Get the popcorn, there's a war on!

] The start of the war caused business at movie theaters to
] drop by 25 percent on Wednesday as people stayed home to
] watch the war, and snack-food sales and restaurant
] deliveries thrived. The opening salvos of the war had
] taken the place of prime-time entertainment, and
] television stations did their best to serve up gaudily
] produced coverage: the war in Iraq as the ultimate in
] reality television, as the apotheosis of every favorite
] Hollywood genre, from the combat thriller to the
] coming-of-age tale to the blow-'em-up, special-effects
] extravaganza.
]
] As he watched the "shock and awe" bombing that lit up the
] Baghdad sky on Friday , the veteran reporter Peter Arnett
] exclaimed, "An amazing sight, just like out of an action
] movie, but this is real." In the last week other
] commentators and viewers were drawing a lot of movie
] analogies too.
]
] The burning oil-well fires elicited comparisons to
] science-fiction movies; the plight of seven Tennessee
] families who had sent pairs of fathers and sons off to
] the war brought comparisons to "Saving Private Ryan."
] Allusions to the HBO mini-series "Band of Brothers" were
] ubiquitous, and the postbombing videotapes of Saddam
] Hussein (which might have starred one of his doubles)
] drew comparisons to the comedy "Dave," in which a
] look-alike fills in for an ailing American president, and
] "The Prisoner of

Shock, Awe and Razzmatazz in the Sequel

The chief reason why dollars are more than pieces of green paper is that countries all over the world need them for purchases, principally of oil. This requires them in addition to maintain dollar reserves to protect their own currency; and these reserves, when invested, help maintain the current high levels of the US securities markets.

...the need to dominate oil from Iraq is also deeply intertwined with the defense of the dollar. Its current strength is supported by OPEC's requirement (secured by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia) that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This requirement is currently threatened by the desire of some OPEC countries to allow OPEC oil sales to be paid in euros.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO, "HMMM"...

Bush's Deep Reasons for War on Iraq: Oil, Petrodollars, and the OPEC Euro question

] At the core of this is oil. When the administration's
] people say American involvement in Iraq is "not about
] oil," they're often responding to charges that they're
] only going after profits for American oil companies. They
] speak truth, in that context, when they say the war isn't
] about revenues from oil - the profits will only be a
] desirable side-effect. What the war is really about is
] the survival of the American lifestyle, which, in their
] world-view, is both non-negotiable and based almost
] entirely on access to cheap oil.

the vision of America held by the New Right

Maybe it has something to do with oil.

AlterNet: Obviously Oil

...But it's very interesting to consider in terms of the
American right and in terms of the Bureau, what they define terrorism to be. And I'll give you just two examples of conflicting or contrasting examples to
explain this. Right wing fundamentalist Christians and
racist groups are responsible for probably between 600
and 700 terrorist acts every year in the U.S.

The principal groups involved are the Ku Klux Klan, the National Alliance, Aryan Nation and so on. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a congressional investigation of it, there is not much dedication of FBI resources to it and yet it is instrumental in creating an atmosphere of terror for every person of color in this country, for women and for gays. It is a program of terrorism against almost the majority of the people in the United States. It is of far greater concern to most people of color that they are likely to be murdered by the Klan than by international Islamic terrorists.

In fact Ashcroft used 9/11 as an excuse to divert resources from the enforcement of the nation's civil rights laws into anti-terrorist scams. The right in the U.S. and the media in the U.S. don't consider this terrorism. It's just murder, bombings, arson, but hey it's against people who don't have much political power so it's not important. To give you an example of the sort of terrorism they are concerned about, a quote from a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigation concerned with this terrorism - it describes a horrific act of terrorism committed by Earth First, a radical environmental organization:

"On October 16, 1997, my Eureka, California office was rocked by what sounded like a thunderous explosion. In fact the sound was that of a 500-pound tree stump being dumped off a truck into my office foyer floor. Upon responding to the horrific sound, my two female staff members were greeted by the visages of several Earth First terrorists - one wearing a black ski mask. These masked marauders were wearing combat boots and dressed in black from head to toe and their cohorts in the stump drop then dumped large garbage bags of sawdust on the floor…"

This wasn't a joke, they were quite serious about this.

Isn't this when they held them down and put swabs of tear gas in their eyes?

Yes…

…while handcuffed?

Yes. What we see here is an example of how anti-terrorism is going to be used. Anti-terrorism is going to be used to attack groups that are concerned about the environment, about civil rights, about the rights of gays and women. It's not going to be used to attack racist or fundamentalist religious groups that are murdering people outside of abortion clinics. It's a purely political term and it's being promulgated with a political agenda in mind - that is the rollback of Constitutional rights.

The FBI's greatest hits

Things that make you go "hmmmm":

Its provisions allow for secret arrests of persons in certain terrorist-related cases until indictments have been handed down and there is no time limitation for this process. America has never permitted secret arrests for indefinite time periods. In addition, Patriot II provides that these terrorist arrests may be under "no bail" conditions and that any federal employee who discloses the identity of someone who has been secretly detained may be imprisoned for up to five years.

The bill mandates that government authorities are entitled to have ex parte (one- on-one, without defense counsel or a public record) and in camera (private) - meetings with judges without opposing counsel or defendants even being notified to secure rulings on search warrants, admissibility of evidence and investigative procedures. In certain cases where naturalized American citizens are found to be working with foreign governments, or making donations to foreign based charities later found to be supporting terrorist causes, the Attorney General will have the right to revoke U.S. citizenship and extradite those charged to any country in the world, whether there is an extradition treaty in place or not.

There has been some debate, encouraged by inaccurate and extremely irresponsible reporting by some "alternative" journalists and radio talk show hosts indicating that the bill provides the government with the ability to strip native-born U.S. citizens of their citizenship for seemingly trivial offenses. This is patently untrue. The actual truth is bad enough.

Section 501 of Patriot II amends section 349 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1481) pertaining to the citizenship status of those who have acquired U.S. citizenship. It states that those who have entered into the armed forces of a foreign government (when such forces are engaged in hostilities against the US), or have joined or provided material support "to a terrorist organization... if the organization is engaged in hostilities against the United States, its people, or its national security interests" will be deemed to have made a prima facie (apparent on its face) statement that they intend to relinquish their citizenship.

Lewis and Moyers were correct in their interpretation of this section in that a naturalized American who makes a donation to an Islamic charity later alleged to have been giving money to a terrorist organization could be stripped of their citizenship and deported anywhere without it ever having been established that he or she even knew how the charity was distributing its money.

The act broadens the scope of activities that qualify for the loose-to-non-existent guidelines for eavesdropping and surveillance under Patriot I and allows law enforcement personnel to obtain "national" search warrants for domestic and foreign terrorism investigations. As discussed in previous FTW stories, under Patriot I the definition... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

Patriot II

The leaked, draft Patriot Act II, probably to be launched at the legislature during the upcoming war, has some very scary, very constitution smashing provisions. These guys are fascists, I'm telling you....

from linked article:
Among other things, the draft includes provisions that would:
Authorize a DNA database of "suspected terrorists"-- a category so broadly defined that it could, according to CPI, include anyone associated with "suspected" groups, and any "noncitizens suspected of certain crimes or of having supported any group designated as terrorist."

Nullify most law enforcement consent decrees passed before September 11, 2001 that do not relate to civil rights violations. Consent decrees are legal agreements that limit law enforcement's ability to gather information about individuals and groups. Many, such as New York City's Handschu agreement (which was severely weakened by a federal court ruling on Tuesday), were arrived at in response to police abuses, including the harassment of social justice groups.

Enable the government to "expatriate" U.S. citizens "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a 'terrorist organization.'" Currently, you must formally state your intent to give up U.S. citizenship in order to lose it, or take a drastic action such as serving in the military of a state that is at war with the U.S. CPI warns that Patriot Act II would allow the government to "infer" that intent from an individual's political associations, and possibly deport any citizen who participated in the work of a group that the attorney general chooses to brand as "terrorist," even if he or she broke no laws.

....
Please note that the FBI considers Greenpeace and PETA to be 'terrorist' groups. Whether you support them or not, isn't that going a little too far?

Muted Response to Ashcroft's Sneak Attack on Liberties

flynn23 wrote:
] When the videotape in the VCR is replaced by a hard drive
] so that the copy made is as good as the original and can be
] shared over the Internet with a multitude of people, the right
] to record looks more--at least in the view of several media
] companies--like a license to steal.
]
] Oh for CRYING OUT LOUD! Get out of the way and let it happen
] already. We've only been waiting 10+ years for this to happen.
] It's finally all here, and you idiots are still trying to stop
] it. You'd think after 10 years, you'd have figured out how to
] make the transition by now.

Gee, information is getting hard to control, isn't it? But control it they must, that's the only way to make really obscene amounts of money, and incidentally control what media gets produced and promoted.
This is a great example of centralized control of a resource vs. decentralized control of that resource. I wonder what will happen....

RE: Recording Restricted

Some very interesting information here. In particular, check out the 9/11 timeline, which details the events of the day and leading up to the day. It becomes clear that there are a lot of unanswered questions, the investigation of which the administration is attempting to block. Why did the jets not scramble to intercept once the planes were suspected to be hijacked, when it is standard operating procedure to do so? (note that interception is NOT the same as shooting them down, but puts fighters in a position to do so) Serious investigation into this and other issues would uncover a scandal much bigger than Watergate: the Bush administration was complicit in the attacks of 9/11, if not actually behind them.
Insane? Read it for yourself, and ask, just what has the administration gained from 9/11? An endless, profitable, global war, amazing popularity, righteousness, complete amnesia about the judicial coup, Total Information Awareness, Fatherland Security, unprecidented secrecy, the ability to perpetually detain and execute anyone, citizen or not, *accused* of terrorism, in secret, with no evidence and no representation.
It is clear that they had been warned. With so much to gain, why would they try to stop it?

Center For Cooperative Research (911 Scandal)

] Brilliantly, seditiously remixed State of the Union
] address video.

It's refreshing to hear the fellow addressing us with the plain truth for once.

Deconstructing Bush...