Someone to Feel Sorry For

All the midgets who were hit with the spam titled "Are You Short This Week?"

Unless You Read Pravda, You Heard it Here First

Russia's dumping the dollar and switching to the Euro.

Today in History

One year ago today, the Iraqi Air Force prepared to defend Najaf.

Questions asked to the U.S. House of Representatives 
on January 26, 2005 by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

1. What if the policies of foreign intervention, entangling alliances, policing the world, nation building, and spreading our values through force are deeply flawed? 
2. What if it is true that Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction? 
3. What if it is true that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were never allies? 
4. What if it is true that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein did nothing to enhance our national security? 
5. What if our current policy in the Middle East leads to the overthrow of our client oil states in the region? 
6. What if the American people really knew that more than 20,000 American troops have suffered serious casualties or died in the Iraq war, and 9% of our forces already have been made incapable of returning to battle? 
7. What if it turns out there are many more guerrilla fighters in Iraq than our government admits? 
8. What if there really have been 100,000 civilian Iraqi casualties, as some claim, and what is an acceptable price for "doing good?" 
9. What if Rumsfeld is replaced for the wrong reasons, and things become worse under a Defense Secretary who demands more troops and an expansion of the war? 
10. What if we discover that, when they do vote, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis support Islamic (Sharia) law over western secular law, and want our troops removed? 
11. What if those who correctly warned of the disaster awaiting us in Iraq are never asked for their opinion of what should be done now? 
12. What if the only solution for Iraq is to divide the country into three separate regions, recognizing the principle of self-determination while rejecting the artificial boundaries created in 1918 by non-Iraqis? 
13. What if it turns out radical Muslims don't hate us for our freedoms, but rather for our policies in the Middle East that directly affected Arabs and Muslims? 
14. What if the invasion and occupation of Iraq actually distracted from pursuing and capturing Osama bin Laden? 
15. What if we discover that democracy can't be spread with force of arms? 
16. What if democracy is deeply flawed, and instead we should be talking about liberty, property rights, free markets, the rule of law, localized government, weak centralized government, and self-determination promoted through persuasion, not force? 
17. What if Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda actually welcomed our invasion and occupation of Arab/Muslim Iraq as proof of their accusations against us, and it served as a magnificent recruiting tool for them? 
18. What if our policy greatly increased and prolonged our vulnerability to terrorists and guerrilla attacks both at home and abroad? 
19. What if the Pentagon, as reported by its Defense Science Board, actually recognized the dangers of our policy before the invasion, and their warnings were ignored or denied? 
20. What if the argument that by fighting over there, we won't have to fight here, is wrong, and the opposite is true? 
21. What if we can never be safer by giving up some of our freedoms? 
22. What if the principle of pre-emptive war is adopted by Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and others, "justified" by current U.S. policy? 
23. What if pre-emptive war and pre-emptive guilt stem from the same flawed policy of authoritarianism, though we fail to recognize it? 
24. What if Pakistan is not a trustworthy ally, and turns on us when conditions deteriorate? 
25. What if plans are being laid to provoke Syria and/or Iran into actions that would be used to justify a military response and pre-emptive war against them? 
26. What if our policy of democratization of the Middle East fails, and ends up fueling a Russian-Chinese alliance that we regret - an alliance not achieved even at the height of the Cold War? 
27. What if the policy forbidding profiling at our borders and airports is deeply flawed? 
28. What if presuming the guilt of a suspected terrorist without a trial leads to the total undermining of constitutional protections for American citizens when arrested? 
29. What if we discover the army is too small to continue policies of pre-emption and nation-building? What if a military draft is the only way to mobilize enough troops? 
30. What if the "stop-loss" program is actually an egregious violation of trust and a breach of contract between the government and soldiers? What if it actually is a backdoor draft, leading to unbridled cynicism and rebellion against a voluntary army and generating support for a draft of both men and women? Will lying to troops lead to rebellion and anger toward the political leadership running the war? 
31. What if the Pentagon's legal task-force opinion that the President is not bound by international or federal law regarding torture stands unchallenged, and sets a precedent which ultimately harms Americans, while totally disregarding the moral, practical, and legal arguments against such a policy? 
32. What if the intelligence reform legislation - which gives us bigger, more expensive bureaucracy - doesn't bolster our security, and distracts us from the real problem of revamping our interventionist foreign policy? 
33. What if we suddenly discover we are the aggressors, and we are losing an unwinnable guerrilla war? 
34. What if we discover, too late, that we can't afford this war - and that our policies have led to a dollar collapse, rampant inflation, high interest rates, and a severe economic downturn?
- Truthout -

Meaningless Rant

The meaningless rant and the subsequent discussion of gay marriage has been moved here.

Quiz of the Week

The Middle East ceasefire will last...

a) a day.
b) a week.
c) a month.
d) as long as all Israelis and Palestinians long to live in peace and harmony.

Important Political Action of the Week

Put these stickers everywhere.

I Feel So Much Safer Now

"Two boys were arrested for making pencil-and-crayon stick figure drawings depicting a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, police said. The children, charged with a felony, were taken from school in handcuffs. The 9- and 10-year-old boys were arrested Monday and charged with making a written threat to kill or harm another person. They were also suspended from school. One drawing showed the two boys standing on either side of the other boy and 'holding knives pointed through' his body, according to a police report. The figures were identified by written names or initials. Another drawing showed a stick figure hanging, tears falling from his eyes, with two other stick figures standing below him. Other pieces of scrap paper listed misspelled profanities and the initials of the boy who was allegedly threatened.  The boys' parents said they thought the children should be punished by the school and families, not the legal system.
- Boys Arrested for Stick Figure Drawing -

Blogger Most in Need of Spellcheck

Well...
something fishy is hapening in Baghdad..
since the day after the day of the elections, Baghdad became damn silent, although all the security measurments have stopped after the elections, the streets are opened again and the concrete blocks disapeared from the streets and bridges.
my ears are about to hurt me, no explosions at all!
i mean...at ALL!
so: Life of Iraqis have defenately improved because of the elections.
wait a second...
now, couldn't this be exactly what "they" want us to think?
which brings back the supposadly naive issue back to the surface: is it possible that the Americans themselves are making, or at last prticipating in making these explosions in the city?
dont give me these looks!
walk with me in the streets and lets make a servey!
who thinks that the American are responsible for these actions?
you would be amazed of the percentage of people that do!
in so many occasions, when a car bomb explodes, you find an eye witness telling you that he saw an American helicopter launching a missile towards a car in the street, i talked to one of those eye witnesses myself right after one of the car bombs exploded.
a car bomb exploded a while ago, on a bridge, and made a hole with diameter of about 2 meters right through the bridge, i looked at the hole from under the bridge, and saw, besides a 2m diameter window to the sky, the enforcement steel hanging down, now i need you to go see an engineer, and ask him: what does it realy take to make that happen?
The car bomb explosion effect goes horizontally, much more that it does vertically, i have seen the location of explosion of many car bombs (being in Baghdad, you know), and the street was damaged under them, but not really that much, just fractions and descent in the asphalt.
it looks much more easier to believe that a missle hit the bridge.
- tell me a secret -
 

Don't Take My Word For It

     "Light is constantly trying to enter our lives... If the Light is constantly trying to share with us, why aren't we endlessly fulfilled every moment of the day? The answer to this amazing question is one of the most important spiritual lessons we can grasp: there cannot be Light without a vessel. This means that although the Creator desires to share and give us everything (Light), we need to create the vessel to receive it. And the amount of Light that we receive is exactly dependent on the size of the vessel that we create.
    "What is the vessel? Our spiritual transformation. The more we transform, the bigger our capacity to receive Light."
- Yehuda Berg's Weekly Consciousness Tune-up -

"Every man serves a useful purpose: A miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor."
- Laurence J. Peter -

    "The two parties meet in the middle of the forest, and they address the first thing, which is each other's humanity. And they address it in a very interesting way. In the beginning, they set the stage by paying attention to the people. The one side says to the other side something like this. 'Well we've been engaged in combat and you've come out of the forest and you're covered in the bracken of the forest; we see that on your clothing. So the first thing we do is brush your clothing off, and clean off all the stuff that shows that you've been in a war.' The next thing they do is they brush off the bench that the man is going to sit on and make it clean and ready for that. Then they begin addressing a series of things.
    "These are symbolic. They say stuff like this: 'With this wampum, I release the pressure in your chest. You're feeling tightened in your body from the struggle, so I release you from that. With this one, I take the tears out of your eyes that you've been crying because of the people you lost in your war. And with this one, I release your vocal cords. I release your voice so you can speak strongly.' What they are basically addressing is that things have to be done symbolically to prepare both sides to talk. The first thing that is there in the tradition has to do with the concept of what conditions actually lead to peace...
   "People are starting to talk about a war on terrorism. Well some cultures haven't realized that there's always been a war on terrorism. Forever, as long as human memory has existed, there have been assassinations and harm done from group to group, on and on, endlessly. And sometimes they had some sort of claim to a religious foundation, sometimes it was just things that happened as a result of battles. But whatever it was, it would have been an interesting thing, in my opinion, if the contemporary war on terrorism had been built on principles of pragmatism, of coming to ways of sorting out whatever it is that people are saying was done wrong to them, and making proposals about how to make it right. That would have been interesting.
    "There will never be an endgame to the war on terrorism. What we need to do is a beginning game in the process of peacemaking. As far as I can see in pragmatic terms, we haven't begun that yet."
- John Mohawk: What Can We Learn from Native America about War and Peace? The Progressive Pragmatism of the Iroquois Confederacy -

    "I want people to know that the longer I thought about just how stupid the concept of war really is the stronger I felt about not participating in war. Why do we tell our children to not solve their differences with violence, then turn around and commit the ultimate in violence against people in another country who have nothing to do with the political attitudes of their leaders?
    "Having read numerous books on the subject of war and having heard all the arguments for war, I have come to the conclusion that there are no valid arguments for the destructive force of war. People are destroyed, nations are destroyed, and yet we continue on with war. The young people that I went with to the combat zone looked at it like it was a video game they played back in their childhood.
    "When you contemplate the beauty of the world around us and the gifts we have been given you have to ask yourself, 'Is this what humanity is meant to do, wage war against one another?' Why can't we teach our children not to hate or to not be afraid of someone else just because they are different from us? Why must it be considered honorable to train young men and women to look through the sights of a high-powered rifle and to kill another human being from 300 meters away?"
- Kevin Benderman: A Matter of Conscience -

    "A decorated Marine Corps general said, 'It's fun to shoot some people' as he described the wars U.S. troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
    "His boss, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said yesterday that the comments reflected "the unfortunate and harsh realities of war" but that the general has been asked to watch his words in public.
    "Lt. Gen. James Mattis, a career infantry officer in charge of developing better ways to train and equip Marines, made the comments Tuesday at a forum in San Diego.
    "According to an audio recording, he said, 'Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot... It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.'"
- AP: Marine general calls war, killing 'fun' -

    "Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job including in the sex industry or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.
   "The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.    "When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalize people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.
   "'There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry,' said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specializes in such cases. 'The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits.'"
- Clare Chapman: 'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits' -

    "What of the election's content? How has the vote changed things in Iraq? Has it led to any expansion of democratic rights, or given the Iraqi people greater power? The U.S. military remains the real ruler of Iraq.
   "The day after the election, just like the day before, Iraqi towns and villages are subject to bombardment by U.S. military aircraft. Ordinary people face the prospect of being summarily shot or thrown into detention camps without charges or trials, to face abuse and torture.
   "The struggle for genuine democracy means a fight for freedom of the press and the right to strike and assemble - all of which the U.S. occupation ruthlessly suppressed before the election and will continue to do so afterwards. It means the right of a people to determine their own future, free of external compulsion.
   "The ultimate purpose of the election, from Washington's point of view, is to legitimize a continued U.S. occupation and the installation of a regime under the tutelage of the U.S. military - a puppet government that will sign agreements granting the Pentagon permanent bases in Iraq and ceding to the US-based oil conglomerates a controlling interest in the country's massive petroleum reserves. Officials of the Iraqi Interim Government recently revealed that legislation has already been drafted to turn over the country's oil industry to the likes of Occidental, ExxonMobil and Chevron-Texaco."
- Bill Van Auken: WSWS replies to letters on Iraq's election and the U.S. occupation -

    "We must withdraw our military from Iraq, the sooner the better. The reason is simple: Our presence there is a disaster for the American people and an even bigger disaster for the Iraqi people.
    "It is a strange logic to declare, as so many in Washington do, that it was wrong for us to invade Iraq but right for us to remain. A recent New York Times editorial sums up the situation accurately: 'Some 21 months after the American invasion, United States military forces remain essentially alone in battling what seems to be a growing insurgency, with no clear prospect of decisive success any time in the foreseeable future.'
    "And then, in an extraordinary non sequitur: 'Given the lack of other countries willing to put up their hands as volunteers, the only answer seems to be more American troops, and not just through the spring, as currently planned... Forces need to be expanded through stepped-up recruitment.'
   "Here is the flawed logic: We are alone in the world in this invasion. The insurgency is growing. There is no visible prospect of success. Therefore, let's send more troops? The definition of fanaticism is that when you discover that you are going in the wrong direction, you redouble your speed."
- Howard Zinn: Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home -

    "The United States is steadily losing ground to the Iraqi insurgency, according to every key military yardstick.
    "A Knight Ridder analysis of U.S. government statistics shows that through all the major turning points that raised hopes of peace in Iraq, including the arrest of Saddam Hussein and the handover of sovereignty at the end of June, the insurgency, led mainly by Sunni Muslims, has become deadlier and more effective.
    "The analysis suggests that unless something dramatic changes - such as a newfound will by Iraqis to reject the insurgency or a large escalation of U.S. troop strength - the United States won't win the war. It's axiomatic among military thinkers that insurgencies are especially hard to defeat because the insurgents' goal isn't to win in a conventional sense but merely to survive until the will of the occupying power is sapped. Recent polls already suggest an erosion of support among Americans for the war."
- Tom Lasseter and Jonathan S. Landay: Analysis: Iraqi Insurgency Growing Larger, More Effective -

    "Let the Sunnis have what is left of Fallugah and the Sunni Triangle. Let the Shi'its have Baghdad. Bush doesn't want it anyway. It is covered with DU. It glows in the dark! Let the Kurds get the north. And let everyone (except poor sorry George Bush who will probably sulk about this for decades) split the oil profits. If the Iraqis divide themselves up this way - and perhaps form a federation like the U.S. federation of states - everyone will be happy. Everyone will get a piece of the pie.
    "But what will America get out of this? you might ask. American parents won't have to send thousands more sons and daughters into a hopeless quagmire, we taxpayers will save hundreds of billions of dollars - and America will get to take its marbles home INSTEAD OF LOSING THEM! End of problem.
   "America has been divided into 50 parts for YEARS! Works for us."
- Jane Stillwater -

"If George Bush took a shit in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Orrin Hatch would appear on Fox 'News' to declare how bold a shit it was and how mighty a loaf was pinched out and how are the Democrats going to deal with a President who is unafraid to take a dump with a stone Lincoln staring at him."
- The Rude Pundit: The State of the Union Is "Suck It, Fuckers" -

    "Voters turned out in unexpectedly high numbers, defying terrorists in an act of collective bravery that marked a historic triumph in the struggle for democracy and a turning point in the long and bloody US military operation thousands of miles from American shores.
   "Iraq, January 2005? No, this was the story pitched by the government and the US media to the American public more than 37 years ago after the people of South Vietnam went to the polls in an election engineered by Washington to legitimize its imperialist intervention in that country.While the differences between Vietnam and Iraq are many, the similarities between the way in which Washington organized, manipulated and exploited elections in both countries to further its own strategic aims are all too evident.
   “'US encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' was the headline of the New York Times September 4, 1967, the day after the ballots were cast.
   “'United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of the turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.'
   Washington and its puppet regime claimed an 83 percent turnout among the 5.85 million South Vietnamese registered voters.
   “'The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the national election,' the Times added.
   "The day after the vote, the administration of US President Lyndon Johnson hailed the election as a 'major step forward,' declaring that the South Vietnamese people had expressed their democratic will and 'deserve our support.'”
- Bill Van Auken: Vietnam 1967 & Iraq 2005: using elections to justify criminal wars -

"[T]he president's most important constituency is not the Christian right, but Wall Street, which stands to gain hefty new benefits from the privatization of part of the Social Security system in the form of individual investment accounts. The main Wall Street lobby, the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security and its 35 members, gave $34.6 million in individual and PAC contributions from 1999 through late 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Members of the Alliance spent $108 million lobbying the federal government during 2003 and the first half of 2004."
- James Ridgeway: From Security to Risk in One Easy Bush Plan - President Trades American Promise for a Wall Street Gamble -

"While the Palestinians, including militant groups such as Hamas, make every attempt for a cease fire, the Israelis continue to kill more Palestinian children. Just 5 days ago the Israelis shot and killed a 3-year-old Palestinian girl while the young child sat in her own home. Today, the Israelis shot and killed a 10-year-old Palestinian girl while she stood in line at her day school. Yet, the only news we get from the U.S. media is praise to Sharon and his Israeli thugs for their efforts towards peace. You can bet you won't get it in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution or if you do it will be a one sentence hidden in the 'Other World News' summary. They are too busy praising Israel's concessions and their efforts at peace. Peace is the last thing that Sharon wants. With peace the Israelis fear that the U.S. handouts would end. Now, I wait to see how the media reports Hamas revenge for this killing. I won't be surprised when the media reports the facts without ever mentioning the two Palestinian children killed in the last few days. When Israelis attack the media reports it as retaliation. When Palestinians attack it is reported as a break in the lull of Middle East violence. Pathetic!"
- A Memo From: Retired U.S. General James J. David -

"The United States has five secret military bases in Israel, according to a new book published recently in the U.S. Code Names, written by journalist William Arkin, a former U.S. intelligence official, says there have been secret ties between the U.S. and Israel since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Arkin says the American military is present at Ben-Gurion International Airport, in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya Pituah and in three other sites, called bases 51-56, across the country. The book also claims to decipher 3,000 code names and secret passwords used to develop international military contacts between the Pentagon and other countries, including Israel. The book also offers a detailed description of U.S. military ties and secret presence in countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa following the 2001 attacks."
- Yossi Melman: New book says U.S. military has five secret bases in Israel -

"Ali Abunimah, a writer and commentator on the Middle East and Arab-American affairs and co-founder of the Web site Electronic Intifada, laid out his opposition to a two-state solution to the Mideast peace process yesterday. The Middle East peace process is phony, Abunimah said, because what Israel wants to do - with U.S. complicity - is to set up independent homelands similar to the apartheid system under white-ruled South Africa. The apartheid system is so far advanced that a two-state solution to the conflict is no longer possible, he told about 100 students. What is needed is a unitary state in which Israelis and Palestinians would have equal rights, Abunimah said."
- Ali Abunimah's Bitter Pill: Uncovering media myths about the mid-east since 1998 -

    "For a brief moment perhaps the casualties will believe, then try desperately to keep believing, that they did something brave and worthy and terribly important for that abstraction, country. Some will expect thanks. But there will be no thanks, or few, and those quickly forgotten. It will be worse. People will ask how they lost the leg. In Iraq, they will say, hoping for sympathy, or respect, or understanding. The response, often unvoiced but unmistakable, will be, What did you do that for? The wounded will realize that they are not only crippled, but freaks.
    "The years will go by. Iraq will fade into the mist. Wars always do. A generation will rise for whom it will be just history. The dismembered veterans will find first that almost nobody appreciates what they did, then that few even remember it. If when, many would say the United States is driven out of Iraq, the soldiers will look back and realize that the whole affair was a fraud. Wars are just wars. They seem important at the time. At any rate, we are told that they are important.
    "Yet the wounds will remain. Arms do not grow back. For the paralyzed there will never be girlfriends, dancing, rolling in the grass with children. The blind will adapt as best they can. Those with merely a missing leg will count themselves lucky. They will hobble about, managing to lead semi-normal lives, and people will say, How well he handles it. An admirable freak. For others it will be less good. A colostomy bag is a sorry companion on a wedding night.
    "These men will come to hate. It will not be the Iraqis they hate. This we do not talk about.
    "It is hard to admit that one has been used.... [Some of these men] will remember that their vice president, a man named Cheney, said that during his war, the one in Asia, he had other priorities. The veterans will remember this when everyone else has long since forgotten Cheney.
    "They don't hate America. They hate those who sent them. Talk to the wounded from Iraq in five years."
- Fred Reed from The American Conservative , quoted by Sobran's Real News of the Month - 

"How quickly we forget: A democratic Iraq was never the reason Bush forced us into this war. Iraq's fledgling democracy is a pleasant side effect, an bonus PR move, a heartwarming and patriotic patina of bogus humanitarianism BushCo is now trying to slather over one of the most disastrous and inept military efforts in recent history. It makes for terrific photo-ops. It makes for miserable and debilitating foreign policy."
- Mark Morford: Freedom rings in Iraq! Bush was right all along! American wins! Or, you know, not -

    "These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.
    "Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.
    "As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.
    "I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man.' A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 - just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.
    "So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer - The Road to Environmental Apocalypse. Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
    "As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total and more since the election - are backed by the religious right."
- Bill Moyers: There is no tomorrow ((There were interesting problems with another part of Moyer's speech) -

"Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it."
- Woody Allen -

"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument."
- William G. McAdoo -

"Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms."
- Alan Corenk -

"It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
- John Andrew Holmes -

"When the Holy One, Blessed Be He, is angry with the world's nations who fail to help Israel, who want to evacuate and to disengage and who interfere in our affairs and harm us, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, claps his hands in sadness - and all this causes the quake."
- Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu quoted in Jewish Israel Weekly News, explaining that the Tsunami was God's punishment for disengagement -

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."
- Barry LePatner -

"Load up your mind with pictures capturing your preferred tomorrow. Put the remembrances of the past in a place where they won't block your view."
- Gary Carter -

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
- Dorothy Parker -

"I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."
- J. D. Salinger -

"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then - we elected them."
- Lily Tomlin -

"Stoop and you'll be stepped on; stand tall and you'll be shot at."
- Carlos A. Urbizo -

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- Martin Luther King, Jr. -

"Life is easier than you think. All you have to do is accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, bear the intolerable, and be able to laugh at things that aren't funny."
- Xarvon, alien investigator -

"I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise."
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu -

"The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish."
- Virgil Thompson -

    "A better way to wipe out the communications of North America is to just explode four thermonuclear devices at a high altitude over the continent. These will generate an EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) that will knock out most electric and electronic devices tied into the power grids. It will also knock out any new devices that contain IC's (integrated circuits) and that have an antenna over thirty inches long. That means that your car radio, portable radio, and television will be inoperable, even if the power ever does come back on.
    "All over the continent the power and lights will suddenly go off. If you happen to be listening to a battery operated old tube type radio (when did you last see one of those?) that is tuned into a 'hardened' transmitter sight (I don't know where you will find one) that transmits (fat chance) the EBS (Emergency Broadcast Signal) then you will know that doomsday has begun."
- Bruce Beach: You Will Survive Doomsday -

"To preserve the cooperative, peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space by the United States, and to require the President to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning space-based weapons. The term `exotic weapons systems' includes weapons designed to damage space or natural ecosystems (such as the ionosphere and upper atmosphere) or climate, weather, and tectonic systems with the purpose of inducing damage or destruction upon a target population or region on earth or in space. Such terms include exotic weapons systems such as--chemical, biological, environmental, climate, or tectonic weapons." 
- Space Preservation Act of 2001: H. R. 2977, 107th Congress, 1st Session, October 2, 2001 -

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." 
- Thomas Jefferson -

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance." 
- James Madison -

"The chief principle of a well-regulated police state is this: That each citizen shall be at all times and places [be] recognized as this or that particular person. No one must remain unknown to the police. This can be attained with certainty only in the following manner: Each one must always carry a pass with him, signed by his immediate government official, in which his person is accurately described. There must be no exception to this rule."
- Johann G. Fichte: The Science of Rights, 1796 -

    "The Pentagon is spending more than $5.8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, according to the military's top generals. That is nearly a 50 percent increase above the $4 billion-a-month benchmark the Pentagon has used to estimate the cost of the war so far. The Army alone is spending $4.7 million a month while the Air Force is spending $800 million a month transporting soldiers and flying combat missions. The Marine Corps is spending $300 million a month, the four service chiefs told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday...
    "Since 2003, the Pentagon has received some $160 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in supplemental funding - that is, in addition to its annual budget. It will be requesting another multibillion-dollar supplement early next year to cover the continuing cost of the war."
- Iraq War Topping $5.8 Billion A Month -

"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper... everyone was eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is bend a disk."
- A member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity, commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement -

"The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent ANY part of the government from deceiving the people."
- Justice Hugo L Black: U.S. Supreme Court, N.Y. Times vs. U.S., 1971 (Pentagon Papers) -

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws."
- President John Adams -

    "President George W. Bush uttered 'freedom' many times during his coronation speech. But freedom in the American experience has never had the dictionary definition - freedom from arbitrary exercise of authority.
    "Since the birth of this nation, freedom has meant the taking by the rich and powerful from the weak and penniless. The West was not paid for, but was stolen from the indigenous Americans. See Manifest Destiny. Nor did we amass the wealth that fueled our meteoric rise as a world power without the brutal exploitation of Africans. See The White Man's Burden.
    "At present, Bush loves freedom so much he denies it to Haiti. He denies it to the citizens of Saudi Arabia by keeping the monarchy armed to the teeth. In fact, Bush loves freedom so much he denies it to all he designates as enemy combatants by placing them in secret camps where they enjoy the freedom of being tortured.
    "In the future, he plans to provide the freedom from the last shred of a social safety net by eliminating Social Security as we know it. King George's definition of freedom is thus the crowning achievement of those he has surrounded himself with - freedom from any 'quaint' law, social contract or Bill of Rights that stands in the way of being Bushwhacked."
- Max Podrecca -

    "George W. Bush has abandoned the search for WMDs in Iraq. The supposed presence of these weapons was the main reason Bush gave for invading Iraq. Other reasons he gave for the invasion - ties to al-Qaida, complicity in 9/11 and the building of nuclear weapons - have also proven false.
    "So what now? What are Americans to do with a president who is responsible for the needless death and destruction of thousands of people, Americans and Iraqis alike. Bush's Republican cronies in Congress will never initiate impeachment proceedings, although that is the least that Bush deserves. His lies caused the death and destruction of so many.
    "Yet, Bush is greeted with pomp and privilege as he is inaugurated to a second term. History tells us that leaders who commit unspeakable atrocities have ruled countries such as Germany, Russia and Cambodia, just to name a few. It's to our and our country's eternal shame that we now add the United States to that ignominious list."
- Sol Bilczic -

    "Under the new Social Austerity reform, the majority of Americans will be given their own personal debt account. Each American's account will become active at the time of birth, with an opening balance of minus $25,767. Upon a person's death, whether from shock or exhaustion, his or her compounded debt will be passed on to succeeding generations with an added 'interest incentive...'
   "As a second-term president, Bush recognizes his 51 percent share of the vote as a powerful mandate, if only because it is several points higher than some of his test scores at Harvard Business School.
    "'And when you think about it, having the lowest approval rating of any second-term president since Richard Nixon just serves to underscore that he, too, is not a crook,' said Todd Toadly, the president's undersecretary of yes-men. 'That's the kind of character you can take to the bank.'"
- Joyce McGreevy: Power to the people - In a gutsy move, the president proposes to privatize the federal deficit by creating a debt ownership society, one "that will allow the have-nots to fully have naught." -

"Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the Buddha...Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation."
- Bodhidharma -

"No one gossips about other people's secret virtues."
- Bertrand Russell -

    "A female military interrogator who wanted to turn up the heat on a 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before 9/11 removed her uniform top to expose a snug T-shirt. She began belittling the prisoner - who was praying with his eyes closed - as she touched her breasts, rubbed them against the Saudi's back and commented on his apparent erection.
   "After the prisoner spat in her face, she left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist suggested she tell the prisoner that she was menstruating, touch him, and then shut off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash."
- Maureen Dowd: Torture Chicks Gone Wild -

"Under President Bush's proposal for private accounts, individuals who elect to go with a private account only get to keep returns earned above what the traditional Social Security system pays; the government would keep most of it. For example, a worker who invests $1,000 a year for 40 years, earning 4% on investments, would see his account grow to $99,800, but the government would keep $78,700 - about 80% - and only the remaining $21,100 would belong to the worker."
- Jonathan Weisman: Participants would forfeit part of accounts' profits -

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."
- Erica Jong -

    "Using any criteria at all, we are suffering the worst President in American history. One who relies on theology rather than reason, who lies to create crisis that do not exist, who starts wars that need not be fought, who threatens countries that need not be threatened, who sneers at the Geneva convention, who gives our allies the finger and isolates us from the world community. On the home front it is much the same, he lies to create crisis that do not exist, he dismantles whatever social programs and environmental regulations he can get away with, he wants to give Social Security to Wall Street to administer and he has done nothing about the real elephant in the room, Heathcare costs rising further than the middle class can afford...
   "With that said, perhaps it may be a good idea to change the Constitution to historically reflect George Bush and our present bamboozled majority by actually passing the 28th Amendment, the Queer Amendment. For it will embed an historical marker into world history as to just when and who allowed religious intolerance to overcome reason."
- Rack Jite -

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire -

Everything Else

I can think of few greater educational experiences for a journalist than to look through Woodward and Bernstein's actual notes while conducting the Watergate investigation.

Ghostsites is the museum of e-failure and supplies us with oodles of dead website screenshots and elegies.

Here's a good place to look for new and used college textbooks.

The Great Software List advocates the great and ignores the mediocre. A truly excellent guide to software that WORKS.

Don't like any of these links? Check out The Freedom Portal.