun Of The Cheneys day. Thanks to everyone for making this effort a success. I expect Dick Cheney'ss resignation on my desk by noon Friday. A partial list of participating websites follows. Read as many as you can stand."

heads up

"Radiohead's sixth studio album Hail to the Thief has just been leaked onto the internet, two months before its official release. (The title is generally viewed as a dig at Dubya, though the band itself coyly denies it: "Not sure where all that George Bush stuff came from. Hail is no insult, really...We just like the contradictory phrases like '2+2=5' and 'Hail to the Thief' and all that.") The actual release could be a remastered version of this, though."

masters of war

"Avril Lavigne has recorded a version of the Bob Dylan classic ’Knocking On Heaven’s Door’ for inclusion on the forthcoming album ’War Child: Hope’, a fundraiser for children of Iraq.

Alongside Lavigne’s contribution are tracks from Travis, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Moby, The Charlatans, Beverley Knight, Ronan Keating, Basement Jaxx, New Order and Spiritulized.

One particular point of interest on the 17-song album is a track by Yusef Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, who has chosen to break his musical silence for the album, with a reworking of his 1971 hit ’Peace Train’."

air brush up

trench footnotes

firstworldwar.com: the war to end all wars website

blog as i want to be

just noticed i was added to the incublogula blogroll. as usual, all i can say is, what were you thinking?

pete and pete

"I am still in shock and awe at being fired. There is enormous sensitivity within the US government to reports coming out from Baghdad.

They don't want credible news organisations reporting from here because it presents them with enormous problems.

I reported on the original bombing for NBC and we were half a mile away from those massive explosions. Now I am really shocked that I am no longer reporting this story for the US and awed by the fact that it actually happened."

hearts and minds

"Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or in
nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern town
overnight, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and heavy artillery.

Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved."

inseitz

"After six years on this beat, I know one thing for sure: expecting TV to be coolheaded, complex and forward-looking during times of global panic is expecting it to act against its nature. It's like asking a shark to eat salad."

shock and awe

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American television network NBC said on Monday it had severed its relations with veteran reporter Peter Arnett after he told Iraqi television that the U.S. war plan against Saddam Hussein had failed."