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perle jam
"Famed Prince of Darkness Richard Perle is a political animal unique to Washington. He has successfully melded personal, ideological and commercial entrepreneurship into a polished package that looks kosher just so long as no one examines its particulars. Too bad for Perle, Rabbi Sy Hersh decided to take a look in the March 17 New Yorker."
war torn
"This weekend 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army destroying homes in the Gaza Strip. In a remarkable series of emails to her family, she explained why she was risking her life."
commons cause
live parliament debate about war in iraq
chem suits
"Which makes the parking lot of the Kuehne plant a uniquely scary place to stand. As the United States stands on the brink of war with Iraq, terrorism and Middle East experts warn us that al-Qaida is already using the prospective war as a rallying cause. Rohan Gunaratna, the author of "Inside al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror," told Salon that a U.S. attack on Iraq, without United Nations support, could arouse terrorist "sleeper cells"; such an attack could seem like a war against Islam, and sleeper cells might rationalize, "'My God, we went and trained in Afghanistan, and now we must go and fight the infidels.'" And that's what contributes to making Kuehne a possible ground zero. Its lethal combination: proximity to a densely populated area and some of the deadliest chemicals around. A well-executed attack upon it could kill 12 million Americans."
paper chasers
"NEW YORK (AP) -- CNN has reached an agreement with The New York Times and The Boston Globe to make the newspapers' reporters available for stories on the impending war with Iraq.
The reporters will deliver their reports on-screen with the newspapers' logos visible."
pharm teem
"AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Just what the doctor ordered?
Pharmacies may fill prescriptions for marijuana and patients can get the cost covered by insurance, according to a law that went into effect Monday."
booty call
"But even if there's nothing exactly new about making money from war, this particular conflict, a preemptive war of choice, presents the somewhat novel prospect of the U.S. government deciding how war profits will be distributed even before the first sorties are launched. Whether you think Iraq will be "conquered" or "liberated" by American forces, regime change in the country will open up vast new opportunities for commercial interests to do business there, and the Bush administration could have wide latitude in determining which of those interests win out. Already, companies are jockeying for prime positions, and already there are signs that the White House is being nicest to its friends."
window to the world
i just saw someone break into a car in the lot outside my window. i had heard a loud crash but had ignored it. i thought someone was throwing out some garbage. then i was mindlessly staring down at someone at the back of a bmw mini-suv as i was closing the window. just looked like a guy was putting something in the back of the vehicle. then he rollerbladed off with a couple of bags and only then did i notice that the back window had been smashed. about three minutes later he returned and snagged another bag from the back. i felt like screaming at him but im not sure what good that would have done. just pop that one into the "people suck" file.
fish tales
"An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in awe by what it believes to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle."
somebodys watching you
"“Almost all of the pieces for a surveillance society are already here,” says Gene Spafford, director of Purdue University’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security. “It’s just a matter of assembling them.” Unfortunately, he says, ubiquitous surveillance faces intractable social and technological problems that could well reduce its usefulness or even make it dangerous. As a result, each type of monitoring may be beneficial in itself, at least for the people who put it in place, but the collective result could be calamitous." (reg req)