sitemeter

Showing posts sorted by date for query war on terror. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query war on terror. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Thursday, December 14, 2006

San Diego County Supervisors wrong again

County to appeal medical-marijuana ruling

Supervisors again cite clash with federal law
By Jeff McDonald
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 14, 2006
A week after a Superior Court judge threw out their case against California's medical-marijuana laws, San Diego County's supervisors have voted to appeal the ruling.
...In January, San Diego County sued the state of California rather than implement medical-marijuana laws that permit qualified patients to smoke and grow marijuana and require counties to issue them identification cards...
The county was later joined by San Bernardino and Merced counties in trying to overturn Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative approved by 56 percent of voters that permitted the medical use of marijuana.
Tuesday's closed-session vote to appeal was 4-1, with Supervisor Ron Roberts opposed. It is unclear when the appeal will be filed or when the appellate judges will consider the case.
Supervisor Greg Cox said he supported the county's issuing ID cards to qualified patients, but when that vote failed 3-2 late last year, he decided to go along with the lawsuit.


Supes vote to persist with medical marijuana challenge
By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer
SAN DIEGO -- As expected, San Diego County supervisors voted Tuesday to continue their controversial legal challenge to overturn California's 10-year-old, voter-approved medical marijuana law.Board Chairman Bill Horn said the board voted in closed session to appeal Superior Court William R. Nevitt's week-old ruling that dismissed the county's argument that California's Compassionate Use Act should be pre-empted by federal law because federal law is "supreme."
The county's challenge has national implications, patients and government officials say, because it marks the first time that any county has sued to overturn any of the medical marijuana laws voters have approved in 11 states....
..."No, not at all," Horn said. "I think it's a bad law. I mean, as far as the benefits, those are medical opinions. There are probably some medical benefits, if you listen to the (patients). But that's not our point. Our point is who has jurisdiction here (the state or federal government)
"We didn't get that from this judge, so we're going to appeal it," he said...

The M-I-C owns this creepy little cronified podunk county (of three million) and the idiotic, brainwashed repugnanthuglican peons who need to have things painted black and white for them by some authoritarian hypocrite and don't think for themselves. Can't let those holy Federal Dollars go anywhere else, right? For the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal aliens, oh, and by the way, defense contractor WAR profiteering.


Bill Horn
bill.horn@sdcounty.ca.gov

Greg Cox greg.cox@sdcounty.ca.gov (619)5331-5511

Pam Slater-Price pam.slater@sdcounty.ca.gov (619)531-5533

dianne.jacob@sdcounty.ca.gov (619) 531-5222

or copy and paste this line and mail them all at one time:

greg.cox@sdcounty.ca.gov, pam.slater@sdcounty.ca.gov, dianne.jacob@sdcounty.ca.gov,bill.horn@sdcounty.ca.gov

I am not a medical marijuana user, or a marijuana user at all. I voted for prop 215 because I believe that marijuana can help people deal with the painful and traumatizing effects of chemotherapy, and other diseases, including some that cause chronic pain.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Analysis: Is bin Laden truly dead?

Analysis: Is bin Laden truly dead?
By CLAUDE SALHANI
UPI International Editor
9/23/2006 9:15:00 AM -0400

Ok. After five years of the Bush Administration's assault on civil liberties in the guise of the "War on Terror" and this speculation that Osama binLaden is dead do I feel any safer?

Not a fucking chance.

My child wants to see Europe. If she gets to go I'll be terrified the whole time that someone will find out that she is an American. She doesn't deserve to be treated in an ugly manner, she is not the typical "Ugly American." She's had to deal with so much grief that she she didn't earn already in her lifetime.

All of the goodwill that America received after helping destroy Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany has been squandered. All of the goodwill that America received after 9/11 has been squandered.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

This pic made me smile
















the article that accompanied it, not so much...


62,006 - The Number Killed in the "War on Terror"

By David Randall and Emily Gosden
The Independent UK
Sunday 10 September 2006

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Corporate newz sucks

I didn't expect to find anything in an American newz (MSM) source for an article that spells out how I feel about the "War on Terror." That's why I didn't even bother with (other than to sign a complaint to ABC or Disney) the whole 9/11-blame-it-on-Clinton-Crockudrama thing. Fuggit. Wudn't worth my damn energy.

I knew if I looked hard enough I would find an article some where that about wraps it up for me.
This article from the Netherlands comes close, so here it is:

Five Years of War on Terror: 'Time for a New Strategy'
EDITORIAL
Translated By Meta Mertens
September 9, 2006
NRC Handelsblad - The Netherlands - Original Article (Dutch)



SSSShhhhhhhhh... don't tell Rudi Guiliani and don't tell Daddy Bush (HW).


I'm no genius, but the "War on Terror" is absolute bullshit, it don't take a fuckin genius to figure that one out.

Peace out.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Ain't it sad

That our citizens have to retain a lawyer to forward the goal of fair and legal elections?

Paul Lehto Retained By Election Integrity Advocates In San Diego
Breaking!
Guest blogged by Emily Levy of the California Election Protection Network and the CA-50 Action Committee
Attorney Paul Lehto, who specializes in cases involving election law, business fraud and consumer law, has been retained for work on the issues surrounding the illegal election conditions in San Diego County.
Lehto came to the attention of BRAD BLOG readers when he filed a lawsuit in Washington state against Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.
He has also appeared as a guest on The BRAD SHOW of April 23, 2005. To listen to that interview, click here.
More details will be posted when they become available.
(DISCLOSURE: Paul Lehto is also a legal advisor for VelvetRevolution.us, a Voting Rights and Election Reform organization co-founded by BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman.)

And that the

U.S. Could Take Lessons from Mexican Voting Process
Published on Saturday, July 22, 2006 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)
by Norman Stockwell


And that Americans are misinformed, disinformed and uninformed about the rest of the world, and, in particular, the Middle East
Jul. 21, 2006 - 1:46 PM
Amateur Hour
The Fog of Cable
Lawrence Pintak
Napa Valley, Calif. -- As someone who lives and breathes Middle East politics and media, I have had the bizarre -- and frustrating -- experience of watching the current conflict play out on U.S. cable television, and I am reminded once again why many Americans have such a limited -- and distorted -- view of the world.
I run a center for television and new media at The American University in Cairo, which puts me at the crossroads of journalism in the Arab world. For me, monitoring a crisis like this would normally mean the voracious consumption of Arab and U.S. media -- television, newspapers, Web sites and all the rest.
But for the first week of the war, I was on vacation in California with my family. That has meant catching glimpses of the conflict in bite-sized snatches on cable television between forays to Disneyland, trips to the beach and aquarium tours -- much, I suspect, like many other Americans this summer.
At times, the coverage has seemed as much a fantasy as Disney's Space Mountain, and the level of Middle East knowledge on the part of some television anchors only a few notches higher than that of the tattooed biker couple waiting in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
Take, for example, a CNN interview with an American high school student who had been visiting his father's relatives in Lebanon when the conflict broke out. With his tearful American mother in the studio, he was asked by phone whether he was frightened. No big deal, he replied, explaining that he was north of the Christian port of Jounieh, far from the fighting. Betraying her woeful ignorance of Lebanon's geography and politics, the anchor replied that he sounded like a typical "macho" young man who didn't want to worry his mother.
The anchor might have looked at a map before going on air.
Hype abounded. "This could be World War Three!" more than one reporter was heard to say. The same dramatic images were endlessly repeated, as if on a loop. Rumor was elevated to fact -- and the networks seemed proud of it. One CNN promo showed an unedited sequence in which a nameless photographer told Anderson Cooper, in northern Israel, that there was a rumor of rockets on the way. Cooper then turned to the camera and authoritatively reported, "The police say more rockets are coming."
So much for checking sources.
To be fair, there was also a fair share of solid, informed reporting. Yeoman's work has been done by Nic Robertson in Beirut, Matthew Chance in Gaza and Christiane Amanpour on the Israeli border, as well as CNN anchor and Beirut veteran Jim Clancy, NBC's Martin Fletcher on MSNBC and the handful of others who are based in, or spend significant time in, the region. The problem comes with those -- like Cooper -- who have parachuted into the Middle East with little grounding in the region, and the anchors back in the studios in London and the U.S. The errors of the uninitiated embeds in Iraq have been endlessly repeated.
One example: CBS refugee John Roberts, now CNN's senior correspondent, eruditely pointed to pro-Hezbollah demonstrations in Syria as evidence of a Sunni-Shiite split. The only weakness in that analysis is that Syria is a Sunni nation, so the demonstrations point to exactly the opposite -- Sunni-Shiite unity on the issue of Hezbollah's actions.
Over on Hardball, NBC correspondent Dawn Fratangelo's discussion of potential dangers to American evacuees quickly disintegrated into confused talk of Hezbollah rockets in northern Israel. That's the other direction, Dawn.
There was little effort to identify the politics of many of the pseudo-experts who were trotted into the studios. Right-wing Lebanese Christians and representatives of Israeli-backed think tanks -- both with axes to grind -- were offered up as independent analysts. Anchors and reporters, meanwhile, frequently wore their politics on their sleeve. When an American woman trapped in southern Lebanon decried Washington's failure to stop what she said was Israel's brutal killing of civilians, CNN anchor Tony Harris snapped back, "That's not the view over here," and cut her off, saying he didn't have time to debate the issue.
As is so often the case these days, celebrity reporters themselves frequently became the story. Anderson Cooper spent more time on-camera than the protagonists in the conflict, and MSNBC endlessly looped an outtake of Richard Engel repeatedly flubbing his on-camera standup as Israeli bombs fell behind him, much, I suspect, to his embarrassment. A failure to remain cool under fire is not something to be proud of.
NBC anchor Brian Williams made much of the fact that when he went on a helicopter flight with an Israeli officer to take a look at the fighting, "We got closer than we intended." Turns out that some shells landed in the distance. War is Hell, Brian.
Even more troubling was the fact that the Williams segment, along with reports by several other NBC correspondents, ran on Scarborough Country, an overtly politicized talk show, further blurring the line between news and opinion and muddying the waters of cable journalism.
Amid segments from such stalwart NBC correspondents as Martin Fletcher, there was Scarborough describing Hezbollah as an "Iran-backed terror group" and throwing former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak softballs like, "Why is it the more Israel is willing to give up to the Palestinians, the more your country comes under attack?" Meanwhile, conservative iconoclast Tucker Carlson, sans bowtie, has been out there "reporting" from the Israeli border, asking real NBC correspondents such leading questions as, "Do we have any idea whether this city was targeted by Hezbollah because of its Christian population?" (This isn't just about "good" Christians and "bad" Muslims, Tucker.)
There is plenty of room on cable television for politicized talk shows of all stripes. But in allowing -- or, rather, ordering -- its respected news correspondents to appear on such shows, the networks are trading credibility for ratings and cementing their transition from purveyors of news to citadels of infotainment.
Lost in the fog of hype and self-aggrandizement on the cable segments I saw was much of the subtle complexity of the conflict. Instead, it was too often reduced to the black-hat/white-hat characterization that has guided U.S. policy toward the region.
My view was one slice of the coverage. I did not see the main network evening newscasts or the morning shows. What I did was what so many Americans do these days -- I grazed cable news in fits and snatches. And I came up hungry.
Lawrence Pintak is the director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo. A former CBS News Middle East correspondent, his most recent book is Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas. He can be reached at lpintak ~at~ aucegypt.edu.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

oil slicks

Cheney's Oily Interests
BLOG Posted 05/16/2006 @ 11:43am
Katrina vanden Heuvel




Cheney Starts New Cold War Over Oil
By Mark Ames, The eXile. Posted June 1, 2006.


Putin Blames U.S. for Russian Diplomats’ Murder in Iraq

Created: 12.07.2006 14:08 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 14:08 MSK, 6 hours 5 minutes ago
MosNews

Enron fraud suspect found dead
12/07/2006 16:22 - (SA)

Terror in Mumbai: IT could be next target
Rakesh Goyal
July 12, 2006
...The bombs strategically targetted the local trains: the transport lifeline of Mumbai. All the blasts were in the first class compartments which carry middle and senior management of corporations, banks and government, apart from owner-managers from various markets. Thus, the target-segment was chosen carefully to break the middle layer of the industrial hierarchy and create terror. Until now, this class was never targeted...

update: Yeesh, I didn't even think of the possible nuclear implications

MARITIME SECURITY & MARITIME COUNTER-TERRORISM
Paper no. 1176
06. 12. 2004
by B.Raman
...15. The LTTE had been examining for many years the possibility of an explosive-laden suicide bomber piloting a microlite aircraft crashing on a land or sea-based target. A Sikh terrorist arrested by the Indian authorities in the early 1990s had stated during his interrogation that during his training in Pakistan, the ISI had asked him to join the Mumbai (Bombay) Flying Club, go on a solo flight and crash his trainer plane on to the Mumbai off-shore oil platform...

Dollar gains on US trade; oil, gold rally
Wed Jul 12, 2006 6:03 PM GMT
By Steven C. Johnson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar on Wednesday was on track for its biggest one-day gain against the yen in 18 months, boosted by a smaller-than-expected U.S. trade deficit in May and growing uncertainty about Japanese monetary policy
Gold, meanwhile, hit a six-week high, supported by higher oil prices, while technology shares dragged U.S. stock markets lower after European antitrust regulators fined Microsoft Corp..
U.S. Treasury debt prices also slipped as investors unwound safe-haven plays established after Tuesday's deadly train explosions in Mumbai, India's financial hub....


North County Reps vote to lift offshore drilling ban
By: EDWARD SIFUENTES - Staff Writer
Last modified Wednesday, July 12, 2006 12:27 AM PDT
NORTH COUNTY ---- Local Republican congressmen, including newly elected U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, have voted for a bill that would allow companies to drill for oil and gas off the coast of California and other coastal states.

Awww crap, what does Bilbray, the (environmentalist *cough* surfer *cough*) care?
His kids prefer indoor activities in Virginia.


Pacific Energy Resources Ltd. Announces Signing of Purchase and Sale Agreement for Majority Interest in Beta Oil Field Unit
JULY 10, 2006 - 08:30 ET
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA--(CCNMatthews - July 10, 2006) - Pacific Energy Resources Ltd. (TSX:PFE)(the "Corporation") wishes to announce that further to its news release of February 24, 2006, it has signed a definitive Purchase & Sale Agreement with Aera Energy LLC regarding the sale of its 71% interest in the Beta Unit, offshore California. Before the acquisition is completed, the Corporation is required to satisfy a number of financial and regulatory requirements, further particulars of which have been filed today on SEDAR as an additional News Release at http://www.sedar.com/.Netherland Sewell & Associates (NSA) estimated Proved Reserves of 19.78 Million barrels of 14 degree API oil and 3.23 Bcf of gas as of May 1, 2006 for the Unit. It also estimated 11.61 Million barrels of Probable oil reserves, 1.93 Bcf of Probable gas reserves, 31.26 Million barrels of Possible oil reserves and 4.84 Bcf of Possible gas reserves. These estimates are based on forecasted price scenario and have PV10% values of US$ 193.90 Million, US$ 89.29 Million and US$121.14 Million for Proved, Probable and Possible reserve categories respectively.The Beta Oil Field is located in San Pedro Area, in Federal waters nine miles offshore Long Beach, California. The leases in question are POCS 300, 301 and 306. A complex of two production platforms (Eureka and Ellen) and a facilities Platform (Elly) handle production from these leases. Platform Edith, also in the Beta Oil Field in lease POCS 296 is neither owned nor operated by Aera and is not included in this acquisition.The Beta Field was discovered in 1976 by Shell Oil Company...

Umm. that's like ONE day's worth of oil for the US.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Bubbles



Hat tip: Wonkette via Words Have Power

Brian Bilbray’s Kids Love Social Networking, Natty Light








Foreclosures May Jump As ARMs Reset
By J.W. ELPHINSTONE AP Business Writer
Monday, June 19, 2006


Howard Zinn: The Myth of American Exceptionalism
Lecture and Questions and Answer session. MIT - March 14, 2005



And ask yourself if the "war on terror" has made YOU any safer?

Or is it just a wonderful business opportunity for those well connected enough to profit from it?

Homeland security officials leave government for high-paying jobs
Associated Press
Last update: June 18, 2006 – 8:00 AM

Friday, January 27, 2006

Friday TV

1/27/2006

Embracing Humanity: Truth in a Time of War with Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn, playwright, activist and historian, is the author of the ground-breaking "A People's History of the United States." His influential writings and teaching give voice to factory workers, immigrant laborers, African Americans, Native Americans and the working poor. Zinn's talk explores the notion of "just" wars with his usual candor and critical understanding.
(An hour and a half lecture)

Watch it now using RealPlayer.
UCSD TV

Tonight on NOW
NOW gets perspective on the business of making war from award-winning filmmaker Eugene Jarecki. Jarecki's latest film WHY WE FIGHT examines the history of the politics and business of war and explores what it tells us about the war on terror and the war in Iraq.
http://www.pbs.org/now/