Masters of Disaster: The Bush Gang Opens the Floodgates Again
At first glance, the Washington Post story seems to be a rather routine piece about a turf war between state officials and the federal government over disaster planning. But upon closer examination, it turns out to be a doorway into the dark, fetid heart of the Bush Regime’s hell. As the Post’s Spencer Hsu reports:
Money Been On Me Blues: Once More With the Hat
Money been on me all my life
Left my children hungry, withered my wife
Kept me strapped to a grindin stone
Money oh money won’t leave me alone
Sorry to be so crass, but due to the completely inexplicable fact that no well-heeled news outfit has picked up the prose stylings of your correspondent following not one but two ash-cannings in the last 12 months, we are
The Rewards of Rape: Rich Bounty for a Bush Partner in Torture
Our text for today is from the Guardian: Freed doctor describes torture ordeal inside Libyan jail.
Nightmare on Main Street: More on Bush’s Anti-Dissent Order
I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones
—Eliot
We wrote recently here of Bush’s new executive order granting himself and his minions the arbitrary power to seize the entire assets of any American citizen – without warning, without any criminal charges whatsoever – solely by declaring that their victim somehow poses an unspecified threat to “the peace or stability of Iraq” or else is “undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction
The Magic Lantern Goes Dark: Ingmar Bergman Dead at 89
A couple of weeks ago, I sat up late one night watching a documentary on one of the BBC channels. It was a profile of an aged but still active Ingmar Bergman, centered on long interviews with him i
n 2006 at his house on the solitary island of Faro, off the coast of Sweden. A day and a half ago, in a house on the Spanish-Portugese border, I sat up far into the night with my brother-in-law,
Good News is No News: Profitable Ignorance of Extremist Recantations
An important development has been taking place in the real “war” on terror — not the profit-making, fear-and-domination machine of the Bush Administration’s devising, but the genuine struggle to quell the violence of Islamist extremism. Yet despite the great potential of this breakthrough, an overwhelming majority of Americans have never heard of it. Certainly it has not been featured — or even mentioned — by the corporate press and government PR engines in the United States. And why not? Because it is a breakthrough toward peace — and peace, as we all know, is not boffo box
Future Shock: A Deadly Harbinger of Post-Surge Iraq
Aircraft fired missiles and dropped a bomb in a Shiite stronghold in northeastern Baghdad, killing six militants, the U.S. military said Saturday. Iraqi officials claimed a higher death toll, saying 18 civilians were killed.
The Husseiniyah airstrikes began after American forces came under small-arms fire from a building just before midnight, prompting helicopters to fire missiles at the structure, the military said, adding that three of the gunmen fled into another building.Aircraft dropped a bomb that destroyed that
A View From the Bridge: Edsel Floyd Honored in Watertown
On July 22, the State of Tennessee will honor one of its most distinguished citizens in a ceremony inaugurating the Edsel Cordell Floyd Bridge in Watertown. The bridge, which spans Round Lick Creek, is part of Highway 70, the two-lane road that threads the center of the state from the mountains of East Tennessee through the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee to the flatlands of Memphis and the Mississippi River.<br
Bringing It All Back Home: New Bush Order Could Criminalize Dissent
Here’s a quick follow-up to the previous post: The Legal Pervert’s Parade: Executive Privilege Über Alles.
Sara Robinson at Orcinus gives us a glimpse of what could be coming as the unrestrained executive tyranny rolls on in Are We There Yet? She examines the new Executive Order quietly signed by Bush this week, in which he bestows upon himself — and designated minions — the arbitrary power to seize the assets of anyone whom he decides “poses a significant risk” of commiting violence aimed at
The Legal Pervert’s Parade: Executive Privilege Über Alles
Just in case you haven’t noticed before, the United States of America has become a presidential tyranny. We’ve been clanging this bell here (and elsewhere) since late September 2001, and have seen it confirmed over and over through the years — with torture edicts, domestic spying, rendition, secret prisons, indefinite detention of uncharged, untried captives, etc. — and most recently and most baldly with the “Military Commissions Act,” which enshrined the principle of arbitrary presidential power in law and gutted the ancient