23-year old American dies in Gaza

A more detailed report than you are likely to find in the US media on the American peace activist who was killed today in Gaza.

Our tax dollars at War...

More details on how the Coalition of the Billing gets paid off to support George Bush's march to war! Chile, Bulgaria, and Romania get economic benefits for being our new allies.

Once you turn Turkey on...

The bUSh has stopped trying to bribe Turkey to let us base troops there, now they are back-pedaling, trying to convince Turkey NOT to send their own troops into Northern Iraq. This is an attempt to undo their earlier sellout of the Kurds; check out this Talking Points Memo post from last week on our sellout of the Kurds. The author of TPM is Josh Marshall who writes for the Washington Monthly and other politics-focused periodicals. I find it essential reading.

The Warheads in the 5-point building

It's not like I'm a fan of Army Secretary Thomas E. White, former Enron executive and fat cat. But isn't there an adage about "my enemy's enemy is my friend?" What I mean is that anyone who is a thorn in the side of Donnie Rumsfeld is... well, okay, I still don't think I'd invite White over for dinner or anything, but I'm glad to root for him from afar. This article (originally from the LA Times, who make you register to read and then put their articles in archives after 7 days--boo!) discusses the current situation, which involves not following the proper spin cycle...

Recently, he again irked the Pentagon's civilian leaders by refusing to challenge Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's prediction that it could take "hundreds of thousands" of U.S. troops to keep the peace in a postwar Iraq.

Pentagon's civilian leaders (read: Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) are notorious for dicatating policy and valuing yes-men and not skeptics or critical voices. From the above article we learn that the Air Force Secretary feels undermined by the Pentagon, that there is no secretary or undersecretary of the Navy right now, and that Shinseki, the Army's top military officer, has been a lame duck since Rumsfeld named his successor nearly 15 months before the general's scheduled retirement in June.

So it really is the Rums n' Wolfy Show, as long as some of these people with ACTUAL MILITARY EXPERIENCE would stop shooting off their mouths about how many troops they think will be required. Since Rumsfeld is such an accomplished public speaker himself, able to turn the headlines of European papers and the stomachs of European populations, the BBC has put together the Donald Rumsfeld soundbite archive though it is out of date by many months now.

Have you heard the infamous Kissinger quote about Rummy? He called him the most ruthless man I know. Comforting, huh?

Wolfowitz, by the way, looks like a weasely bad guy from Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rogers. Thanks to the genius of military web design, you can get a version of Wolfowitz's image which is so hi-res you could print a poster from it. Watch it fill your browser window! You don't want to see his eyes this big. You don't want to know!

Protests foreshadowing the morning after?

Did you hear about the war protest here in SF? It included the 60 year old former President of the Pacific Stock Exchange. The protest centered on the Stock Exchange, which is right across from my chricopractor's office. :) They tried to bum rush it and shut it down. They got kicked out so they shut down a few intersections. The power of a mass of human bodies; which is a metaphor for a mass of human opinion. This is in some ways a test run for the morning after a war starts. Which is NEGATIVE THINKING--we should be planning on the war never starting!!! Intersections will be shut down all over the city, but especially downtown. I wasn't there today, but you can bet I'll be there if that day does come around.

In other news, have you heard about Terror Insurance? Or how bout the 74 former members of congress who sent a letter to the White House urging Bush to hold off on his attack plans?? Or the former Nebraska Congresman who is suing George W Bush to restrain him from attacking Iraq?

Do you know about Patriot Act II!? You better.

Ashcroft is more evil and blatant than you could ever imagine. This policy was leaked a month ago, it wasn't going to proposed until we were in the heat of distracting war. Here's what the ACLU has to say about this policy proposal that they had been working on for months, while denying that they were doing so. You can hardly believe it's the United states, huh?

Also read this on the frightening Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System II (CAPPS II) . According to the ACLU this is being
tested (not "proposed", not "approved") at several airports this month!! The Transportation Security Agency
Lockheed Martin got the contract the economy looks pretty sweet if you're a Homeland defense contractor.

do you need links on Politics?

Well, here they are anyway. First of all, the must-reads, which have become daily obsessions for me:

• The Talking Points Memo weblog by Joshua Micah Marshall (who writes for the Washington Monthly and elsewhere)


• Altercation (like a weblog but on MSNBC, weird.) by Eric Alterman
  (the author of What Liberal Media?) and occassional pinch hitters who also score well


• Finally, Howard Kurtz provides an excellent survey of current political articles from across the spectrum (both online and paper-based) called Media Notes

A few interesting blogs that I've been meaning to check out (more of):

• Lawrence Lessig innovator in cyberlaw


• George Kelly
  born in DC, lives in Oakland


• Matt Welch is one of the people who started that English language newspaper in Prauge (Prognosis did anyone else read about it in Details?)


• Who else? You tell me!

By the way, it seems that Alterman critiques Kurtz in his book, and Welch disses Alterman regularly. I wonder what Donahue thinks?

A couple other recent politico links of note:

• From the Washington Post, in proof that incompetence does not inspire confidence, the Bushistas are Bush is not hot with all hawks


• Bill Moyers on flag-wearing.