Archive for February, 2003
Why don’t we use GPS?
For me, the most worrisome claim made by Powell at the UN Security Council was about the mobile biological weapons factories. If true, and Powell said that that this evidence was supplied by multiple eye-witness accounts that allowed them to create accurate sketches of the inner workings of these mobile factories, then there are some [...]
Loose talk of using US Nuclear Weapons poses threat to world peace
Whatever one thinks of the coming war, its aim of eliminating weapons of mass destruction is a worthy one. Who could have imagined that the hawks would find a way to prepare for such a war that could legitimize nuclear weapons, leaving the world more dangerous than ever?
I wholly agree with Kristof on this [...]
How does a filibuster work?
The Senate’s odd tradition of the filibuster—delaying a vote indefinitely by speaking for hour after hour on the Senate floor—could push back a decision on Estrada for weeks. It might even force Republicans to withdraw the conservative Hispanic lawyer from consideration. Why is the Senate allowed to use this anti-democratic stunt, and how does it [...]
Sharon can be tried!
Belgium’s supreme appeals court has ruled that a genocide lawsuit against Ariel Sharon could go ahead once his term as prime minister of Israel ends.
From ITV News.
Afghanistan? Never heard of it.
It is bad enough that the Kurds are getting the shaft in the war on Iraq, but if I were a member of the Iraqi opposition I would be worried, very worried. It seems that the Bush administration clean forgot to include money promised to Afghanistan in their last budget! That’s right - they forgot [...]
Oops - there go your civil liberties.
The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information.
The Center for Public Integrity has [...]
Goering on War
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in [...]
Administration no longer worried about “coded messages”?
In the past, Condi Rice has implored the networks not to broadcast the tapes outright, fearing he might be activating sleeper cells in code.
But this time the administration flacked the tape. And Fox, the official Bush news agency, rushed the entire tape onto the air.
So the Bushies no longer care if Osama sends a [...]
Fired for reporting the numbers - Beth Osborne Interviewed
Beth Osborne Daponte talks about how her estimates of Iraq’s Gulf War dead got her in deep trouble with the White House
Beth Osborne Daponte was a 29-year-old Commerce Dept. demographer in 1992, when she publicly contradicted then-Defense Secretary Richard Cheney on the highly sensitive issue of Iraqi civilian casualties during the Gulf War. In short [...]
Who killed the simpsons
At some point during its 14-year run, The Simpsons turned into one of the best sitcoms on television—and that’s not a compliment. At one time, to call The Simpsons the best show on Fox would have been a vast understatement; to say it was the best sitcom on television would have been inadequate; and to [...]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
