This is WAY beyond Wag The Dog

Fox News advised White House after 9/11

“Roger Ailes, the chairman of the Fox News Channel, confirmed on Monday that he sent a note suggesting policies to follow in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks,” the New York Times reports. “The existence of the note was revealed in the new book by Bob Woodward, , Bush at War. Mr. Woodward characterized it ‘an important-looking confidential communication’ in which Mr. Ailes was offering a ‘back-channel message’ to the president: that the president needed to convince the American public that he was taking ‘the harshest measures possible’ or else the public would not remain patient with the administration.”

Not to mention that some seriously bloodthirsty pounding of the drums for war by Fox News would boost their ratings providing some tidy ad revenue.

Conspiracies? Heck, this one is out in the open. What more evidence is needed to demonstrate that Fox News is the propaganda channel for the Bushies? “We report, you decide”, yeah right. “We distort, truth died”, I’d say.

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This could start rocking the government

Militia battles protesting students in Tehran. 

Paramilitary forces clashed Monday with protesting students, who gathered at Industrial Sharif University in central Tehran in support of a reformist scholar sentenced to death.

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Fly those friendly skies?

Only if you’re not on the no-fly list. And watch out for those dangerous elderly nuns. Article from Salon (fee)

A spokesman for the new Transportation Security Administration has acknowledged for the first time that the government has a list of about 1,000 people who are deemed “threats to aviation” and not allowed on airplanes under any circumstances.

And in an interview with Salon, the official suggested that [some] political activists may be on a separate list that subjects them to strict scrutiny but allows them to fly. “We have a list of about 1,000 people,” said David Steigman, the TSA spokesman. The agency was created a year ago by Congress to handle transportation safety during the war on terror. “This list is composed of names that are provided to us by various government organizations like the FBI, CIA and INS We don’t ask how they decide who to list. Each agency decides on its own who is a ‘threat to aviation.’”

The agency has no guidelines to determine who gets on the list, Steigman says, and no procedures for getting off the list if someone is wrongfully on it. Meanwhile, airport security personnel, citing lists that are provided by the agency and that appear to be on airline ticketing and check-in computers, seem to be netting mostly priests, elderly nuns, Green Party campaign operatives, left-wing journalists, right-wing activists and people affiliated with Arab or Arab-American groups. Via ProRev.

Hmm, Am I, as an active Green, on on the list. Will you be next? This is getting crazy.

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Women strip for Peace

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Terrorist training camp discovered in America

Details

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Tom Tomorrow gets it right (again!)

Why we’re going to war

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Japan government may switch from Windows to Linux

The Japanese government may replace their Windows computer with Linux, in a move to boost security.

Indeed, “Windows security” is a misnomer, as one constantly needs to download updates and patches to repair gaping security holes that never should have existed in the first place. And that’s just for end users. For those running networks, the security issues are much more serious - and dangerous.

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Uh, oh

Iranian hardliners clash with student protesters. 

Hundreds of Iranian hardliners clashed with pro-reform students at a demonstration on Monday in the first serious outbreak of violence in 10 days of university protests against a dissident’s death sentence.

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All war, all the time

If Bush has his way, will will have continual war for the forseeable future. With no thought given to what happens if we encounter obstacles along the way. Or what the blowback will be. And how could there not be blowback?

From John Robb’s Radio Weblog

60 Minutes interviewed Bob Woodward last night on his new book:  Bush at War.  It included snippets from an amazing recorded interview between Bob and George Bush.  It changed the way I am looking at the future in the following ways.

1. Bush has a long-term agenda to eliminate the three major “named” sponsors of terrorism (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea).  He will not stop until all three regimes are “changed.”  Invasion of North Korea is on the table.  This agenda is based on the idea that technology and geo-politics have changed in a way that makes the continued existance of nations that support terrorism and the development of weapons of mass destruction untenable.  This agenda will direct every aspect of his presidency.
   
2. These conflicts, and potentially additional conflicts with unnammed regimes (Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Palestine), will drive global politics and economics for the next decade.  The global economy will likely suck during this period.  This series of conflicts will consume all of our attention span.
   
3. We are in the process of re-allocating how we deploy our forces world-wide.  It is very likely that after an invasion of Iraq, that most of the forces currently in Europe will be permanently re-based in Iraq.  The same holds true with North Korea and the troops we currently station in Japan and South Korea.  Long-term pacification of rogue states and regional hotspots is the goal.

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Ayatollah orders reconsideration of scholar’s death sentence.

Iran’s supreme religious leader has ordered the country’s chief judge to review a reformist scholar’s death sentence, which has been the cause of Iran’s largest protests in years, a lawyer for the scholar said Sunday.

It appears the student protesters who shut down the universities have won. In Iran. This is genuinely inspiring.

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Maybe not a walk in the park after all

Special Republican Guard: Iraq’s loyal and formidable force. 

Despite doubts about the overall fighting capability of the Iraqi military, the Pentagon considers Iraq’s Special Republican Guard a formidable combat force willing to fight and die defending President Saddam Hussein

“I don’t think the folks I’m dealing with are thinking this is going to be a cakewalk; it never is,” one four-star general said. “Anybody with a gun in his hand who is defending his town or his tribe can be a pretty tough opponent, especially when he’s in his own backyard.”

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Catholic Bishop’s statement against an Iraq war

There’s some powerful stuff here. A few paragraphs that particularly impressed me.

Based on the facts that are known to us, we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature. 

The use of force must have “serious prospects for success” and “must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated”. We recognize that not taking military action could have its own negative consequences. We are concerned, however, that war against Iraq could have unpredictable consequences not only for Iraq but for peace and stability elsewhere in the Middle East.

In assessing whether “collateral damage” is proportionate, the lives of Iraqi men, women and children should be valued as we would the lives of members of our own family and citizens of our own country.

We pray for President Bush and other world leaders that they will find the will and the ways to step back from the brink of war with Iraq and work for a peace that is just and enduring. We urge them to work with others to fashion an effective global response to Iraq’s threats that recognizes legitimate self defense and conforms to traditional moral limits on the use of military force.

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Italy gets tough on crime!

Former prime minister gets 24 years for conspiracy to murder.

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