The Secret of Mass Delusion
What happened to Pfc. LaVena Johnson?
Parents question their daughter’s mysterious death in Iraq
A year and a half ago, a 19-year-old Florissant woman became the first female from Missouri to die during the Iraq war.
The military was quick to point out that her death was not combat related.
Major Swift Boat donor to Kerry: “you’re a hero”
But Sam Fox gave $50,000 to Swift Boat Liars
Ah, the Republican hypocrisy is one thing we can count on!
Happy Birthday Michel de Montaigne!
It’s the birthday of the great essayist Michel de Montaigne, born in Périgueux, France (1533). His father was a wealthy landowner. Montaigne went off to college and became a lawyer, but his father died when Montaigne was 38 years old. And so he retired to the family estate and took over managing the property. And it was there that he began to write. He wrote short pieces on various topics, and he called them “essays,” because the French word “essai” means attempt.
He lived at a time when religious civil wars were breaking out all over the country — Protestants and Catholics killing each other. The Black Plague was ravaging the peasants in his neighborhood; he once saw men digging their own graves and then lying down to die in them. Still, while he occasionally wrote about big subjects like hatred and death, he also wrote about the most ordinary things, like his gardening or the way radishes affected his digestion. He wrote about sadness, idleness, liars, fear, smell, prayer, cannibals, and thumbs, among other things.
Michel de Montaigne wrote, “The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.”
[Writer's Almanac]
If you talk with the animals, they will talk with you, and you will know each other. If you do not talk with them, you will not know them. And what you do not know you will fear. What one fears, one destroys. ~Chief Dan George
Woman and Children
… at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad. Bombers killed 18 Iraqi women and children on Tuesday as a relentless bombing spree snuffed out dozens more lives.
Ozone Man Sequel
February 28, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By MAUREEN DOWD
HOLLYWOOD
Al Gore now has a movie with an Oscar and a grandson named Oscar.
Who could ask for anything more? (more…)
News War: What’s Happening to the News?
Frontline
Tuesday, February 27, 9:00pm
Lowell Bergman examines the economic pressures the news industry faces because of aging audiences and the Internet. Included: comments from “Daily Show” head writer David Javerbaum; Ted Koppel; former L.A. Times managing editor Dean Baquet.
Pepe Escobar : US’s Iraq oil grab is a done deal
US President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney might as well declare the Iraq war over and out. As far as they - and the humongous energy interests they defend - are concerned, only now is the mission really accomplished. More than half a trillion dollars spent and perhaps half a million Iraqis killed have come down to this.
A Land of Camel Milk and Honey
February 27, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
HARGEISA, Somaliland(?)
Here’s the ethos of Somalia, as a former Mogadishu resident explained it to me: “If I use a dollar to buy food, then tomorrow I have nothing. If I use a dollar to buy a bullet, then I can eat every day.” (more…)
Torture Is Finally on Trial
By Naomi Klein, The Nation
Something remarkable is going on in a Miami courtroom. The cruel methods US interrogators have used since September 11 to “break” prisoners are finally being put on trial. This was not supposed to happen. The Bush administration’s plan was to put José Padilla on trial for allegedly being part of a network linked to international terrorists. But Padilla’s lawyers are arguing that he is not fit to stand trial because he has been driven insane by the government.
We Miss You, Bill Hicks
You died 13 years ago today. But your genius lives on. Thank you.
“I had a vision of a way we could have no enemies ever again if you’re interested in this- Anybody interested in hearing this? It’s kind of an interesting theory and all we have to do is make one decisive act and we could rid the world of all our enemies at once. Here’s what we do: You know all that money that we spend on nuclear weapons and defence every year? Trillions of dollars. Instead, if we spent that money feeding and clothing the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, not ONE; We could as one race explore outer space together in peace, for ever.”
Watch your Step, or We’ll Sick the Dems on You!
President Bush has sent “an unusually tough message to one of his most important allies,” Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. But the “tough message” is about what others will do: Bush has warned “that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda.”
How Many More Have to Die Because They’re Gay?
72-year-old gay man Andrew Anthos dies after violent hate crime. He was on a city bus February 13 when a man asked him if he was gay. The man followed Anthos off the bus at the stop in front of his building and beat him with a metal pipe. He fell into a coma and died 10 days later. Police are seeking the assailant. Andrew was a private, gentle man whose twin passions to support military veterans and public transportation earned him a reputation for community service.
Substance Over Image
February 26, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Six years ago a man unsuited both by intellect and by temperament for high office somehow ended up running the country.
(more…)
Mud, Dust, Whatever
February 26, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By BOB HERBERT
If Bill and Hillary Clinton were the stars of a reality TV show, it would be a weekly series called “The Connivers.” The Clintons, the most powerful of power couples, are always scheming at something, and they’re good at it. (more…)
Choices
Happened across a news site and seeing these two stories right on top of each other caused me to stop and wonder what influenced each of them in the paths they chose. 
Police try to determine if two armed robberies are related
(Wallingford-WTNH) _ The two robberies happened just hours apart in Rocky Hill and Wallingford
(East Hartford-WTNH, Feb. 23, 2007 5:20 PM) _ Flags around the state are flying at half-staff for Connecticut’s latest casualty of war. Forty-year old Army Sergeant Richard Ford died from combat injuries on Tuesday.
This Poll Was Smoking Something
Just got called and asked to participate in a poll for Time magazine on 2008 presidential candidates. Unfortunately the very sweet, very young-sounding, possibly African-American girl asking the questions could not pronounce Kucinich, evangelical, or diplomacy (to name a few). Stumbled over many words, so that I started to anticipate the answers and say them before she was done, because it was painful to hear her struggle. Bless her heart. Anyway, I was flabbergasted to be ask a couple of these questions:
What candidate would be most likely to do well on “The Apprentice”?
What candidate would be the best to work for?
What candidate would do the best at speed dating?
How would you answer?
‘They Think They’ve Been Cursed by God’
February 25, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
President Bush’s budget request this month proposes that the U.S. cut spending on global maternal and child health programs to $346 million, or just $1.15 per person in the U.S.
To understand what the cuts mean, meet Simeesh Segaye.
(more…)
Where Were You That Summer of 2001?
February 25, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By FRANK RICH
“UNITED 93,” Hollywood’s highly praised but indifferently attended 9/11 docudrama, will be only a blip on tonight’s Oscar telecast. The ratings rise of “24” has stalled as audiences defect from the downer of terrorists to the supernatural uplift of “Heroes.” Cable surfers have tuned out Iraq for a war with laughs: the battle over Anna Nicole’s decomposing corpse. Set this cultural backdrop against last week’s terrifying but little-heeded front-page Times account of American “intelligence and counterterrorism officials” leaking urgent warnings about Al Qaeda’s comeback, and ask yourself: Haven’t we been here before? (more…)
Thousands protest against Iraq war
A protester wearing a skull mask marches amongst 1000’s of anti-war protesters through central London in a demonstration calling for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and to oppose the renewal of Trident nuclear missiles, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)
“Ghosts of Abu Ghraib”: In New Documentary, Firsthand Accounts of Abuse
It’s been over two and a half years since the publication of the notorious photos depicting the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody at Abu Ghraib prison. While a small number of low-ranking soldiers have been prosecuted, the Bush administration has steadfastly refused to hold high-level officials accountable for creating the policies and tolerating a permissive climate that resulted in these abuses.
In a powerful new documentary, acclaimed filmmaker Rory Kennedy investigates the abuse and torture of prisoners in the infamous Iraqi prison. “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” features interviews with prisoners, court-martialed abusers, military personnel and legal experts, among others.
In an exclusive ACLU podcast, Rory Kennedy talked about her new film with Jameel Jaffer, deputy director of our National Security Program and a lead attorney in the fight against unlawful detention and abuse.
To hear the podcast and learn more about “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” and the ACLU’s challenges to unlawful detention go to: www.aclu.org/ghostsofabughraib
