Democracy at Work

The U.S. government is seeking help in the following areas:

CB - Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures
ED - Explosives Detection
IDD - Improvised Device Defeat
IP - Infrastructure Protection
IS - Investigative Support and Forensics
PP – Personnel Protection
PS – Physical Security

Send your ideas here.

It's al-Real Thing

Qibla Cola has been designed to provide consumers from within the Muslim community and all people of conscience with an alternative brand of this popular soft drink.

Anti-Corporate Media Ad of the Week

This ad, in PDF format, ran full page in the Washington Post.

I Feel So Much Safer Now

The following Executive Orders, now recorded in the Federal Register, and therefore accepted by Congress as the law of the land, can be put into effect at any time an emergency is declared:

10995--All communications media seized by the Federal Government. 
10997--Seizure of all electrical power, fuels, including gasoline and minerals. 
10998--Seizure of all food resources, farms and farm equipment. 
10999--Seizure of all kinds of transportation, including your personal car, and control of all highways and seaports. 
11000--Seizure of all civilians for work under Federal supervision. 
11001--Federal takeover of all health, education and welfare. 
11002--Postmaster General empowered to register every man, woman and child in the U.S.A. 
11003--Seizure of all aircraft and airports by the Federal Government. 
11004--Housing and Finance authority may shift population from one locality to another. Complete integration. 
11005--Seizure of railroads, inland waterways, and storage facilities. 
11051--The Director of the Office of Emergency Planning authorized to put Executive Orders into effect in "times of increased international tension or financial crisis". He is also to perform such additional functions as the President may direct. 

- Mind Control Forums -

Calling All Assholes

In contrast to the theory that an adult's personality is set in stone by age 30, a new study suggests personality does change throughout life - and often for the better.

Our Literate Armed Services

Marines vandalizing the Sumerian city of Ur in southern Iraq spray painted "SEMPER FE" (always faithful) on the ancient walls. The motto of the Marines is "SEMPER FI."

Why Winona Ryder Isn't Traveling to Iraq

US occupation authorities announced a policy of shooting looters on sight.

Afghanistan - The U.S. Roadmap for Peace in Iraq

Warlords still terrorize Afghanistan's civil population 18 months after US forces toppled the Taliban regime. "The international community has allowed warlords and local military commanders to take control of much of the country," Human Rights Watch rep Loubna Freih told the UN Human Rights Commission, now ending its annual six-week session in Geneva. Kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, armed robbery, extortion and beatings at the hands of warlord armies remain widespread in much of Afghanistan. Even the opening of schools and colleges for women - a widely hailed fruit of the Taliban's overthrow - is under threat. "Religious fundamentalism is on the rise, with new restrictions on freedom of expression and movement of women and girls. Gains in education are now at risk as many parents, afraid of attacks by troops and other gunmen, keep their daughters out of school," Freih said.

MP3s of the Week

Billy Bragg's The Price of Oil.

400,000 frozen embryos in America's fertility clinics have formed a musical group.

Get Lost

But first, get a global positioning implant.

Get a Calendar for Christ Sake

Mexican Immigrants in Truck 
Celebrate Day of the Dead
on Wrong Day

Answer of the Week

Last week we asked why anti-Semitism was just anti-Jews since Semites are Arabs and Jews. The answer, thanks to Nancy Otero, is at the Simon Wiesenthal Multimedia Learning Center, who place the blame on Wilhelm Marr, who introduced the word "anti-Semite" into the political vocabulary by founding the "League of Anti-Semites." The "League" failed as an organization, but was historically important, being the first to create a popular political movement based on anti-Semitism.

Questions of the Week

#1) Okay, I've gotten used to all the offers to enlarge my penis, but the latest ones say "larger nuts and penis." Why on earth would someone want bigger nuts? (I have a hunch the answer isn't at the Simon Wiesenthal Multimedia Learning Center, though Simon Wiesenthal certainly had a pair)

#2) What's the difference between "blitzkrieg" and "shock and awe?"

TV Show of the Week

I don't blame you for not getting Showtime, but you're missing one of the best shows on television, Penn & Teller's Bullshit!. How did they prove feng shui is bullshit? They hired several feng shui experts to work on the exact same living room and they all rearranged it completely differently. For clips and info on each episode, check out their homepage. (Don't miss several women, and Teller, increasing their breast size by hypnosis.)

Oh Joy Unbounded

The Bilderbergs met last week in secret to discuss the future of the planet.

Cartoon of the Week

Calling All Screenwriters

The Women's Image Network is looking for screenplays. So is Zoetrope.

Don't Take My Word For It

"May you start your day with love, fill your day with love, and end your day with love."
- Sai Baba -

"We no longer have a country that operates on the consent of the governed, if, indeed, we ever did. But we did have the illusion, perhaps foolishly so in the face of the reality that has come to pass. We the people are now superfluous to the decisions made by the ruling elite in Washington, the state houses and city hall. We are now their servants, instead of they ours. Our only purpose is to do their dirty work at the least possible cost to them, buy their products with any money we have left over after minimally providing for our basic needs, kill and be killed in their endless wars, keep supplying them with more wage slaves and cannon fodder, and die before we cost them any money."
- Bev Conover: Aliens in our own land -

"If sanctions against the people of Iraq have not hurt the Iraqi people, as U.S. officials have been claiming for the 12 continuous years that the sanctions have been in existence, then why are U.S. officials now urgently arguing that the sanctions should be immediately lifted in order to relieve the horrible suffering of the Iraqi people?"
- Jacob G. Hornberger: Hornbergers Blog -

"The 29 or more deaths and 200 or so injured in Riyadh are a reminder that the present danger comes not from the fantasies of right-wing presidents and prime ministers. It is not from an axis of evil or some Doctor No plotting global holocaust in a secret desert laboratory. Nor should we honour these killers with such exaggerated status. There is no evidence that they are backed by a ruthless dictator, nor that toppling another hapless regime will do anything to stop them."
- Simon Jenkins: Case proven - war does not eradicate terrorism -

"The prize for MOST heinous crime doesn't go to George or Colin or ANY of the oily-fingered bunch, not even those who now face charges of war crimes (if we don't knock off Belgium first). It goes to the people of this country, those who are checking the DOW today, those out laughing over dinner as if all's right with the world, those signing new contracts for 'better' lives, those with fourteen tattered flags bedecking their SUV, those who sleep well, truly believing that God's on our side even when we fib a little, those who, in blunt terms, simply don't give a damn that thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of innocent Iraqis lie dead, that more than a thousand Iraqi kids will never see summer. Never. OUR kids will go to summer camp; a thousand Iraqi kids will rot underground. Therein lies a difference to be noted."
- Lisa Walsh Thomas: The Most Heinous Crime of the New Millenium -

"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it."
- Frank Zappa -

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
- Greek proverb -

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
- Sam Levenson -

"Now, if you watched TV and read the national papers, you'd never know that Tom Craddick, the GOP legislator man who wailed and whined about Those Low-Down Dirty Double-Dealing Demon Rats [the Texas Democrats who flew the coop] to a concerned and sympathetic Candy Crowley, and was quoted as saying that 'Republicans never once resorted to such an irresponsible stunt', had in fact done the exact same irresponsible stunt himself back in 1971."
- Tamara Baker: The Things Left Out -

"I believe they were people who knew what they wanted. They had passed by the gypsum copy of the Black Obelisk. This means that they must have been specialists. They did not touch those copies."
- Dr. Dony George, head of the Baghdad Museum -

"Recent discoveries of mass graves have seemingly bolstered the new rational; that the war was necessary because Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. Left unsaid is the fact that the bodies in those graves are there because Bush's father encouraged the Iraqi people to rebel against Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War, and then abandoned them when they did. An earlier dirty lie."
- The Daily Brew -

"If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist."
- Joseph Sobran (1995) -

"Anarchists are opposed to violence...The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on the freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the police. For this reason we are enemies of capitalism, which depends on the protection of the police to force workers to allow themselves to be exploited...We are therefore enemies of the State, which is the coercive, violent organization of society."
- Errico Malatesta: Umanita Nova, August, 25, 1921 -

"After finishing the first essay in Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness, one wonders: If Philip Morris or Seagram or another major U.S. company owned a patent on premium, smokable pot - a drug Schlosser argues is less addictive than nicotine, caffeine, or booze - would it still be illegal? More important, would judges continue to punish marijuana offenders by handing them life sentences without parole - as has happened in Alabama and Indiana - while letting cold-blooded killers get off with an average of less than 12 years?"
- Michelle Conlin: What Is America Smoking? -

"The secret of eternal youth is arrested development."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth -

"I am a free prince and have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred sail of ships and an army of a hundred thousand men in the field. And this my conscience tells me; that there is no arguing with such sniveling puppies who allow superiors to kick them about the deck at pleasure, and pin their faith upon the pimp of a parson, a squab who neither practices nor believes what he puts upon the chuckle-headed fools he preaches to." 
- Black Sam Bellamy, pirate captain -

"Results not typical."
- Hooked on Phonics ad -

"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first. And, whatever you hit, call it the target."
- Ashleigh Brilliant -

Flash of the Week

Don't miss Triumph of the Wimp.

Calling All Election Fixers

Here's the idea: you promise a voter money to cast their ballot for your candidate, send them into the booth with a picture phone, they send a picture via the phone proving that they have voted as instructed and then they get the cash.

And Thus the Oil Wars Became the Water Wars

Genesis World Energy has harnessed an unlimited power source from the molecular structure of water. 

Tourist Spot of the Week

Visiting Lithuania?
Don't miss Stalinworld

History Lesson from Hell

During the early part of the 20th century a group of American intellectuals, including Mark Twain and Carl Schurz, disagreed with the direction of United States foreign policy. Here is their statement. 

Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League 
(October 18, 1899)

We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is "criminal aggression" and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our government. 

We earnestly condemn the policy of the present national administration in the Philippines. It seeks to extinguish the spirit of 1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror. We protest against the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish methods. 

We demand the immediate cessation of the war against liberty, begun by Spain and continued by us. We urge that Congress be promptly convened to announce to the Filipinos our purpose to concede to them the independence for which they have so long fought and which of right is theirs. 

The United States have always protested against the doctrine of international law which permits the subjugation of the weak by the strong. A self-governing state cannot accept sovereignty over an unwilling people. The United States cannot act upon the ancient heresy that might makes right. 

Imperialists assume that with the destruction of self-government in the Philippines by American hands, all opposition here will cease. This is a grievous error. Much as we abhor the war of "criminal aggression" in the Philippines, greatly as we regret that the blood of the Filipinos is on American hands, we more deeply resent the betrayal of American institutions at home. The real firing line is not in the suburbs of Manila. The foe is of our own household. The attempt of 1861 was to divide the country. That of 1899 is to destroy its fundamental principles and noblest ideals. 

Whether the ruthless slaughter of the Filipinos shall end next month or next year is but an incident in a contest that must go on until the declaration of independence and the constitution of the United States are rescued from the hands of their betrayers. Those who dispute about standards of value while the foundation of the republic is undermined will be listened to as little as those who would wrangle about the small economies of the household while the house is on fire. The training of a great people for a century, the aspiration for liberty of a vast immigration are forces that will hurl aside those who in the delirium of conquest seek to destroy the character of our institutions. 

We deny that the obligation of all citizens to support their government in times of grave national peril applies to the present situation. If an administration may with impunity ignore the issues upon which it was chosen, deliberately create a condition of war anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch the civil service for spoils to promote the adventure, organize a truth-suppressing censorship, and demand of all citizens a suspension of judgment and their unanimous support while it chooses to continue the fighting, representative government itself is imperiled. 

We propose to contribute to the defeat of any person or party that stands for the forcible subjugation of any people. We shall oppose for re-election all who in the white house or in congress betray American liberty in pursuit of un-American ends. We still hope that both of our great political parties will support and defend the declaration of independence in the closing campaign of the century. 

We hold with Abraham Lincoln, that "no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government, but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government--that is despotism." "Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it." 

We cordially invite the co-operation of all men and women who remain loyal to the declaration of independence and the constitution of the United States.

Poster of the Week

Mr. Conspiracy Says...

If John Kerry wins the Democratic nomination, the candidates from both parties will be members of Skull and Bones, a secret society who just lately were seen doing this (unbelievable).

Go here and enter "H.J.Res. 11" in the search box.

Quiz from Hell

By repealing the double taxation of dividend income, Republicans have succeeded in putting more money in the hands of:

A) a majority of ordinary Americans most likely to jump-start the economy. 
B) a plurality of small business owners most likely to reinvest the tax savings in growing their businesses. 
C) a plurality of family farmers most likely to forge lasting trade relationships with visitors from other galaxies. 
D) a plutocracy of the richest Americans most likely to contribute to the Republican Party.

- thanks to Ironic Times -

You Too Can Make a Non-Profit Fortune

Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, makes $571,042 a year. Ellen Futtner, President of the American Museum of Natural History, makes $470,362 a year. The Greater New York Hospital Association cries poverty on behalf of 220 local hospitals. It slams as "unbearable" the budget cuts proposed by Gov. Pataki. But the trade group and its affiliates pay $849,421 to Kenneth Raske, its president, and $651,639 to Lee Perlman, its No. 2 executive. The New York Public Library frets that dozens of its 85 branches will have cash to stay open only four days a week. The culprit: Mayor Bloomberg's budget cuts. But the home of the marble lions pays Paul LeClerc, its president, $300,000 in wages and $167,295 in benefits, plus $120,000 for an annual housing allowance. Gee, imagine what they'd be making if they made profits.

Everything Else

Mandatory reading: Despite Bush administration efforts to suppress them, here are the documents from Congress's Joint Inquiry into 9-11, including the testimony of key guilty players, where they were forced to make cover-up statements that conflict with established fact. 

For more than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives. The United Nations has estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, and that 5,000 Iraqi children continue to die every month for this reason. Why did we do this? So we could pay ourselves to rebuild it? Read The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply  by Thomas J. Nagy.

Need your caffeine fix but feel guilty exploiting South American peons who'd rather be growing cocaine? Why not try a politically correct coffee company?

Both the recent Saudi bombings and the 1995 attack were made against the same target, the Vinnell Corp., a Fairfax, Va. company recently acquired by Northrop-Grumman that trains the 80,000 member Saudi Arabian National Guard under the supervision of the U.S. Army.

Pathways to Peace is so fucking peaceful it will make you want to snap the neck of a kitten.

A complete guide to the world heritage found in Iraq.

What are you going to do with all that money you're saving from Bush's tax break? Why not invest it using this serious guide to making money off WWIII?

Is FEMA funded by laundered drug money? It is according to this lawsuit.

The United States burns $92 million per House district to prohibit marijuana use. In Oregon, that's $460 million per year taken away from schools. In New York, it's $2.7 billion. In California, $4.8 billion! If you are unhappy about losing that much money, join the Free Weed Club. And while you're at it, use this free marijuana cooking guide.

For the best reviews of tons of films you've never heard of, plus lots of previews and very strange downloads, check out Brains on Film.

Everything you never wanted to know about cluster bombs.

Identity Theory is a superb site full of interviews with interesting authors and tons of publishing information.

Want to grow your own magic mushrooms? Visit the Shroomery.

Perhaps things would be better if we had a different fictional president. Check out The X2 Guide to US Foreign Policy by James Norton.

If you get an e-mail from support@microsoft.com, it's not from Microsoft, it's a worm.

100,000 inmates were released from Iraqi prisons in October by Saddam Hussein. Gosh, you think it might be time to put them back in jail? (especially the ones guilty of smoking pot)

It would now appear that the U.S. submitted a roadmap to peace in the mid-east that it knew damn well wouldn't work.

The Iraqi body count of civilian dead now hovers around 5,000. Expect it to go up since our unexploded bombs are still killing children, local residents are showing signs of radiation sickness near the nuclear facility at Tuwaitha, not to mention the fact that Iraqi agriculture is on the brink of collapse and 24.5 million people may go hungry this summer.