drat fink

free winnie

"Disney gets nabbed destroying documents amid a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over royalties from the world's most lovable -- and lucrative -- bear."

back to the future 2

"That leaves "1984's" most potent political tool: perpetual warfare. Just as Oceania was always at war with Eurasia or Eastasia -- who could keep track? -- the "war on terror," we are told, will continue indefinitely. Indefinitely is just another word for forever."

kurds away

"I'm intrigued by your end point because that's sort of where I'd start. In some ways, the reasons to worry about Iraq don't have much to do with 9/11. Whatever you've found about Ansar al-Islam (more on those charmers in a bit) probably doesn't amount to a smoking gun—except perhaps to some of the harder-line folks cheering on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who've long since been sold on the need to get Saddam anyway. Even if everything said by the Kurdish prisoners with whom you spoke was true, there still would be very little to tie Saddam to the World Trade Center attacks. If someone's looking for casus belli with Iraq, for now at least, 9/11 isn't it."

farcoterrorist

"US officials say they have no intention of leading the US into deeper involvement in Colombia's vicious civil war, but, if approved, the aid would mark a major policy shift. Until now, US aid to Colombia has focused on fighting the drugs trade, but the new package would mean direct support for counter-insurgency operations against the guerrilla saboteurs."

gazprompt

"Almost unnoticed, the dynamics of the world energy market have changed dramatically since the terrorist attacks on America six months ago. Russia has suddenly emerged as the new oil superpower. So drag your eyes away from Washington for a moment, swivel round 180 degrees, and let's focus on the pepperpot towers of the Kremlin."

roy polloi

"Roy spent one night behind bars, but now her decision to pay a fine and thus avoid serving the full three-month sentence imposed by the high court is drawing criticism from some in India and Great Britain, who dismiss Roy as just another member of India's 'radical chic.' Roy, however, says she chose to pay the fine simply because remaining in prison would not have served any meaningful purpose. And she says she has no intention of allowing her critics to silence her."

wrong-listed

"It's not a blacklist, it is a wrong-list," he said. "We just think that these people are wrongheaded, unhelpful, and misguided. We live in a free country, so we have the right to debate and go back and forth with them. I am sure I am not going to make president Jimmy Carter shut up if I say that I don't agree with him." And he promised the list would grow. "We don't add them," he said cheerfully. "They add themselves."

protecting your rights

"WASHINGTON -- The Church of Scientology has managed to yank references to anti-Scientology websites from the Google search engine.

Citing the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Scientology lawyers are claiming that Google may no longer include anti-Scientology sites that allegedly infringe upon the church's intellectual property."

trilateral comissioners

everything is out of whack today. first, my aol account can sense its imminent demise and has started to freak out on me. it wont let me read my mail, it wont let me report the problem and it wont even let me sign off. if i alt-ctrl-del, it crashes my computer. i think at night when im asleep it sends out its sensors in my room and has detected the dsl modem on the chair a few feet away. this, in turn, set off all sorts of buzzers and whistles at aol headquarters (whose underground bunker is just down the block from our shadow governments). their spies at verizon confirm the transaction so they have no recourse but to sabatoge my machine; any fool will tell you that!

meanwhile, word on the street is that content does not want to be free. todays lesson is hotline scoop. just another sordid example of the world forcing me to do my own thinking (or, at least, that thing which approaches actual thinking).

heres more blah blah blah blah about content being less free.

without a punchline

"When that pain is caused by our government, we are channeled away from that empathy. The way we are educated and entertained keeps us from knowing about or understanding the pain of others in other parts of the world, and from understanding how our pleasure is connected to that pain of others. It is a combined intellectual, emotional, and moral failure -- a failure to know and to feel and to act."