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Saturday, Feb 01, 2003

l ementary

"The agency is aggressively trying to shake that antique image. By 2005, after some delays, Mr. Reuter said, it expects to have the entire L line refitted so that its new trains can be operated automatically, by radio signals sent by a distant computer, much like the Meteor driverless subway line in Paris. (For the foreseeable future, a train operator will ride aboard the trains in case of problems. The L line will serve as a kind of pilot project for automating other lines, which are much more complicated.)"

Friday, Jan 31, 2003

break it down

nice state of the union recap at liberal oasis.

philerupt

"In December, I will travel to Iraq and stand with her people against the threat of a United States military attack. As a member of the Iraq Peace Team, I will work with Iraqi mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, students, writers, painters, unemployed government officials, the poor, the homeless, the sick, musicians, shopkeepers, hustlers, and poets to spread the word about the devastating effects the sanctions have brought to Iraq and the further turmoil a military campaign will bring to the Iraqi people."

blowhole

"Let�s take a hard look today at the actual nature of fascism, by way of understanding not just who really fits the description in today's world, but how much danger to the nation in the post-9/11 environment they actually represent."

cowpoke

i have so much to learn about art.

Thursday, Jan 30, 2003

bar none

as everyone knows, i am a social butterfly. or maybe thats sociopathic. but who could miss out on this event. well, me for one.

jim, how long has it been since you went bowling for bloggers?

rush to judgement

bloggers take another scalp as a drive to press advertisers away from rush limbaugh actually has some impact. nothing those corporations hate more than bad press. well, at least some of them.

Wednesday, Jan 29, 2003

gut instinct

"What targets would you consider fair game for a satirist today?"

"Assholes."

ells bells

"NEW YORK -- Daniel Ellsberg has never been a journalist, but he is one of the most important figures in the history of American journalism. His release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 not only sparked a landmark freedom-of-the-press case, it changed journalism forever, ushering in an era of "leaks," whistle-blowers, and general skepticism about official statements."

"His book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, was published to much acclaim last fall. Ellsberg is uniquely qualified to address the issue of the media and war: as a former Marine, a Rand Corp. analyst, and an adviser to Robert McNamara, Clark Clifford, and Henry Kissinger on Vietnam -- not to mention as one of the most famous newspaper sources in history. E&P Editor Greg Mitchell interviewed Ellsberg, who has long lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, last week."

all wet

"But the biggest surprise of all is that they are not even soldiers; they are spies, part of the CIA's rough and ready, supersecret Special Operations Group (SOG). Until fairly recently, the CIA, in an effort to clean up a reputation sullied by botched overseas coups and imperial assassination attempts, had shied away from getting its hands dirty. Until about five years ago, it focused instead on gathering intelligence that could be used by other parts of the government. Before that, traditional CIA officers, often working under cover as U.S. diplomats, got most of their secrets from the embassy cocktail circuit or by bribing foreign officials. Most did not even have weapons training, and they looked down on the few SOG commandos who remained out in the field as knuckle draggers, relics of a bygone era. Now the knuckle draggers are not just back; they are the new hard edge of the CIA, at the forefront of the war on terrorism. And, says a U.S. intelligence official, "they know which end the bullet comes out of."

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