This entry was posted on
Monday, October 25th, 2004 at
9:08 am and is filed
under Uncategorized.
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Date
20041025
How To Think Like An Evil Bastard
Time
09:08
Pwahahahahahahahaha!
Pardon me while I wipe a tear from my eye.
And here’s what these relaxed gaming laws are really about; it’s an extremely inefficient one-off tax hit.
The ongoing assurance that children won’t be exposed to gambling (yeah, right) is a feint. It’s meant to suggest that only children are vulnerable.
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Date
20041025
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s Lovely! It’s Over!
Time
09:10
Independent – ‘Our boys are being used like puppets’: “They are professional soldiers and expect to have to go to war sometime but the way the regiment has been treated by Blair and Hoon is a bloody disgrace. We shouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place and now our boys have to clean up after the Americans. George Bush calls the tune, Blair dances and our boys have to do the dirty work.”
Yes, many will be home in time for Christmas. Some in gift-wrapped boxes.
Now let’s all shut up and support the troops. Who are obviously all kitted out and raring to go.
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Date
20041025
Music
Time
09:17
Download and share the excellent Come Clean MP3, currently available via ranzorising.com
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Date
20041025
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
09:18
Topping the chart is wolfpacksfortruth.org, where the wolves featured in the Bush campaign’s latest round of fear-mongering have their say. More on that here.
Just under that, the latest ads from Win Back Respect get an airing, as do 100 facts and 1 opinion regarding the Bush administration.
If you wish you can also see and hear some people who voted for Bush in 2000, but will be voting for Kerry in 2004.
Scope down a bit and you’ll also discover the wonders of liegirls.com
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Date
20041025
The End of Democracy
Time
09:31
Rest assured that if was leaked via a Murdoch newspaper, the ‘revelation’ that Westminster is about to become a fortress is very much a “your cat’s on the roof” moment. You’re being prepared for bad news in the nicest possible way.
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Date
20041025
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s Lovely!
Time
09:37
Well, isn’t this lovely? The Bush administration is all set to outsource torture.
Chicago Sun-Times – Legislation would tell world U.S. supports torture: After the photographs of the egregious abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq flashed worldwide, the president said: “Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country. We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.” Yet, on Oct. 8, the Republican leadership of the House rammed through a bill, H.R. 10, ”the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act,” that would permit the secretary of Homeland Security to deport non-citizen detainees to countries known for torturing their prisoners. A last-minute, deceptive, unrealistic amendment by U.S. Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) appeared to make it possible for the president to avoid vetoing this bill, which officially legitimizes torture.
With just over 7 days to go until the US election, I’m inclined to think Abu Ghraib is what needs pushing the most, not least because it highlights so many failures and dangers.
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Date
20041025
Video
Time
09:43
Make time to see There’s Something About W. If you’re forced to make do with the previews, you can check out a bit-torrent WMV file of the whole lot lumped together here.
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Date
20041025
Flash Music Video
Time
09:46
Rush Limbaugh – this says it all. Share and enjoy.
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Date
20041025
Dead Blog Holiday
Time
09:54
I’m back. Here’s the plan:
Bush voted in – target Murdoch.
Bush voted out – target Murdoch.
That’s it, in a nutshell. If Kerry gets in (and it looks increasingly likely no matter what the polls you’re seeing might suggest), we can look forward to Murdoch’s media empire turning back into what it was before the 2000 election – an outright attack machine aimed at the President (as opposed to a rabid supporter of the pResident), so there’ll still be plenty of work to do.
As for the next 7-8 days, I’m in two minds:
1. Over 7 days, present ammunition for other bloggers on 7 key issues ranging from the economy to Iraq.
2. Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib.
Your call. You know the address. Use it.
Cheers all.
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Date
20041025
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s…. oh s**t!
Time
10:08
Wave goodbye to your rights, folks. (More here from poons).
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Date
20041025
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s Lovely! And You’re Next!
Time
10:31
If America goes with Bush, they’ll be going it alone. Their forces are already under strain; what happens when Iraq draaags out and/or the unexpected happens in that or another region?
Never mind the economic deficit; worry more about the general lack of meatbags. (For those who came in late: you may be wondering why this is the first you’ve heard of it.)
UPDATE – GOP Pressures Rock the Vote to Stop Talking About the Draft. You can see a fair few people reacting to this here.
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Date
20041025
We’re Not At Home To Mr Cock-Up
Time
15:53
380 Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq.
BBC – Tons of Iraqi explosives missing: The IAEA said the US-led coalition had been warned about the danger posed by the explosives on several occasions. It says the coalition forces were specifically told to keep the material secured.
Feel any safer? No, didn’t think so.
Truckloads of the stuff – gone. They were warned it should be secured – and they failed to secure it. Plus, we’re just hearing about this now, more than a year after it went missing.
I’m tempted to crawl back into my hole….
(Isn’t it also fun how similar the name al Qaqaa is to al Qaeda? That’s sure to blow a few dim bulbs.)
UPDATE – Kerry Chides Bush on Missing Explosives.
Odds are, the Bush administration have known about this all along and just sat on the ’embarrassing’ news (much as they did in the months before Abu Ghraib went public).
I’m willing to the bet that this stuff has already been used in Iraq, but I don’t dare hope that forensic proof exists (or – more to the point – that anybody is looking for it).
UPDATE 2 – Oh, I missed this Oct 12 article when I was on a beach somewhere (cheers to poons and Balders for the linkage):
Nuclear weapons materials ‘vanish from Iraq’
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Date
20041025
The Political Weblog Movement
Time
18:08
Sandra Gidley, Liberal Democrat MP for Romsey in Hampshire, needs to be added to the The List.
I’ve been advised that this Blogger space is just a temporary measure until she can get a blog plugged in on her existing website, but I’ll sort the full linkage out on the current URL for now. Sometime tomorrow. Time go home go bed now. After this…
Apologies for the belated welcome, Sandra!
First of the firsts; this is our first female MP with a weblog.
Second of the firsts; it needs to be noted that this MP weblog is the first major victory on the proxy-blog front.
From Sandra Gidley’s first post: “I will freely admit that the good people at GidleyWatch have a lot to do with the decision – which hasn’t been an easy one.”
Hooray for Sandra and hooray for The GidleyWatch Team.
Also, big-ups to Shane McCracken for his ‘simple’ email to the proxy-blogged that has helped to bring two MPs to the fold now.
Third (and this isn’t a first, it’s just bloody great is all) Sandra has already given another blogger what appears to be a well-deserved slap-down.
The blogger in question is her Tory rival, Caroline Nokes.
Nokes had a blog going back a few months (to Jan 04), but it had begun to gather dust… until Sandra’s new blog came along. GidleyWatch has a full outline of what followed here, but the short version of events is that Caroline made a snide, misleading statement on her weblog and Sandra called her on it in this post on her own weblog.
Caroline’s reaction was to scream “personal attack!” and take her weblog down, claiming that she did so to stop Sandra from making “malicious” remarks about her.
Pwahahahahahahahahaha! And now several ‘independent’ voices are making comments of Sandra’s site, blaming her for content on GidleyWatch and also insisting that Sandra “do the decent thing” and delete her blog as well, “that way, there will be a much fairer contest not based on personalities.”
I say again: Pwahahahahahahahahaha!
OK, I have a house-warming gift for Sandra…
The Caroline Nokes weblog was previously at http://www.carolinenokes.blogspot.com/, *not* http://www.carolinenoakes.blogspot.com/ as Gidleywatch suggests.
It’s no longer in Google’s cache… but it’s still in Yahoo’s.
If you (or anyone else) wants to see what Caroline Nokes would rather was forgotten, you can click here and follow the ‘Cached’ link for each entry listed. You can see the specific entry Sandra objected to by clicking here.
Poke around at will. Right-click and ‘Save As’ if you feel like it.
It’s a body of work that’s well worth preserving.
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Date
20041026
The End of Democracy
Time
10:02
New York Times – Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State: Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.
There are two words that apply here: obfuscation and intimidation
In taking this action, they not only provide a daunting a gauntlet for would-be voters (i.e. those who might look a bit liberal will have to face down a rabid Republican who wishes to take down their particulars before they can even get to a booth) they also suggest that it’s the Democrats who are about to attempt one of the greatest electoral frauds in modern history.
Bush is ahead of the game with unquestioned media control. And his brother runs the marginal state of Florida. Pollsters are already cooking the books. (Perhaps Gallup would care to poll Bush’s family. They might get some better data.)
And then there’s Diebold, the Republican donors who wish to weave their own brand of magic…
CNN – What could go wrong this time?: Electronic voting machines were supposed to have provided a seamless voting process this time, but they have only fed concerns about snafus on Election Day. The touch-screen machines, which will be used by about 30% of voters, have been shown to be vulnerable to tampering, to break down and to lose votes or record none at all. Worse, in every state where they are used except Nevada, the machines produce no paper trail of votes. And e-voting machines can’t do recounts. On a second go-round, they simply repeat the outcome they offered the first time.
You also have to consider that it is usually the Republicans who suffer from a large turnout of voters. The old and new systems have already caused massive queues during the early-voting process due to widespread system/network failures. And now this isn’t the only delay likely to turn potential voters away. Now they have professional harassment teams waiting for them at the door. Should they ever reach it.
UPDATE – A nifty video on the Florida voting experience. Enjoy.
UPDATE 2 – For those who consider the above video to be unfair and somewhat fanciful.
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Date
20041026
We’re Not At Home To Mr Cock-Up
Time
10:11
CNN – Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived: NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad. While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that reportedly went missing, according to NBC.
Oh, really? How curious. I’m greatly comforted by this ‘new’ information and Matt Drudge’s assurance that this amounts to a Kerry smear and/or liberal conspiracy. Especially when this ‘it was like that when we got there’ theory is based on assurances from the White House and a report from embedded reporters (who – by and large – have done so much to bring us the truth about the invasion of Iraq in the past).
It’s also fun to watch the Bush administration duck and dive as they cobble their cover story together. Live and without the aid of tell-tale bulges.
Josh Marshall is following this closely, so his site should be worth a few repeat visits today. You should click through and poke around the links he provides if you have the time.
Here’s the latest from his site: What I am trying to show is that Pentagon appointees like Di Rita don’t seem to have any clear idea what happened to this stuff. And in an attempt to push back the story, they’re cooking up various theories, most with very short half-lives, that just don’t seem credible to a lot of folks who follow these issues. If you look at the multiple contradictions in the different stories administration officials told reporters over the course of Monday, it’s hard not to get the sense that they’re caught without a good explanation and they’re just making this stuff up as they go along.
But not all of us actually follow these issues. We’re used to having our news reduced to 7-second chunks of information.
That’s why you need to poke around this stuff and be ready to refute any wingnut who’s out and about shouting “Kerry smear!” today.
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Date
20041026
The War on Stupid
Time
10:16
Use fear. Lie about source of danger. Rinse and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. (5.2Mb Quicktime video.)
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Date
20041026
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s Lovely!
Time
10:18
Increase In War Funding Sought – Bush to Request $70 Billion More. Just a little something for folks what vote according to twinges in their hip pocket.
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Date
20041026
Abu Ghraib
Time
10:31
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh spills the secrets of the Iraq quagmire and the war on terror: In addition to adding more details to the woeful chronology of the Abu Ghraib scandal, in which the military stopped the abuse only after Hersh’s story brought it crashing down onto front pages around the world — four months after it was first reported to the Department of Defense — Hersh speculated on why those dehumanizing techniques had been used. He was sure that they were not, as some have claimed, the “stress outlet” or other spontaneous recreational ideas of young soldiers from West Virginia. Instead, he said, they were the outgrowth of a massive manhunt for information, any information, about first Al Qaida, the Taliban, and then the Iraqi insurgency.
Want to get Seymour Hersh excited? Ask him why Abu Ghraib is important. Then take cover. : “Why is it important? It’s important because — let me tell you why it’s important, in a nutshell! It’s important because it’s a symptom of a lack of care by the people at the top. The president and (Vice President Dick) Cheney and (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld dehumanized the opposition from the beginning – out of fear, out of anger, out of want of payback.”
(Try to ignore the shouty-crackers angle. Seymour Hersh has seen what you haven’t. And received more than his fair share of death threats.)
Even if we go with the Bush administration’s “stress outlet” theory, you have to ask what role the officially sanctioned process of hooding played. And the role their continued claims that Iraq was connected to 911 played. And the role their officially sanctioned policy of using the detention process to ‘soften up’ prisoners for interrogation played. And what role their desperation to find WMDs that didn’t exist played.
Even if this was an unhappy accident, the Bush administration comes out of it looking as guilty as hell. Especially as they didn’t act to stop it until irrefutable evidence came to light.
And why does that evidence exist? Why are there so many photos of Iraqis being tortured?
Share the Flash show; point people to the article.
Oh, and this Halloween? The simplest and most powerful costume you can use this year involves putting a bag over your head. Just a thought.
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Date
20041026
An American Election
Time
11:38
Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Don’t stop at the pledge. The petitions are equally inspired (‘Sane Warfare’ especially).
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Date
20041026
Video
Time
11:53
Auditions for the role of Osama bin Laden in the upcoming blockbuster October Surprise are now closed.
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Date
20041026
In The News
Time
15:42
Goodbye, John.
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Date
20041027
Activism
Time
10:04
IC Birmingham – Law created to get rid of protester: A new law is to be passed solely to evict Midland carpenter Brian Haw from his one-man peace protest outside Parliament. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will announce he is to outlaw “permanent encampments” outside Parliament as well as the use of megaphones, according to reports.
Independent – Blunkett legislates to silence lone protester at Westminster: Sir George Young, the Tory MP for Hampshire North West, has led the charge against Mr Haw, accusing ministers of an “inexcusable paralysis” for failing to get rid of him earlier. In a Commons debate in May he said that terrorists could hide behind the peace protester’s banners and “pick us off as we arrive at or leave the House”. No other democracy would allow “this shanty town” in the middle of the its capital, he said.
Sir George Young speaks total claptrap.
Is he seriously unaware of Operation Dewey Canyon III and large and sustained protests over the years in the National Mall in Washington D.C. or the Aboriginal Tent Embassy that’s been in front of Parliament House in Australia (these past 32 years)?
Blunkett has picked the perfect time to try and do away with this little cloud of shame that does and should hang over our representatives, in that his supporters are obviously very focused on the US elections right now. But I’m not to busy to call him on his bullshit.
Using laws that are supposedly designed to combat organised crime to stifle protest? It’s simply not on.
UPDATE – Rob emailed to say; Brian is taking it well – we talked about it last night. Public Enemy Number 1 he’s calling himself. He’ll be – as I assume everyone else will be – fighting it, as usual. His mantra in response? “Blunket’s Dog for Home Secretary!”
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Date
20041027
Video
Time
10:06
For those who missed it, check out John Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire via this post at Perfect.co.uk and this post at Wibbler.com (the latter has a swath of alternative video links, and is definitely something that you have to see and hear to appreciate).
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Date
20041027
Church & State
Time
10:10
To. Be. Read. In. Full.
(Use bugmenot.com if you have registration difficulties.)
NYT – Without a Doubt: “Just in the past few months… I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.” Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush’s governance, went on to say: ”This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can’t be persuaded, that they’re extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he’s just like them… ‘This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,” Bartlett went on to say. ”He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.” Bartlett paused, then said, ”But you can’t run the world on faith.”
Sweden has an army? Well, I’ll be damned…
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Date
20041027
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s Lovely!
Time
10:17
NYT – U.S. Action Bars Right of Some Captured in Iraq: A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday. The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said. They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.
Break out the head-bags, boys. Once again, it’s time to play Human Pyramid!
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Date
20041027
Inneresting
Time
10:18
A visual history of spam and virus emails.
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Date
20041027
The Political Weblog Movement
Time
10:22
1. Sandra Gidley: “I am not GidleyWatch.”
2. GidelyWatch: “We are not Sandra.”
Hope that clear things up for the ninny-mouse Tory jobbers who are busy attacking both. Also, here’s a Lib-Dem blog aggregator. Enjoy.
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Date
20041027
Anyone But George
Time
10:24
Thomas F. Schaller – Why I believe in our president.
Via this DailyKos post, which states: You’ll be interested to learn that this commentary was initially accepted by a Top 10 circulation national newspaper op-ed page editor, but later rejected by higher-ups.
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Date
20041027
Flash Games
Time
10:27
Hit The Loser! Simple and addictive. (Link via FunJunkie.)
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Date
20041027
The End of Democracy
Time
10:28
BBC – New Florida vote scandal feared: A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan – possibly in violation of US law – to disrupt voting in the state’s African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals. Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign’s national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called “caging list”. It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida. An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: “The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day.”
DailyKos has more, and a bunch of comment besides.
The folks at DailyKos are doing a stellar job, BTW. It’s definitely a blog to watch over the next week. One of their contributors even had a piece in the Guardian yesterday.
Check out Polling truth for some enlightenment on the number-crunching front.
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Date
20041027
An American Election
Time
10:31
Be prepared for Ralph Nader.
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Date
20041027
The Bush Administration
Time
10:34
Democratic Underground – White House Website Scrubbing: Far-Reaching, Systematic, in Violation of ‘The Rule of Law’: Over the past several weeks, I have been chronicling the stark difference in the Bush Administration’s management of their White House website (to that of the Clinton administration). I caught them red-handed as they hastily removed the website’s list of Iraq “coalition” members just after the V.P. Debate when Dick Cheney accused John Edwards of being “dead wrong” for not counting Iraqi casualties as a percentage of “coalition casualties.” I caught them again after the third Presidential Debate when the White House removed damning video footage of Bush admitting at a press conference that he was “not truly that concerned” about bin Laden – precisely as John Kerry had charged during the debate. Continued investigation reveals a great deal of information that has vanished from the site.
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Date
20041027
Anyone But George
Time
10:35
I hate to repeat myself, but – again – To. Be. Read. In. Full.
Baghdad Burning: Who am I hoping will win? Definitely Kerry. There’s no question about it. I want Bush out of the White House at all costs. (And yes- who is *in* the White House *is* my business- Americans, you made it my business when you occupied my country last year) I’m too realistic to expect drastic change or anything phenomenal, but I don’t want Bush reelected because his reelection (or shall I call it his ‘reassignment’) will condone the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. It will say that this catastrophe in Iraq was worth its price in American and Iraqi lives. His reassignment to the White House will sanction all the bloodshed and terror we’ve been living for the last year and a half.
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Date
20041027
Distractions
Time
10:36
Bleaaarrrrrrrgh!!!!
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Date
20041027
Music
Time
10:38
You know me; I’m the type of guy who thinks that ‘rap’ is spelled with a silent ‘C’, but you simply much check out Eminem’s new track, Mosh. It’s awesome. There’s a link to the video in the latest WMV format, but if you have trouble chewing on that, there’s a Quicktime version here.
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Date
20041027
Humanity
Time
10:41
Here’s a conversation sparked by my Abu Ghraib video.
Please take the time to link to Something Funny Happened On The Way To Abu Ghraib somewhere today (or use any of the links, quotes or resources provided underneath the Flash show) to start a conversation of your own.
UPDATE – Also see this. You will choke with rage. (Are we seriously supposed to believe these people when they assure us they have no women in custody?)
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Date
20041027
Tolerance
Time
11:34
Oppose the homophobic EU Justice Commissioner
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Date
20041027
The Interweb
Time
14:10
The official campaign web site for George W. Bush is refusing connections from servers outside of the US.
Suddenly the ‘internets’ moment makes a lot more sense. There’s US… and there’s them. That’s two individual internets right there, folks. Case closed.
UPDATE – The BBC reports.
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Date
20041027
Anyone But George
Time
14:47
Why I believe in our president, as annotated by Nosemonkey. Good stuff.
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Date
20041027
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s Lovely!
Time
22:21
Independent – US gave date of war to Britain in advance, court papers reveal: Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday. The revelation strengthened suspicions that Tony Blair gave his agreement to President George Bush to go to war while the diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions were continuing.
There it is. Won’t it be fun watching Tony talk his way out of this one?
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Date
20041028
Updates
Time
08:47
Busy. Building.
Go and be nice to Sandra if you need something to do.
UPDATE – Oh, or download a copy of Fahrenheit 9/11. (Cheers to Carl for the heads-up.)
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Date
20041028
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s Lovely! And You’re Next!
Time
14:20
Pwahahahahahahahaha! Up is down, black is white, and Kerry is more likely to reinstate the draft than Bush. Of course, this editorial completely ignores the evidence that the Bush administration has clearly been gearing up for the draft and even seeking staff to make it happen since this time last year.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Perhaps Bush has an alternative plan to keep those troops coming. Cloning.
Click here for a screengrab from the GeorgeWBush.com website and then click here for detail.
Does this remind you of anything?
(Cheers to James for the heads-up.)
UPDATE – This post now comes complete with a bonus image.
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Date
20041028
Video
Time
14:21
More anti-Bush videos than you can shake a shandy-stick at. Enjoy. (Link via goodyspeedy.)
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Date
20041028
Anyone But George
Time
21:08
A top video and an excellent campaign. Got a camera? Use it. Let the intimidators know that we’re watching them.
UPDATE – Hahahahahahahaha! Presented in the spirit of fairness and balance. Have we just witnessed the start of a last-minute out-takes war?
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Date
20041028
The Interweb
Time
21:48
May I just say as a former recipient of Tony Blair’s email, that I f**king love this?
I can? Thanks.
(Link via ScaryDuck.)
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Date
20041029
Distractions
Time
06:44
Run out of ideas for Halloween?
PS – Some cartoons for you. Play nice.
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Date
20041029
The War on Terror
Time
06:47
Oh, well done, Drudge.
UPDATE – Ahahahahahahaha!
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Date
20041029
Anyone But George
Time
06:54
The American Conservative – Kerry’s The One: Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliche about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal – Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can’t be found to do it – and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.
Whoops. And there goes another.
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Date
20041029
The Interweb
Time
07:02
Heh. The excuse is touchingly typical.
Here’s a report from BoingBoing and here’s an inneresting development that may amuse you.
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Date
20041029
The End of Democracy
Time
07:52
American Politics 101. This is how corrupt and rotten its gotten here, all thanks to Republicans.
Another overview here and some satire here. Oh, and here’s another example of a voter-suppression letter .
(And just in case you’re wondering, yes, Republicans do stand to benefit even if they only manage to gum up the works a bit.)
UPDATE – Why Do Republicans Hate Democracy? … will show you a great way of doing this. It takes months of plotting, scheming, and generally thinking like an evil bastard.
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Date
20041029
It’s War! It’s Legal! It’s…. oh s**t!
Time
08:00
Boom.
(Here you go; this should keep you busy.)
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Date
20041029
Humanity
Time
08:20
Guardian – 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says study.
IraqBodyCount‘s estimates don’t go higher than 16,000. Not that a (*cough*) slightly lower number would make it OK.
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Date
20041029
Flash Music Video
Time
08:29
################################################
Your mission today:
Point lots of people in this direction.
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Date
20041029
Tony ‘King Blair
Time
08:47
Iraq war plans were drawn up eight days before Resolution 1441 and a month before UN inspectors under Hans Blix began their hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
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Date
20041029
Civil Liberties
Time
09:56
Remember; Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut.
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Date
20041029
An American Election
Time
10:26
That’s the spirit!
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Date
20041029
The Interweb
Time
13:25
Internets Vets for Truth: Our goal is to present you with (a range of video clips) to help you make an informed choice next Tuesday.
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Date
20041029
Interesting Times
Time
15:11
Bloody hell! What a week, eh? The only thing missing is a terror warning and a massive virus attack. (Aaaaand 5, 4, 3, 2…)
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Date
20041029
Anyone But George
Time
15:28
A bulge is not a wrinkle. This is hardly rocket science, but just in case you’re in any doubt, here’s a chap from NASA to explain it to you.
(Ha-ha! Captain Bunnypants was wired for sound and still lost the debate. And that’s not all he’s lost.)
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Date
20041029
Flash Music Video
Time
15:50
Have you whored this link yet? If not, why not?
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Date
20041030
The War on Terror
Time
22:21
I think we can bank on Osama bin Laden being alive. And quite possibly in possession of a sense of humour.
This is an exchange documented in a New York Times article that reached me recently, even though I was ‘offline’ at the time. I assume that most people who are online and watch such things have seen it….
Ron Suskind – Without a Doubt:
“I don’t know why you’re talking about Sweden,” Bush said. “They’re the neutral one. They don’t have an army.”
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: “Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They’re the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.” Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. “No, no, it’s Sweden that has no army.”
The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.
For me, the following reference is pretty clear…
Osama leads in with: “Security is an important foundation of human life, and free people do not squander their security, contrary to Bush’s claims that we hate freedom. Let him tell us why we did not attack Sweden, for example.”
PS – Me pointing this out means that I love Osama. And wish to have his babies.
